After Failing To Win Over the Yandere Best Actress, I Got Marked - Chapter 27.1

“Lan Lan.” Her voice carried an imperceptible tremor. Her gaze searched Ye Qinglan’s face as if trying to find a trace of the daughter she once knew.

Ye Qinglan didn’t stop, nor did she look back. “Is there something you need, Ms. Ye?”

That distant form of address caused Ye Hui to freeze. Her fingers whitened around the umbrella handle. “I… Can we talk?”

“There’s nothing to talk about.” Ye Qinglan pushed open the glass door, letting the curtain of rain rush in. “If it’s to plead for Fang Zhiqiang, don’t bother. If you want to leave him…” She turned slightly, her gaze shallow. “I can provide all the help you need, provided you cut ties with him completely.”

“I…” Ye Hui stammered for a long time, finally uttering only, “He is your stepfather, after all.”

“Heh!” Ye Qinglan’s cold laugh mingled with the sound of the rain, shattering like ice on the floor.

“Stepfather?” she repeated the word, her tone laced with frost. “Yes, he’s my stepfather, and I was the punching bag he beat and scolded at every whim!”

“You knew perfectly well that Fang Zhiqiang had violent tendencies, yet you watched with your own eyes as he laid hands on me. And you? You said he was just drunk. When he smashed my trophies to pieces, you said he was under too much pressure. When he embezzled thirty million of my acting fees to gamble, you said, ‘Why be so petty among family?'”

Ye Hui’s face turned from white to a sickly green.

“The past?” Ye Qinglan turned sharply, her gaze like a blade piercing through the other’s dodging eyes. “When I was in the hospital getting seventeen stitches, you were at Fang Zhiqiang’s banquet drinking on his behalf. When I was being slandered by the whole internet as a ‘diva,’ you were posting photos of the jade bracelet he gave you. On the day I won my first Best Actress award, Fang Zhiqiang was in Macau losing all my money with my bank card, while you…”

She paused, her throat working as she suppressed the metallic taste of blood on her tongue. “While you told me to ‘be sensible and stop making your stepfather angry.'”

The rain intensified, thudding heavily against the glass. Ye Hui staggered back against the door, her umbrella slipping. Rain instantly drenched her meticulously styled hair. “I didn’t… I just…”

“Just what?” Ye Qinglan stepped closer, her eyes churning with a decade of accumulated sorrow. “Was it ‘just’ handing me a piece of moldy bread when he locked me in the storage room for three days? Or ‘just’ saying ‘a girl with hands too skilled will only invite trouble’ when he broke my left pinky finger?”

Standing by Ye Qinglan’s side, Su Jin could clearly feel her fingertips trembling. It wasn’t anger; it was a long-repressed, nearly numb desolation.

The brief mentions of Ye Qinglan’s past in the novel now printed themselves vividly in Su Jin’s mind. These were the fragments of a past no one had ever touched, the pieces that made her who she was today. Su Jin lowered her eyes, her throat tightening with a sudden sourness. Her heart felt as if it were being squeezed by an invisible hand, making it hard to breathe.

Ye Qinglan took a deep breath, suppressing the hostility. “You said we are both Omegas, and a home cannot be without an Alpha. Even if that Alpha is an alcoholic, an abuser, and a gambler, you stubbornly believe he is the Alpha the family needs.”

“Ms. Ye, is it that our family can’t live without an Alpha, or is it that you can’t live without one?”

Every word was a knife, precisely dissecting the cowardice Ye Hui disguised as “maternal love.”

“Enough!” Ye Hui suddenly shrieked. “He has his faults, but he raised you! Without him, where would your tuition have come from?”

“Raised me?” Ye Qinglan laughed low, a sound filled with irony. “When I was thirteen, I worked during the holidays, and he bet my entire wages at the poker table. When I was sixteen and cornered in the dressing room by a deputy director, he took twenty thousand in hush money and told me ‘sharing a drink with the director is a compliment to you.’ The year I got into the film academy, my tuition was scraped together only after I drank until my stomach bled”

“Is the ‘raising’ you speak of his treatment of me as a cash cow, or as a stepping stone for his company’s rise? You know better than anyone how Fang Group got to where it is today!”

