Yu heard the subtext in Chong MingDe’s words. She didn’t like this unpredictable guy, but years of living together weren’t something you could just cut off overnight… so she couldn’t help feeling worried for him.
“Don’t get worked up so easily. I just had a little idea, that’s all.”
Chong MingDe caught the flicker of unease in Yu’s eyes and saw straight through to the worry she felt for him. He put on a relaxed smile on purpose, hoping to ease her anxiety.
If you asked him who in this world he least wanted to hurt—Chongzong was already dead. Tang Mingtuo and Yu were his childhood friends; Ran Jingyu and Pang Zebei were friends from his school days. He had older friends from society, and now he’d added the Uesugi family and new friends from Kyoto related to “Chongzong.” Not exactly a huge list, but not that small either.
The only thing missing was his own family.
No grudges, no reason—just pure ignorance. He didn’t know them, so he couldn’t even imagine them.
Yu had no idea he’d thought that far. She couldn’t read his mind anyway. Right now she only cared about his goal, so she pressed him.
“What are you actually planning to do?”
“Me? Since I don’t know the full situation, I don’t really have a plan yet. But exactly because of that, shouldn’t you be all the more honest with me?”
In sharp contrast to Yu’s anxious tone, Chong MingDe lounged there at ease, looking like, “If I make the wrong call, that’s on you for not telling me the truth.”
Yu stared at his shameless face, at a loss for words. The longer she looked, the more he actually amused her. Only then did she realize that all this was just him not wanting her to worry.
Once she relaxed, she looked at the boy in front of her—smiling, maybe real, maybe fake, always hard to read—and still couldn’t guess why he’d come to ask about all this.
What should she tell him, and what should she hide? How was she supposed to choose?
The hardest part of these choices for Yu was that she couldn’t even figure out whether she and Chong MingDe stood on the same side, or opposite each other.
“Fine. Then I’ll start from the worst-case scenario.”
In the end, Yu made the same choice as always: stay neutral. She wouldn’t side with her grandfather Yan, and she wouldn’t side with Chong MingDe either. She would only follow her own feelings.
She was worried about him, so she told him about the experiment. It was just that simple.
Yu shifted her posture and switched to a serious tone.
“If the experiment fails, the main personality of the donor will collapse. The supplied personality will be lost, broken down, or fused into the main personality, and they’ll end up as something even worse than a vegetable.”
“Even if we take a step back and assume it succeeds, there’s no guarantee the remaining personalities will stay intact.”
The more she said, the more uncertain she felt. Even after she laid out such severe side effects, Chong MingDe still looked completely unfazed.
As if the one who’d be destroyed if it failed wasn’t him at all, but some stranger who had nothing to do with him.
“The 54.67% success rate I mentioned just now refers to the chance that the experimental subject receiving the personality survives. As for the original body—the personality donor—the situation’s too complicated. Even Grandpa can’t give a definite projection.”
Yu’s explanation came to a pause. Chong MingDe’s eyes moved a couple of times; he hesitated, then spoke.
“So that’s how it is. All that talk about success is just rumor. In reality, it’s still stuck at the theoretical stage, isn’t it?”
He tapped his fingers lightly on his thigh, turning over what Yu had just said.
“You’re right. But you know how Grandpa is. For him, this already counts as a success.”
Yu remained neutral. She didn’t try to defend Yan’s actions in her wording.
Now that everything was clearly laid out, Yu’s thoughts stalled for a moment, and so did the conversation. The air in the room froze for a few seconds, then Chong MingDe’s question broke the silence.
“Did the old man bring this up while he was on the phone with you?”
For Chong MingDe, the key point was already clear. He quickly replayed their conversation in his head and decided this was a good time to reel in the “net” he’d cast at the very start.
Hence this casual-sounding question.
“What else? You think he’d fly here just to personally deliver this ‘good news’?”
Yu answered without even thinking. To her, the question wasn’t worth asking.
“Then… besides you and the old lady, is there anyone else he might’ve told?”
“Mm… Mingtuo should know too. As for anyone else, I’m not sure.”
Arms folded, head tilted back, Yu thought it over and gave her answer.
As soon as he heard it, Chong MingDe’s mind was already racing ahead to the next line of thought.
—So how did Ito Yono find out?
—Ito Shinran? Bai Yaxin? Souren Manranyama? Uminari Manranyama?
At that thought, he felt a baseless yet strangely convincing hunch: Ito Yono was being used by someone.
—Knowing the old man, he definitely wants me to be his test subject.
—He probably passed me the tech to create and operate personalities in the first place just so he could test this research someday.
—But he also knows the harder he pushes, the less likely I am to cooperate.
—So, is Ito Yono being used by him?
—Then where do their paths even cross?
—Is it Uminari Manranyama? Did Yan tell Uminari first, and have him “accidentally” leak it to Ito Yono?
—But why would Uminari help Yan?
—Where’s the overlap in their interests?
His thoughts stopped there—not because he couldn’t keep going, but because now wasn’t the time. He stood up and flashed Yu a smile.
“Thanks. That helped a lot. It’s getting late, so I’ll get going.”
He said his goodbye as cleanly as his personality—talking as he walked, and by the time he finished, he was already at the door.
Yu had just gotten to her feet, about to say something, when he opened the door and tossed a reminder over his shoulder.
“All your disguise props are still in here. Don’t blow that hard-earned fake identity too easily.”
With that, Chong MingDe closed the door and left.
Left alone in the room, Yu didn’t get mad at his rude exit. Instead, his same-old attitude pulled her back to the days when the three of them played together as kids, and a gentle warmth spread through her chest.
