Reborn: The Return of the Villainous Mr. Liu

"Alter ego? Wh-what nonsense are you spouting, Liu Jun?" Cai Lingyun averted his gaze.

Jun grabbed his hair and forced him to look at him. "I don't have time to waste. Start talking or with every lie, I will start punching your ugly face."

"Liu Jun! Isn't it enough that you fucking ruined my life like this!? Why should I answer your questions?"

Jun chuckled sinisterly. "Because I am telling you to. I am not giving you a choice."

"Shut up! Of course it's a lie! I don't even know how you got to that conclusion!"

This time, it was Ai who said, "Does Guiying smoke?"

Cai Lingyun's stance immediately softened upon hearing her talk to him. "What? Guiying and smoking? That's impossible. She hates smoking."

"Yet I saw her smoking one day in Dream High."

That startled him. His eyeballs turned left and right, and he turned fidgety.

Jun then asked, "Fine. If you don't know about her condition, then you can definitely answer one question, right? Did you ever physically assault your sister?"

He felt a sharp, ominous tingling pass through his spine. Especially in front of Ai, his heart beat even faster in trepidation.

"W-what…" Jun's question turned him fully sober. He nervously laughed. "Just because you want to defame me, you cannot spin lies like this! Guiying is my sister. I will never hurt her-"

Jun threw a surprise punch on his cheek, almost crushing his cheekbone. "I warned you I won't tolerate lies."

Tears pooled in his eyes with the intensity of the punch. He quickly looked at Ai and stammered. "D-Did Guiying tell you anything? Ai, I don't know what's wrong with her. But she is lying! You know me, right? I love Guiying. I raised her since we lost our parents…How can I bear to be violent with her?"

Ai narrowed her eyes. "So you mean to say that the police report against you and Guiying's neighbors seeing all the commotion is also a lie?"

The panic across his face was evident. "T-that wasn't a commotion at all. I just visited Guiying, and we just had a small argument…" he felt his forehead getting covered in sweat. "I was unfairly arrested! I might have just raised my voice a bit, b-but I never hit her!"

"Is that so?" Jun smiled. "I guess you won't understand normal language. But I have ways to deal with stubborn trash like you. The Liu family has a special place to make you open your mouth. We have lots of tools to help you with that."

Cai Lingyun didn't have to be spoon fed the meaning. With how rich and influential Jun was, there were surely lots of goons and men under his orders to torture him.

"Liu Jun…you are going too f-far…You cannot drag an innocent person like me-"

"A man having a police complaint against him regarding beating his sister is not innocent," Jun cut him off. "In fact, he is a monster. So I am asking you for the last time. Don't test my patience after that. Did you beat Cai Guiying?"

He felt his voice stuck in his throat. In front of Ai and the woman he loved, how could he admit to his true nature?

"I…"

Under Ai's accusing scrutiny, Cai Lingyun suffered even more mental damage.

"Did you or did you not beat Guiying?"

He finally confessed, albeit trying to give a half-hearted truth. "L-look, Ai…you can see how I am living. All because of Liu Jun! I was kicked out of my house because I didn't have rent to pay…" his voice stammered, "I am in a miserable state, so I just…asked some help from Guiying."

Jun sneered.

By help, he means financial help.

"But she refused!" His gaze and voice became more distraught. "I am in a tough situation, and Guiying is my sister…I expected she would help me, b-but she straightaway rejected me. We just had an argument over that…a-and in anger, I just slapped her."

Ai stared at him silently, her gaze more unforgiving than before. "JUST slapped her?"

He panicked. "I-I regret my actions, Ai! Really! It was all because of my stress…" he began to laugh, "you understand, right? I mean just look at this place. It's so filthy and disgusting. It was just in a spur of the moment-"

"Spur of the moment or have you done this before?" Ai sharply demanded an answer.

He stiffened. "B-before?"

"Have you been beating Guiying before too?"

When Ai learned of the police complaint against Cai Lingyun, it was then she slowly began to believe that the cause behind Guiying's condition might be none other than her brother herself. If she suffered extreme anguish that she couldn't share it with anybody else, then it must definitely be related to Cai Lingyun somehow because he was her only family. And the most difficult situation for anybody to admit was their complicated family matters.

"Tell me," Ai's stance grew even icier as she peered into his guilty gaze. "Have you been doing this for a long time? Is it because of you that she developed an alter ego?"

Cai Lingyun furiously shook his head. His face paled, and he felt difficulty in swallowing. "No, no…Ai, we…we all three have spent such a long time together…I-I am not that kind of a man to hit a woman. What happened with Guiying was just one time…"

Jun slapped him hard. "One time…According to the report, it wasn't just one slap. You pulled her hair too. She hurt her ankle when she tried to fight you."

He gnashed his jaw. "SHUT UP! You stay out of this Liu Jun! I am talking to Ai! Don't you fucking interfere!"

That earned him another hard punch in his gut, making him cough blood.

Ai clenched her fists because she could watch the guilt in his eyes that became more and more evident. "Cai Lingyun…"

Thinking about all the years she spent with Guiying, but she never got the wind of the state she lived in…Ai felt as if her heart was being squeezed hard without any mercy.

"Why…why would you do that to Guiying?"