Ye Hui’s once straight back slumped. “Qinglan…”

Ye Qinglan withdrew her gaze, watching the raindrops in the air. “I told you our bond as mother and daughter is shallow. It’s best we don’t contact each other unless absolutely necessary.”

“If you want to leave him, I will help you. That promise remains valid. As for anything else… do not force it.”

Su Jin’s heart wavered. ‘Fated for a shallow bond…’ This phrase appeared in the original text, but seeing Ye Hui’s pale face now, she finally understood the cold finality behind those words.

“Lan Lan, I am your mother…” Ye Hui’s voice choked with sobs.

“From the moment you let him hit me for the first time, you weren’t.”

Ye Qinglan’s voice was devoid of emotion. She turned and walked into the rain. Her aura was diluted by the water, yet it remained undeniably distant. Ye Hui froze, watching her daughter’s silhouette vanish into the curtain of rain as her umbrella hit the ground with a “snap.”

Su Jin gave her a deep, lingering look before turning to follow Ye Qinglan. From a distance, she could hear the sound of suppressed weeping behind them.

The two returned to the car one after the other. Inside the van, the heater dispelled the chill but could not clear the low pressure surrounding Ye Qinglan. She leaned against the window, watching the rain carve winding paths on the glass. Her fingers unconsciously rubbed her wrist, as if something were there, though nothing could be seen.

“Qinglan…” Su Jin called softly, her voice carrying a sob she hadn’t noticed herself. She wanted to reach out and wipe the rain from Ye Qinglan’s face, but she feared touching that fragile layer of disguise.

The scars buried by time and the nights no one cared about were now manifesting in the trembling of Ye Qinglan’s fingers, making Su Jin’s eyes red with heat. Su Jin leaned against her, attempting to use her own body heat to drive away the chill.

The moment she touched that warmth, Ye Qinglan’s rigid spine slumped imperceptibly.

“I’m fine,” she whispered. “It’s all in the past.”

Su Jin hummed in response, tightening her embrace. “Everything will get better and better from now on.”

Ye Qinglan withdrew her gaze from the rain and looked at Su Jin’s reddened eyes. She reached out, her fingertip gently brushing away the moisture at the corner of Su Jin’s eye it wasn’t rain, it was a tear of heartache.

“A-Jin,” her voice was very soft, carrying a nearly pathological seriousness, “Will you leave me?”

Su Jin froze, her eyes meeting Ye Qinglan’s bottomless gaze. Deep within those pupils surged an obsession so thick it couldn’t be dissolved like a drowning person clutching a final piece of driftwood, filled with a destructive possessiveness.

Su Jin’s heart skipped a beat.

Is she… is she darkening?

I haven’t even done anything yet!

【System! System, come out! Why did Ye Qinglan suddenly “darken”?】

she asked anxiously in her mind.

【What do I do now? What should I say?】

The System was also frantically flipping through the script. 【Don’t panic, don’t panic, let me check. Antagonist darkening… darkening…】

Pages rustled as they were turned, but the key information was nowhere to be found.

【That’s not right, why isn’t it here?】 the System muttered.

【Host, stabilize the antagonist first. I’m going to do a search to see what the problem is.】

Su Jin’s eyes widened in disbelief.

【? You’re going to leave me at a critical moment like this to go read the original work? Aren’t you afraid she’ll “ka-chak” (kill) me in a fit of rage?】

【Don’t worry, Host! Even if you die, I’ll resurrect you!】

The System dropped those words and hurried away.

【Gotta go, I’m checking the books!】

【Hey! You! Hey!】 Before she could finish, the System had vanished.

In Su Jin’s silence, Ye Qinglan’s eyes grew darker and darker. Her hand gripped Su Jin’s wrist tightly, her voice echoing gloomily, “Are you going to leave me too?”