Change of heart

Yu Ziyuan was angry. No, that was not right, she was enraged, positively furious and full of red hot anger. And the cause of it was kneeling right in front of her.

Wei Wuxian was on his knees, trembling slightly and not looking at her. She had already known that taking him in would be more trouble that it warranted but this was the last drop. Now he was simply making fun of her. She had been so right when she had refused to let him in in the beginning; she had warned her husband that taking this unruly and uneducated thing in would disrupt their family, hinder their children's education and in the end, be a dirty stain of the reputation of the Yunmeng Jiang sect. But would her husband in name only ever listen to her? No, of course not. And here they were, again.

She crumbled the letter that the boy's teacher had send her. After she had understood that Jiang Fengmian was adamant on having the boy live with them, even making him one of their inner disciples, she had resigned and did everything she could so that Wei Wuxian would at least be able to represent their household in the future.

She got him a private teacher to catch up on his education and on her husband's insistence allowed him to take classes together with Jiang Cheng and Jiang Yanli in addition to his private ones. Still, the boy insisted on not taking it seriously and continued fooling around and make trouble even two months after being brought in.

In the beginning, she could, albeit begrudgingly, ignore it because he had been new to the environment, too wild from living on the streets. But after those two months when nothing changed, she had had enough. How dare he make fun of the teacher and say that he did not want to participate in the lesson? How dare he not turn in most of the assignments, always finding less and less believable excuses?

Was he perhaps stupid not to understand what had been said in the classroom? No, that could not be it. The boy did not strike Yu Ziyuan as a particularly stupid child. He was bright and intelligent in everything else beside his classes. Although when it came to learning, he was slow and apparently unwilling. The only thing he excelled in were sword arts. And she had told him to not be a burden too!

"Wei Wuxian," she started and the boy flinched, still not looking at her, "do you know what is written in this letter?" The boy only shook his head but remained silent. He was making it harder for himself with his stubbornness and pretence. Well then, she would just have to spell it out for him: "Your teacher is complaining about your behaviour in the classroom."

Wei Wuxian seemed to have shrunken into himself, ma king himself even smaller than before. Like this, he did not look like a child of almost nine that he in fact was but more like a five years old. Thought, Yu Ziyuan would not be fooled by his acting. He should have known better before being sent directly to her with the letter from his teacher.

She waited for him to start defending himself or at least to explain his behaviour but to no avail. He still remained silent. Her patience was running dangerously thin. She had to do her best to rein in her anger, she did not want to start screaming at the child or hit him, she was not that petty.

"Well, what do you have to say for yourself?" she asked, her voice only slightly betraying her anger. She was doing her very best.

Still, the boy flinched again and started to tremble before whispering with tears audible in his voice: "Madame Yu, I am sorry. Please, I did not want to cause trouble..."

That was it, Yu Ziyuan could truly not stand this anymore. She had never been one to be patient with children and this particular child was not even her own. She had already heard his apologies plenty of times but it did not seem like he meant them because he would do the same thing again just the day after. What an incorrigible brat!