"…"
That tiny flicker of gratitude was snuffed out before it could even warm up.
Jiang Ningchu opened her mouth, but not a single word came out.
"Being angry is one thing, but how could you lay hands on him!"
Su Wanqing shot Jiang Zhenting a fierce glare, skirted around the winding trail of water on the floor, and hurried over to Jiang Ningchu, her voice softening. "Quick! Xiaochu, come here to your godmother. Let me take a look!"
Jiang Ningchu slipped into her slippers and tiptoed over.
Su Wanqing gripped her wrist and examined her up and down twice, then reached up to touch her forehead and cheeks, her voice taut with worry. "Did he scare you? Are you scared? Are you hurt anywhere? Do you feel unwell right now?"
"I'm really fine, Godmother." Jiang Ningchu took her cold hands and smiled, changing the subject. "What's for dinner?"
The servants bent low, silently cleaning up the mess, doing their utmost to avoid the two crisscrossing glares.
"Sir, Madam, dinner is ready to be served."
Uncle Jin, the butler, appeared at just the right moment, smiling and making an inviting gesture toward Jiang Heng. "Young Master."
Jiang Zhenting glared at Jiang Heng's leisurely, unhurried stroll to the dining table, his chest heaving violently.
He strode to the head of the table and dropped into his seat with a bang, as if suppressing a bellyful of fire. "I tell you to come back and you just come back? Can't you understand plain words!"
Jiang Heng didn't even lift his eyelids. "Your exact words were, 'Crawl back here.'"
He paused, then added unhurriedly, "Well, here I am. Crawled back."
"You—!"
Jiang Zhenting slammed his palm on the solid wood dining table, making the cups and saucers rattle.
He raised a hand to point at Jiang Heng, his fingers trembling. "My exact words were! Sort out your Second Uncle's mess, and if you can't handle it, you can forget being Chief Operating Officer—crawl back home!"
Jiang Heng seemed entirely oblivious to the towering rage in front of him. He slowly unfolded his napkin and spread it across his lap, his gaze following the dishes the servants brought in, and gave a lukewarm reply. "Mm."
Jiang Ningchu automatically filled in the second half of the sentence: So, crawled back.
"Forget it."
Jiang Zhenting looked as though all his strength had been drained. He let out a long sigh, lifting his chopsticks to hover in midair, his tone softening a little.
"Zhenzhou did do wrong, but you…"
"You could have at least transferred him to a branch factory in the suburbs, or at worst, demoted him to Xinggang. There was no need to send him abroad to a place like Cambodia!"
Cambodia?
Jiang Ningchu had been planning to keep her head down and eat, but she caught that word by accident.
A few days ago, Zhou Yichi had mentioned that the Jiang family's operations were focused on Europe and America, and Southeast Asia was only a preliminary idea—the factories didn't even exist yet.
Being sent abroad to Cambodia at a time like this… pure pioneering work. Wasn't that just exile?
"Oh?"
Jiang Heng finally showed some reaction, the corner of his brow arching as his gaze swept over like a blade of ice. "Embezzled company funds, then got ambushed at the company entrance by his little mistress holding protest banners. The whole world knows about it."
"And that's 'no need'?"
"That—those were traps someone set for him!"
Jiang Zhenting's momentum visibly weakened, urgency creeping into his voice. "He's your Second Uncle, after all. He's getting on in years. Exiled far from home to a place like that—how could his body take it?"
"Can we please just have one meal in peace?!"
Su Wanqing slammed down her spoon, abruptly rising to her feet and forcibly cutting through the tense standoff before her.
She frowned and shot Jiang Zhenting a glare before turning toward the kitchen. "The two kids finally have dinner at home together, and you insist on picking this moment to talk business? Can't whatever it is wait until after the meal?"
Following Su Wanqing's gaze, Jiang Zhenting finally noticed Jiang Ningchu, who had been quietly huddled at Jiang Heng's right hand side, nearly burying her face in her bowl.
He coughed awkwardly a couple of times, picked up the serving chopsticks, and placed a shrimp in tomato sauce onto the bone china plate in front of Jiang Ningchu, lowering his voice slightly. "Xiaochu, eat up."
Jiang Ningchu had been trying her best to become invisible, and being suddenly called out, she could only lift her face and answer politely, "Thank you, Godfather."
The next second, staring at the shrimp coated in rich, glossy tomato sauce, bright red and appetizing on her plate, Jiang Ningchu froze.
To eat, or not to eat—that was the question.
Jiang Ningchu had lived in the Jiang household since she was four. As a child, she'd had a weak constitution and was extremely prone to allergies, with an allergen list long enough to give anyone a headache.
