Chapter 997 - A Necessary Lie

Nora smiled widened as she looked at her, "You are my best friend." She took a pause and added, "You're never a lie to me. And you can never be."

"But I'm not Destiny whom you knew," said Xiu in a helpless voice.

"I know," replied Nora. "You are Xiu, my best friend."

Xiu sat up when she heard that and looked at Nora incredulously, "Do you understand what I am saying?"

Nora lazily put one foot over the other as she said, "I do understand it. You're saying, you're not Destiny. You're Xiu. But I already know that. I'm just surprised you're willing to talk to me about it at this time."

Xiu didn't respond for a long while. She was too stunned to even form any words. She always thought she did a good job hiding from Nora but she seemed to have forgotten that Nora was the closest person to Destiny and she also became the closest person to her as well. So, how could she, being the closest person to both Destiny and Xiu, not even tell the difference? Or even notice that both were two different people?

But even if Xiu understood this in her head, she couldn't process it well.

"How long have you known it for?" asked Xiu after a long silence.

Nora thought about it carefully before answering, "Honestly, I don't know. Initially, when you said you have amnesia, I accepted it without another thought. But slowly, I noticed how your habits changed. Again, I blamed it on amnesia. Then you became a whole different person and I still blamed it on amnesia." Nora almost wanted to smack her old self for being dense enough to blame everything on amnesia. But as a normal person, she couldn't possibly make the connection with a soul exchange. "It actually happened after I met my daughter. One day I went home and our cooking lady was watching a tv series. The female lead was reincarnated into another person. And the female lead's best friend noticed how she was acting differently. I don't even know why my brain connected that with you."

"What?" Xiu felt like laughing at how it sounded. Her best friend actually doubted everything after watching a drama? She really wanted to crack open Nora's head to see what was inside it.

"Anyway, after that I started paying attention to you like a hawk," confessed Nora. "And the more I noticed, the more I got chills. At that time, my brain was unwilling to believe that amnesia could bring that much change to a person."

"And that's when you knew I'm Xiu?"

Nora shook her head, "Nope! I just figured out that you were not the Destiny I knew. I didn't know whose soul lived within this body but I was certain it wasn't Destiny."

"Then why didn't you confront me?"

Nora sighed out, "It was already too late!" She sounded depressed as she stated, "How could I walk to you and ask what are you doing in my best friend's body? Especially when I already accepted you as my best friend? No, I should say you had already become a sister to me. Destiny was a best friend. A very dear one. But you became a lot more than that. You became family. And I couldn't bring myself to question my own family."

Xiu felt her eyes stinging when she heard that. 

"Then now, do you know who I really am?" asked Xiu.

"I have a nagging feeling that I do know but I never really dwelled over it," answered Nora sincerely. "Because to me, you'd still be the sister who is willing to offer her everything to me. And since you're willing to offer me everything, do you think I would back out?"

"Aren't you mad at me?"

"For what?"

"I've been lying to you for years," said Xiu. "I've been deceiving you for so long."

"But I don't think it that way," replied Nora. "It hurt knowing that Destiny was no more. But it was easier to cope with that, knowing that you were still around. Not only that, you never deceived me. Perhaps, our beginning started with a lie but there is no lie about our relationship today."

"You've become mȧturė," commented Xiu.

"I had to," said Nora. "You always talked big making me sound like an idiot."

Xiu sat up and rubbed her fingers as she told her, "I never wanted to lie to you. I didn't even want to hide the truth from you. I thought once I got adjusted to being in a new body, I'll just come clean with you and distance myself from you. However, you and your family offered me the warmth I really needed and wanted in my life. So, like a greedy person, I desperately tried to hold on to everything you offered. I'm sorry!"

Nora also sat up and hugged Xiu, "Idiot! If we offered you a little warmth, you returned us with everything you had to offer. Do you really think this apology is needed? I don't think so. Your lie was necessary. It's still very necessary." She rubbed Xiu's back as she went on, "Take Uncle Zemin and his wife, for instance. Do you think it's okay to tell them that the daughter they found after decades is actually just a shell? Wouldn't that break them?" She held Xiu's face in her hands and continued, "I also needed you to be Destiny back then. It was easier for me. Maybe that's why I took so long to even accept that Destiny was gone because I was not willing to let go. But that didn't mean I didn't accept you."

Xiu rubbed her tears away from her face as she said, "Do you know I have been envious of Destiny for having a best friend like you? I thought if I had someone like you beside me in my previous life, I wouldn't have ended up so lonely."

"I don't know about the previous life but I feel happy that God gifted me with a friend like you," was Nora's response.