The air in the kitchen suddenly went still.
Jiang Xun did not stop drinking his yogurt. The straw stayed between his lips, but his cheeks stopped moving, and his fingertips pressed a small dent into the carton.
"He didn't stay because he didn't want to leave." Shen Yuxing's voice was calm. "There's no one at home to shoulder things for him. Grandpa needs someone with him, the corn in the fields hasn't been harvested, and the debts haven't been paid off. If he'd left with you, that family would have fallen apart."
He paused, rinsed the cloth under the tap, and wrung it out.
"And my brother's had fierce pride since he was little. What he fears most in life is owing anyone anything. Asking him to come to Capital City with you, to eat your food and live under your roof, would be worse than killing him."
Jiang Xun curled his lip. "Why are you telling me all this?"
"No reason." Shen Yuxing smiled. "I just wanted to tell you that it's not that he doesn't care about you."
Jiang Xun leaned against the refrigerator door and stayed silent for a long while.
Cold white light spilled out from inside the refrigerator, casting a small shadow from his eyelashes onto his cheekbones. That shadow trembled slightly.
"There's no point telling me this." He turned his face away, revealing the tip of an ear that was unusually red.
The redness stretched all the way from his earlobe to the rim of his ear, especially conspicuous in the refrigerator's cold light. He gulped down another mouthful of milk, his voice muffled by the carton and indistinct.
"It's not like I miss him that much. He can come or not. What does it have to do with me?"
Shen Yuxing leaned against