A glass of warm milk

The color drained completely from Liu Wanying's face in an instant.

The gentle, gracious mask she had painstakingly maintained for over a decade developed visible cracks at that moment. Her lips kept moving, but not a single word came out.

As for Jiang Changping, "ugly" no longer began to describe the look on his face.

"Shut up!" Jiang Changping shot to his feet and raised his hand to strike.

Jiang Xun did not dodge. He tilted his face up and stared straight at that raised palm, a spine-chilling smile tugging at his lips.

"Go on. Hit me," he said softly. "Then you'll prove that what you've owed me these past seventeen years isn't just a home, but a slap too."

Jiang Changping's hand froze in midair, trembling violently. His chest heaved, and frightening streaks of red crept into his eyes.

In the end, his hand dropped, and he collapsed back onto the sofa as though his spine had been pulled out.

Seeing this, Liu Wanying immediately grabbed Jiang Changping's arm, her voice trembling. "Changping, listen to what he's saying! He's slandering you! That wasn't what happened back then at all. His mother's health was-"

"Stop your wailing!" Jiang Xun turned, his gaze stabbing into her face like knives.

"Who the hell do you think you are? My mother entered the Jiang family as a properly wedded wife. Don't you know perfectly well which side gate you crawled in through?"

Those two remarks left Liu Wanying white-faced. Her carefully tended fingers clenched her skirt, her nails digging deep into her palms.

Jiang Yu panicked and rushed forward to shove Jiang Xun. "What gives you the right to insult my mom?"

Jiang Xun did not even stand up. He raised his leg and planted a kick on Jiang Yu's knee, sending him stumbling before he had even found his footing and pitching headfirst into the sofa.

"You have even less right to speak to me." Jiang Xun withdrew his leg. "You've been throwing your weight around in front of me all these days just because you carry the Jiang name. I was doing you a favor by not kicking out a few more of your teeth. Don't throw it back in my face."

"Jiang Xun!"

Jiang Yanchu, who had remained silent all this time, stood up from the corner, complicated emotions churning in his eyes.

Jiang Xun met his gaze and raised an eyebrow. "Oh, the second young master has finally decided to speak? I thought you'd fallen asleep. Why aren't you holding that dear little brother of yours and soothing him some more?"

Jiang Yanchu's eyes reddened. "Xun, you..."

His gaze shifted back and forth between Jiang Xun and Liu Wanying before finally dropping.

Watching him, the last trace of hope in Jiang Xun's heart went completely cold.

To Jiang Yanchu, one was the "little brother" who had grown up beside him for seventeen years, and the other was the "mom" who had raised him as her own son for seventeen years.

What did he, a biological younger brother who had appeared out of nowhere, count for? Did he expect a few words about old history to shake seventeen years of affection?

He had expected too much.

Jiang Xun rose from the sofa and stretched.

"All right." He glanced around at the varied expressions of everyone in the living room, his tone light.

"I'm not learning your rules, and as for apologizing, not a chance. Grounding me-do whatever you like. I wasn't planning to stay in this lousy home for long anyway."

He turned and took two steps toward the stairs, then stopped again. His gaze fell on Liu Wanying, instantly sending a chill up her back.

"Oh, right, Aunt Liu." Jiang Xun looked at her with smiling eyes, his smile radiant.

"Don't be impatient. We haven't even started settling our accounts yet. Everything from those seventeen years-we'll take our time and settle it all, one debt at a time. I remember every bit of it perfectly."

The color drained entirely from Liu Wanying's face.

Jiang Xun went upstairs, whistling in satisfaction.

This time, no one called him back.

Only deathly silence remained in the living room, along with Jiang Changping's unusually heavy breathing.

Jiang Xun returned to his room and shut the door behind him.

After a whole morning of commotion, he finally had some peace and quiet. He was about to burrow under the covers when he noticed something new on the bedside table out of the corner of his eye.

A glass of milk.

Faint wisps of steam still rose from the rim, so it clearly had not been there long.

Jiang Xun stopped moving and stared blankly at the glass of milk for several seconds.

An older child in the room next door at the orphanage had once offered him half a piece of bread. He had eaten it, only to find that it had been soaked in soapy water.

He had suffered diarrhea for three full days, while that boy stood outside the bathroom with a group of children, laughing until he crowed.

From then on, he had refused anything anyone gave him.

But this was the Jiang home, not the orphanage.

Even if Liu Wanying wanted to mess with him, she would not be stupid enough to leave a glass of tampered milk in his room-it was too crude, and the servants would see it too.

Jiang Xun sat by the bed for a very, very long time, cradling the glass of milk.

In all his years growing up, no one had ever warmed a glass of milk for him.

In fact, he had rarely even drunk milk. Only on days when officials came to inspect had he been given a tiny cup, and he had wanted to lick even the bottom clean.

Even a little hedgehog bristling with spikes could find a moment of softness in his heart over a steaming glass of milk.

Before his eyes could begin to sting, he tipped his head back and drank it all.

A little undissolved sugar remained at the bottom of the glass. The faint sweetness on his tongue swirled through his mouth before he finally swallowed it.