Peanuts, mangoes, shrimp… all prominently featured.
At her lowest resistance, even dust particles in the air could cover her body in rashes.
Su Wanqing had worried herself sick over her special constitution.
But precisely because of her frequent hospital visits—and because her allergic reactions came and went, sometimes mild, sometimes severe, always unpredictable—doctors had never been able to give her a definitively clear list of foods to avoid.
Strictly speaking, shrimp was off-limits.
But…
Just as Jiang Ningchu was racking her brain for a way to discreetly hide the shrimp among the other dishes, a hand with well-defined knuckles and cool, pale skin reached over naturally from her left.
Jiang Heng's chopsticks picked up the bright red shrimp with pinpoint precision, the movement smooth and unhesitating, and carried it straight to his own mouth.
Before she could react, the shrimp had been nonchalantly swallowed.
He picked up his snow-white napkin with a composed air, gently dabbed the corner of his mouth, then cast a cool glance toward the head of the table.
"As far as Second Uncle is concerned, that's the end of it."
"It's fine if he doesn't go."
As a flicker of hope ignited in Jiang Zhenting's eyes, Jiang Heng lazily delivered the second half of the sentence. "Let him go to the police station himself and turn himself in."
"You!" Jiang Zhenting shot to his feet, the chair legs screeching harshly against the floor, his face flushing red instantly, ready to explode.
But Jiang Heng had already risen from the table.
Jiang Ningchu sat frozen in place.
Jiang Heng's string of actions had flowed as effortlessly as running water, so natural that it seemed he was merely expressing dissatisfaction with Jiang Zhenting—completely indifferent to who was sitting beside him, and utterly unaware of what that shrimp meant to her.
"Look at what a fine son you've raised!"
Jiang Zhenting slumped back into his chair, took a big gulp of water from his glass, and pounded his chest to catch his breath. "Who on earth sends their own flesh-and-blood Second Uncle to hell? Mark my words, before long he won't even have any respect for me, his own father!"
Jiang Ningchu lowered her head again.
By now, he probably already…
"You say that as if he isn't your son too."
Su Wanqing gently pushed a small bowl of warm pork rib soup in front of Jiang Ningchu and replied coolly, "I really don't know who he inherited that temperament from."
The post-rain air had been filtered of dust, carrying a cool, fresh scent of grass and trees.
After her shower, Jiang Ningchu changed into soft cotton loungewear and reclined into the comfortable, plush sofa, contentedly gazing out at the mountains whose silhouettes blurred into the night.
Only after dinner, when she returned to her room and picked up her phone, did she see the message Zhou Yichi had sent:
【Chi: The experimental data turned out surprisingly good. Before my next experiment, I'm coming to you for a blessing [image][image]】
Jiang Ningchu opened the photos and zoomed in.
The images showed freshly logged experimental data. She couldn't understand any of the metrics; she just stared at the timestamp for a long time.
Indeed—it was shortly after she got home that day.
Everything was like that rain in the mountains: it had fallen, left a cold dampness, and then been erased by the night.
The corners of her mouth curved up, ever so slightly, without her even noticing.
Zhou Yichi didn't like arguments. When faced with topics he didn't want to discuss, he simply went silent.
Over the past three years, those trivial little frictions would fade after a few days of cooling off.
What reassured her was that no matter how long the "cooling-off period" lasted, he was always the one to break the silence first.
He had once explained it to her with his science-guy logic: he just needed a bit of time for his stubborn mind to come around.
And all she had to do was wait where she was.
Jiang Ningchu tapped the screen and sent back a squishy cat making a heart with its paws.
In the quiet room, her phone's speaker carried her best friend Lin Wei's hunger for gossip. "Holy crap! You didn't get a chance to sneak off? That's intense! A whole family eating dinner together—it's been ages, hasn't it?"
"Yeah. Last time was probably New Year's Eve? Something like that." Jiang Ningchu bit into a cherry and plucked off the stem with a pop.
She glanced at the deep darkness beyond the balcony, pressed speaker, and set the phone on the little tea table.
The Jiang family villa was a classic French-style structure, spacious and airy.
Her room was on the west side of the second floor, with its own balcony; her adoptive parents' room was on the east side of the third floor.
On ordinary days, the huge mansion was empty and silent. Even under the same roof, they rarely crossed paths—no need to worry about being overheard.
"And then? Don't leave me hanging!" Lin Wei's impatience kicked in, her voice rising without her realizing it. "Uncle Jiang put shrimp in your bowl—did you eat it?"
