Song Yangyao's POV:
The whole drive home, I seethed in impotent rage - mentally replaying that mortifying confrontation with my vile excuse for a sister over and over again. How dare that foul-mouthed gutter tramp publicly humiliate me like that in front of everyone? Spewing her filthy, degenerate insinuations about Father and me without a shred of shame or decorum?
I ground my teeth so hard I could've sworn I tasted enamel as the car pulled through the front gates. Before the driver could even put it in park, I was flinging open the door and storming towards the manor entrance.
"Yangyao? Is something the matter, dear?"
Mother's artificially sugared tone cut through the red haze of fury clouding my vision. She was seated in the front parlor taking tea, no doubt gossiping with her vapid socialite friends about God knows what asinine trivialities.
"That...that wretched whore of a sister!" I spat, stomping over with cheeks still burning from the lingering sting of humiliation. "You won't believe the vile, repugnant things she said about our family this morning in front of the entire academy!"
Mother's perfectly groomed brows shot up in a mask of polite interest even as the glint of cruel curiosity danced in her eyes. Like a starving hyena catching the scent of fresh carrion on the air.
"Oh? Do tell, darling. What has that uncouth little guttersnipe done now to sully our respected family's reputation even further?"
I wasted no time recounting every last salacious, filthy detail in blistering clarity - from Yanyan's crass innuendos about our father's...relations with her, right down to her shameless gesturing at her own obscenely curvaceous form in graphic detail for all to gawk at.
By the time I'd finished relaying the entire mortifying episode, Mother's face had gone thunderous with long-smoldering resentment barely contained behind her mask of aristocratic decorum.
"That ungrateful, degenerate whore," she hissed in a tone of pure venom, all traces of syrupy affectation evaporating like smoke. "How dare she besmirch our family's honorable reputation with her baseless, uncouth accusations? This...this is an outrage!"
Leaping to her feet, she began pacing in tightly agitated circles - each punishing click of her heels echoing through the cavernous parlor like the death knell of civilization itself.
"And to think that poor, simple-minded oaf of a husband just blithely authorized her to move out from under our very noses?" She railed, shooting me a look of outraged commiseration. "The absolute gall! As if that simpering fool is even remotely capable of making such a gargantuan decision unilaterally without even consulting me - her own mother!"
I nodded vigorously, basking in the righteous indignation flowing between us. Finally, someone who understood the full weight of Yanyan's treacherous transgressions rather than brushing them off with indulgent indifference.
"Exactly, Mother! Which is why I knew you'd want to hear firsthand from me the horrific way she publicly defamed and embarrassed our family. That wretched bitch should be shown her proper place before her depravity spirals completely out of control!"
"Girls? Is everything quite alright out here?"
The dulcet, infuriatingly mild tones of my father's voice cut through the building storm of our collective fury like a bucket of ice water. He strode into the parlor with an air of detached, patrician grace - seemingly oblivious to the palpable tension rapidly enveloping the space around us.
"You insufferable fool!" Mother rounded on him like a striking viper, finger jabbing accusingly into the center of his chest. "Is it true what I've just heard? That you granted that insidious little whore of a daughter permission to move out of our family home behind my back? And after the horrific, abhorrent way she's disgraced our name so publicly this morning?"
A strange, unsettling expression flickered across Father's chiseled features briefly. For a moment, I could've sworn his impassive mask cracked to reveal an underlying current of...weariness? Perhaps even dawning self-awareness of harsh truths long left unspoken in this house's dimly lit corners.
But it was gone in an instant, subsumed once more beneath those inscrutable layers of aristocratic poise and reserve.
"Ah yes, it's quite true - Yanyan did approach me requesting her own flat within the city." His rich baritone was low, unflustered in a manner that instantly reignited Mother's outrage anew. "After reviewing her request and the compelling circumstances behind it, I determined it was...within her best interests to grant a measure of increased autonomy and independence from the family household."
You could've heard a pin drop in the following silence as Mother and I just...gaped at him, utterly gobsmacked. Veins were practically bulging at her delicately arched temples, lips thinning into a rictus of indignant disbelief that her husband - her partner of nearly two decades and head of this entire ancestral dynasty - could be so infuriatingly...calm about this development.
"Yanyan? Her best interests?" She finally croaked, voice barely above a strained hiss of outraged affront. "That uncouth, slovenly little mongoloid couldn't discern her own best interests if they reached up and bit her squarely on that overinflated rump of hers!"
Father merely inclined his head in a polite if noncommittal acknowledgement, offering no retort or attempt to counter her vicious character assassination.
Seized by a reckless swell of indignant rage, I found the words bubbling up from my lips before I could think better of them.
"Well, it's no great tragedy really," I sneered, sneering openly at the thought of my gloriously unsullied newfound freedom. "Not like any of us will be missing that grotesque butterface haunting the halls and cramping my style at every turn now, right? Let the talentless, garish cow take her insufferable attitude elsewhere!"
There it was again - that same, fleeting spasm of weary introspection flickering across Father's aristocratic features briefly before being smothered once more. Only this time, his eyes never made it back to their usual glazed facade of indifference when they settled on me again.
This time...they smoldered with something far more potent. Something that sent a chill skittering unexpectedly down my spine despite my blustering bravado.
"Now, now Yangyao - that's hardly a fair or becoming characterization of your own flesh and blood sibling, wouldn't you agree?" He murmured in that same unbearably mild tone, like he was gently reproaching an errant child rather than addressing the leading lady of Wuhan's most prestigious academy.
Suddenly, the parlor felt stifling. Oppressive, like all the air was being steadily siphoned from the room leaving me gasping for every rattling breath.
Mother, seemingly oblivious to the shift in atmosphere, simply scoffed indelicately and waved a negligent hand.
"Please, that uncouth little brat lacks even the most basic comprehension of propriety and feminine decorum." She spat the words like a blasphemous curse upon our hallowed grounds. "I've quite given up on her prospects for achieving anything resembling the meager standards of decency and grace this family rightly expects."
"Have you now?"
The words were soft, almost gentle in their inexorable delivery. But something about Father's tone, coupled with that piercing stare boring straight into my core, rooted me to the spot in instinctive unease.
"Tell me, Wife...all these years of giving up and dismissing her as beyond hope - did it never occur to you that, just perhaps..." He paused fractionally, lips quirking in a faint ghost of a rueful smile. "...the failure originated not from Yanyan herself, but rather...from the wholehearted absence of parental guidance, nurturing and emotional support you so bitterly lament lacking in her character?"
There it was - a clear, unvarnished glimpse behind the impenetrable veil of aristocratic decorum that had enshrouded this family in shadow for far too long. A reckoning, finally given breath and substance after lingering in the stale, cobwebbed corners for untold generations.
But Mother, stubborn woman that she was, simply bristled and turned up her surgically perfected nose in instinctive dismissal of such an offensively blunt awakening.
"Hmph! So the doddering old patriarch finally opens his eyes."