BXBX NOVEL Chapter 132: You Think She's My Sister?!
"Hold up, now..." I said and looked back at the family picture on the wall. "You haven\'t introduced one more person yet."
"Hmm...Who are you talking about?" She looked at the picture with a look of confusion on her face. "I don\'t remember having another person in my family..."
"The gorgeous woman on the right..." I said as I pointed at herself in the picture, where she stood out from the rest of her family because of how bright and cheery she looked in the photo. "...You haven\'t introduced her yet."
"...B-But that\'s just me." She blushed when she realised that she was admitting to my statement and was basically calling herself beautiful. "Why do I have to introduce myself again?"
"Why?...Because you still haven\'t properly introduced yourself yet." I said, which made her tilt her head with a puzzled look on her face, wondering if I forgot that she had just told me her name a minute ago.
She was even more confused when I said, while staring at her family picture like I was observing it,
"...In fact, you still haven\'t properly introduced the rest of your family as well and have given them different identities to throw me off."
"It\'s a good thing that it was quite obvious that you were trying to trick me, and I didn\'t fall for your little lie." I held my chest and breathed a sigh of relief, as if I had just saved myself from a scam.
"Gave my family different identities?" She looked at me in a bizarre manner and squinted her eyes as if she were really trying really hard to understand what I was trying to say. "What does that even mean? It doesn\'t even make sense."
"Let me make it clear to you, since you don\'t seem to understand your trick that was so obvious." I said as if I were going to reveal a big mystery and pointed at her daughter in the picture. "You see that girl over there, who you said was your daughter, that you were so proud of?"
"...Well, she\'s not even your daughter."
"What?!" She couldn\'t help but exclaim when she heard me cut off all her relations to her beloved daughter.
And just when she was about to ask what I was saying with an absurd look on her face, I continued saying,
"But that doesn\'t mean that I\'m saying that she isn\'t a member of your family or even denying her very existence, as that would simply be crazy, but I\'m simply saying that she isn\'t your daughter."
"If she\'s not my daughter, then who exactly is she?" Camila gave a ridiculous smile, not knowing if I was joking or not. "Don\'t tell me that you think that I already had this photo ready for you to trick you, or that I actually took a picture with some random person I found on the street and hung it up on my wall?"
"Of course not." I said as if it were obvious. "Why would I call your sister a random person, when I just said that she was definitely a member of your family?"
"...S-Sister?!" Camila shook her head in shock as her blue eyes went wide when she heard me call her daughter her sister, and she looked to be doubting her own hearing.
"Did you just say that you think that my daughter is my s-sister?...There\'s no way you actually just said that, right? Right?..."
Camila seemed to be able to handle being called a young lady quite gracefully, and she took it as a pleasant compliment from me. But telling her that she looked like she was her daughter\'s sister seemed to be too much for her and made her doubt her reality.
"Why not? What wrong with me saying that, when both of you look like clones of one another?" I said which made her look at me in stupor.
"That\'s because she\'s my daughter! She\'s got my blood running through her veins, so it just makes sense that she looks just like me!" She exclaimed while grabbing my hand and pulling me closer to get a better look at the picture. "And even though we look similar, can\'t you see the clear difference that\'s seen on our faces due to our face?!"
"One is 42 and is more than twice your age!" She pointed at herself while nudging me to get a good look at her daughter\'s face. "The other is 20 and is only starting out with her life." She pointed at her daughter.
"Can\'t you see the obvious difference?!" She looked at me with an exasperated look on her face, hoping I finally understood.
"Oh yeah, I do see the difference." I said, while closely looking at the picture with my hand on my chin, which made her feel relieved that I was finally getting what she was trying to say. "...While both of you are quite pretty and look alike, you still look way more attractive than your little sister."
"Especially comparing both of your figures..." I said as I brazenly looked Camila up and down like she was a sculpture at a museum, which made her ears turn red. "...It\'s quite obvious, who\'s the younger sister and who\'s the older sister with the buxom outline you got."
"Noo!~ That\'s not the difference I\'m trying to point out!~" She exclaimed in a bashful manner and then pushed her palms into my eyes, to cover my sneaky eyes that were roaming around her body. "...And quit ogling my daughter\'s picture like that, when her mother is right in front of you!~"
"Her mother?...You mean her older sister?" I pulled her hands off my face and corrected her words with a smile.
"No, her mother! Her mother, who gave birth to her!~" She cried out in a flustered manner. "Just why won\'t you believe me?!"
"Why won\'t I believe you?..." I raised my eyebrow in doubt and asked, "Well, why don\'t you give me a proper reason yourself?"
"Just look at the photo of yourself here and tell me anything about it; that makes you look like a normal middle-aged lady you would see on the street." I pointed at another photo, where Camila was sitting and smiling in a garden full of white flowers. "If you tell me one single thing that sets you apart from someone who looks young, then I\'ll believe you."
"...But it shouldn\'t be something that makes you mature or adult-like, and it should actually be some characteristic you would see in an ageing oman." I laid some rules for my challenge, which made Camila\'s eyes light up like she just saw an easy bet.
"That\'s it?!...Then it\'s easy to make me believe you!" She said in an enthusiastic manner and immediately turned to look at her picture, so that she could at least throw a dozen reasons in my face and embarrass me for making up such a silly wager.
But even after a minute had passed, Camila told me nothing of the sort that I had asked her, and was still staring at her portrait and scanning every nook and cranny of it to find something about her that resembled an old lady. And no matter what angle she looked at it, she couldn\'t seem to find any reason or feature that made her actually look old.
There were several times where she opened her mouth and looked like she was going to tell me something, but she always stopped herself, like it didn\'t make any sense, and went back to searching her picture.
It was at this moment that she realised that what I challenged her to do wasn\'t as easy as she thought and was actually really tricky, since she was a one-of-a-kind woman in this world who had the charm of an adult and the liveliness and energy of youth, just like my mother did.