"Of course not." Jiang Ningchu's fingers paused on the cherry, then set it back in the fruit plate.
She stood up and paced the room with her phone. "Jiang Heng ate it."
"Jiang Heng? Your brother?!" Lin Wei gasped. "He knows you're allergic?!"
"How could he?" The vague doubt at the bottom of Jiang Ningchu's heart was picked out with precision, and she instinctively wanted to hear what the other side had to say.
Lin Wei let out a long "hmm," as if recalling.
She had met Jiang Ningchu in the first place because of Jiang Heng.
Back then, Jiang Heng's rejection of this "little sister" directly led to Jiang Ningchu being forced to transfer schools—which was how she ended up at Lin Wei's school.
In the years since, Jiang Ningchu's dealings with this "older brother" could be counted on one hand, and not a single one of them had been pleasant.
As an onlooker, Lin Wei was absolutely certain: the Jiang family's high-and-mighty young prince had not one shred of goodwill toward this adopted daughter.
Lin Wei switched off speaker, cutting straight to the point. "No need to guess. Absolutely impossible. Knowing his personality, if he really knew you were allergic, he'd probably pile a whole plate full for you on the spot, watch you with a smile, and make you eat—every—single—one!"
"Bingo!" The worry hanging over Jiang Ningchu's heart finally died. That was exactly what she thought too. "I think he was just plain annoyed that Dad was putting food in my bowl."
"Tch. Childish as all hell, but yeah—totally Jiang Heng."
Lin Wei clearly failed to catch the faint trace of relief in Jiang Ningchu's tone. She smacked her forehead and decisively changed channels. "Okay, okay, enough of this boring stuff. How's Operation Sleep with Zhou Yichi going?"
The word "I" had just reached Jiang Ningchu's lips when Lin Wei cut her off with an "Hey!"
"I'm going to grab my takeout—I'll call you back later!"
The voice call ended with a beep, and the room fell quiet, but Jiang Ningchu's thoughts were still stuck on the previous question.
Lin Wei could count as one of the very few true, genuine friends in Jiang Ningchu's life.
Back when Jiang Ningchu had just transferred schools, she was deliberately—or not so deliberately—ostracized by the other students, huddling in the corner of the bathroom, a tiny little ball.
The righteous "big sister" Lin Wei charged to her rescue, using her fourth-grade height advantage to scare off a whole pack of second-grade little pipsqueaks.
From then on, Jiang Ningchu became Lin Wei's most loyal little sidekick. Despite their two-year age gap, they were practically inseparable outside of class.
Even Lin Wei thought Jiang Heng's recent behavior was off.
Then… it really must have been her imagination.
"I'm back, I'm back!"
Lin Wei's voice flooded the earpiece again, with the sound of slurping noodles in the background—clearly she was eating with relish. "You want my advice? Just be decisive. Drag him straight to a hotel and get a room! If he'll sleep with you, great. If not, cut your losses and run!"
The speakerphone amplified the noodle-slurping, sounding bold and vigorous.
Jiang Ningchu slid open the balcony door and stepped outside, swallowing unconsciously as she pressed a hand to her forehead in resignation. "My dear Miss Lin, when will you learn to be just a teensy bit more tactful?"
"Tactful about what?" Lin Wei gulped down some soup and let out a satisfied sigh. "Think about it yourself—wouldn't this be embarrassing if it got out? Three years dating a campus-heartthrob-level god, and he neither kisses you nor sleeps with you. What is this, Plato?"
"My precious Jiang Jiang, I'm genuinely terrified that your beloved senior is impotent, ahhhhh!"
"Stop!" Jiang Ningchu's ears burned. "He's not! It's not like that!"
"How would you know?" Lin Wei paused, then fired off a string of questions. "Have you tried? Confirmed it? Weren't you saying he won't even kiss you? So how did you find out?!"
Jiang Ningchu was struck speechless. She rubbed the tip of her nose guiltily, her gaze drifting elsewhere.
Click—
A soft sound came from not far away.
It was the sound of a lighter's flint wheel being struck.
Then, a faint orange-red flame flickered to life in the shadows of the neighboring balcony.
The dancing flame illuminated a face in profile.
Thick brows shadowed deep-set eyes; a high, straight nose cast a heavy shadow. Those peach-blossom eyes, like a falcon's, pierced through the night and landed precisely on where she stood.
Wait—?!
Jiang Ningchu's breath caught.
A chill crept up her spine.
She suddenly remembered—Jiang Heng's room was right next to hers.
With so much going on, she had completely forgotten about that.