Huo Mian looked up at Yu Xiaxing. Her eyes were red, but her voice remained neither servile nor aggressive. “Yu Xiaxing, I don’t think there was anything attacking about what I said.”
“I was only showing concern for you. You were the one who misinterpreted my meaning. But if my concern made you uncomfortable, I can apologize.”
“But you had no right to push me into the pool and hold my head underwater! That was attempted murder!”
Just then, Yu Zhining, who had remained silent until now, suddenly spoke. He looked at Huo Mian. “You’re not innocent. You knew perfectly well that what happened to that dog was an extremely severe childhood trauma for Yu Xiaxing.”
“And you also knew that you weren’t an innocent bystander in that incident.”
“You deliberately triggered her trauma response, then portrayed her anger as oversensitivity and emotional instability.”
Huo Mian’s face went deathly pale. She stared at Yu Zhining in disbelief. “A-Ning, how can you say that about me?”
Yu Zhining remained as expressionless as a machine. “Because that’s exactly what you did. I’m simply telling the truth.”
As it happened, Yu Xiaxing usually enjoyed reading those little tips about spotting toxic men. One of them had mentioned this sort of psychological manipulation, known as gaslighting.
For example, a toxic man might constantly tell his girlfriend that she’s fat and put her down by saying that no one else would want her, creating deep psychological insecurities.
After enough time passed, if he casually said in public, “That dessert is really high in calories,” his girlfriend would automatically interpret it as, “Are you a pig? How can you still eat something with so many calories?” Then she would have an emotional breakdown.
Her outburst was clearly caused by his long-term insinuations.
But onlookers would only think, That woman has such a terrible temper. He only said one ordinary sentence. Did she really have to blow up like that?
That was why, when Yu Xiaxing heard Huo Mian deliberately bring up her trauma, she had planned to beat Huo Mian up and then expose her psychological manipulation.
She had originally intended to expose it herself. She hadn’t expected Yu Zhining to do it for her.
How strange…
But since he had already said it, Yu Xiaxing decided to run with it.
Yu Xiaxing looked terrified. “Oh my God, how frightening! You’ve been psychologically manipulating me all along! Could this be that famous gaslighting technique everyone talks about?”
The older members of the family exchanged awkward glances.
Huo Mian was furious and aggrieved. “Yu Xiaxing, what manipulation? I think you’re the one who’s sick! Otherwise, why would you have bitten me like that back then?”
She suddenly lifted the hem of her white shirt, exposing her lower abdomen. A hideous scar marred the skin there.
The scar was sunken, as though a chunk of flesh had been dug out.
“You left me with a physical deformity! You made it impossible for me to ever wear short tops again!”
Yu Xiaxing rolled her eyes. Now that Huo Mian had brought it up, she remembered what had happened. When she had been covering her lower abdomen and complaining to Yu Zhining earlier, she had apparently made it sound as though she had rendered Huo Mian unable to have children. In reality, it was only a scar that meant Huo Mian could never wear a swimsuit.
Yu Xiaxing turned directly to her eldest uncle. “Uncle, back then, you found a psychologist to evaluate both of us. In the end, you decided we were just children and never told us the results. We’re both adults now. Can you tell us? Which one of us had a mental illness back then?”
Several of the older relatives fell silent.
The children had been too young to understand what had happened, and the adults had deliberately kept it hidden.
Because the truth was simply too dark…
—
Huo Mian’s father had once been Yu Zhengrong’s trusted right-hand man. He had even taken a knife for Yu Zhengrong.
Later, he switched to legitimate business and became extremely successful, rising to become one of the most prominent figures among Pu City’s wealthy families.
Huo’s father was in poor health. After having a daughter, he became afraid that he might die young and leave her without anyone to care for her. In a moment of impulsiveness, he thought of the kind of arranged marriage common among wealthy families and chose the Yu family's third son.
Yu Zhining and Huo Mian were the same age, and they had even been classmates at school. He assumed that if things continued developing between the two children, they would naturally fall in love.
Not long after arranging the engagement, he fell ill and passed away.
Huo’s mother had always been domineering. Her husband’s death only made her more paranoid.
She had an intense need to control her daughter. She would deliberately make her daughter sick or injured so that the girl could never do without her care and would remain dependent on her forever.
It was a psychological disorder known as Munchausen syndrome by proxy.
Whenever Huo Mian was preparing to leave for a dance competition, she would deliberately put nails inside her shoes, injuring Huo Mian’s feet and forcing her to stay home with her.
She would even deliberately feed Huo Mian foods that didn’t agree with her. Once Huo Mian fell ill, she would tenderly nurse her, hoping to make her understand that she could never live without her mother.
When the Yu family discovered the abuse the child was suffering, they brought Huo Mian to the Yu estate to care for her.
By then, Yu Zheng had already left, while Yu Xiaxing was being raised by the family’s main branch.
At first, Yu Xiaxing and Huo Mian got along quite well.
Yu Xiaxing had a little dog of her own, also a Maltese. Its name was Tang Tuan.
Huo Mian adored Tang Tuan, but Tang Tuan had eyes only for Star’s owner and disliked being touched by anyone else.
Huo Mian hated that feeling. She thought it might have been better to remain at home after all.
Her mother might hurt her, but at least she was the only one her mother favored.
Here at the Yu residence, her fiancé, Yu Zhining, always stood up for Yu Xiaxing at school and never paid any attention to her.
At home, even a dog rejected her.
One snowy winter day, all the children at the Yu residence went to school.
Because Huo Mian was in poor health, she had taken the day off and was left alone at the estate.
She was so lonely that she began thinking about the things her mother did…
If you caused someone you loved to be hurt, then you had a reason to care for them.
That person would depend on you forever and never be able to leave you.
Huo Mian wondered: If this worked on people, would it work on small animals too?
She loved Tang Tuan so much. She wanted Tang Tuan to become dependent on her forever.
So she deliberately put Tang Tuan inside an iron cage and placed the cage on top of the machine used to warm and dry quilts.
Her idea was simple.
Part of it came from a pure desire to care for Tang Tuan. The weather was so cold, and she wanted to keep the dog warm.
But another part of her hoped that perhaps the puppy’s paws would be burned just a little. Then she could take care of it.
With that care, with all the effort she devoted to it, the dog would surely become dependent on her and never leave her.
At that moment, she finally understood her mother.
But the machine heated so slowly. She waited for ages, yet Tang Tuan still showed no sign of being hurt.
She grew bored and went outside to play.
By the time Yu Xiaxing came home from school and found Tang Tuan, the dog could no longer move.
The scene was horrifying. The puppy’s entire body had gone rigid…
Yu Xiaxing fainted on the spot.
After waking up, she cried and cried. Huo Mian cried too.
Huo Mian ran to Yu Xiaxing’s bedside to apologize, saying that she hadn’t meant to do it.
“I was just afraid it would be cold. I only wanted to take care of it. I really didn’t know this would happen…”
Yu Xiaxing couldn’t accept it. Suddenly, she lunged at Huo Mian like a madwoman!
It was winter, and everyone was wearing thick clothes. Yu Xiaxing wanted to bite her, but there was too much clothing covering the rest of her body to expose any skin. So she lifted the fabric at Huo Mian’s stomach, sank her teeth into her lower abdomen, and refused to let go.
By the time the nurses rushed over and pulled her away, a large chunk of flesh had been torn from Huo Mian’s lower abdomen.
It was a bloody, mangled mess.
