Morning at Beijing University. The thin mist had not yet entirely dispersed from the ginkgo grove, leaving the entire campus submerged in a cool-toned tranquility.
The laboratory door lock let out a faint click, and Silas Shen pushed the door open to step inside. He had arrived exceptionally early today, beating even the cleaning lady who usually loitered around the halls by several minutes. It was hard to tell whether his punctuality was driven by the fact that the research project titled "A Lifetime" had finally been approved, or because of the lingering, stubborn scent of oranges that a certain puppy had left in the crook of his neck at the apartment last night.
Standing before a massive whiteboard, the black marker in his hand made a faint scratching sound against the glossy surface.
Silas's movements were incredibly steady, identical to the way he captured cell division under a microscope. Stroke by stroke, he was outlining an entire research framework that was immensely complex—bordering on revolutionary.
The morning sun filtered through the slats of the blinds like cut strips of gold leaf, casting precise, diagonal lines across his snow-white lab coat. Due to the strain of writing high on the board, Silas had habitually rolled his sleeves past his wrists, exposing a pair of lean, alabaster forearms with clean, resilient lines. His fingertips were slightly flushed from his tight grip on the marker, adding a vibrant touch of life to his otherwise ascetic silhouette in the cool morning light.
"Professor, why are you here so early today?"
Accompanied by a slightly nasal exclamation, the laboratory door was pushed open once more.
Hunter Huo rushed inside, bringing a lively gust of wind with him. His signature blonde hair was somewhat messy, likely whipped into a bird's nest by the morning breeze during his bicycle ride. He casually slung his heavy backpack onto a chair near the window and, with a single stride of his long legs, pressed himself right up to the whiteboard.
Silas's marker paused for a fraction of a second, but he didn't turn around.
On the board, the final line regarding the relation between "emotional connection strength and receptor expression levels" had just been completed.
"I couldn't sleep," Silas answered flatly, his voice as cool as the morning frost. He snapped the cap back onto the marker, the crisp pop echoing faintly through the empty room. "The sample recruitment for the project needs to be finalized before that week. I had Lin draft the announcement overnight."
Hunter didn't reply. His gaze was tracing the dense, logically seamless framework diagram downward. At the very bottom of those cold technical terms and complex functional formulas, Silas had written a line of text in an exceptionally small, concealed script.
—[Special Thanks: Mr. and Mrs. Lin].
Staring at those words, Hunter suddenly felt as if some soft tendril had gently tugged at his heart.
The Lins—a Beta and an Omega who couldn't even register a compatibility percentage, yet whose eyes had cried red at their own wedding. Silas was thanking them, but he was also thanking that sliver of possibility that shattered genetic destiny.
"Professor," Hunter spoke suddenly, a distinct note of doting affection slipping into his tone. "While you were writing this excruciatingly complex framework, did you happen to allocate even a ten-thousandth of a brain cell to think about what to eat this morning?"
Silas turned around to face the youth, his tone flat and uninflected. "...No."
"I knew it."
Hunter sighed as if he had long foreseen this, his expression a mix of helplessness and amusement. He turned around and, with meticulous care, fished a still-warm foil insulated bag out of the backpack he had carelessly tossed aside.
A rich, savory, and intensely domestic aroma instantly exploded inside the sterile laboratory.
"Crab roe soup dumplings," Hunter grumbled while expertly tearing open the packaging. "Still from that shop on the back street. It was the very last steamer; I was squatting there in line at six in the morning. You have no idea—the way those elderly grandpas and grandmas were looking at me made me feel like some endangered species."
Silas finally turned his head completely.
The sunlight shifted angles just right, enveloping Hunter in an ethereal golden silhouette. The rising steam blurred the youth's bright eyes, which looked as though they were permanently flooded with enthusiasm.
As he reached out to open the bag for Silas, the sleeve he had loosely rolled up slipped down, exposing his left hand. The very hand that had taken a blade for Silas on that rainy night in Haicheng was now fully functional, his knuckles long and powerful. Yet, against that tan skin, the pale pink, crescent-shaped scar remained clearly visible.
It was the medal of a time he had risked his life for Silas, and a promise of a love chosen in absolute clarity and reason.
"Sit down and eat."
Hunter pulled over a swivel chair that originally belonged to a teaching assistant, gave the seat a careless pat, and looked up at Silas with a beaming smile. "Professor Shen, rule number one of the laboratory: the body is the capital of scientific research. Eat before you write. I'll keep you company."
Silas looked at the white steam billowing from the soup dumpling, then glanced back at the whiteboard covered in a lifetime's layout. He remained silent for two full seconds before finally laying down the marker—the very symbol of his rationality—under Hunter's burning gaze, and slowly sat down.
He picked up a dumpling with his chopsticks. Its skin was as thin as paper, making the soup inside faintly visible.
The flavor was identical to the breakfast in that Haicheng hotel two months ago. Yet, Silas felt that something was distinctly different now.
Back then, they were separated by a haze of life and death, and by his own resistance toward his instinct as an Omega. But this time, they were not in a displaced, foreign land, nor were they in a hotel suite fraught with calculated testing. They were in this laboratory—a place that belonged to the two of them, where they would strive together for the rest of their lives.
The morning light grew increasingly bright and concentrated.
Silas ate in a slow, disciplined manner, while Hunter sat directly opposite him, resting his chin on both hands, staring at him without blinking for a single second.
"Professor, is it sweet?"
Silas dabbed away a stray drop of soup from the corner of his mouth and lowered his lashes. "Crab roe is savory."
"Liar," Hunter pouted, a sly fire dancing in his eyes. "Then how come I smell nothing but sweetness in the air of this lab?"
Silas did not argue.
He merely used the interval of lowering his head to drink water to steal a glance at the wedding bouquet resting on the windowsill. And in a corner out of his line of sight, Hunter was quietly reaching his hand toward the marker Silas had just held, his eyes flashing with a dark gleam of "possession."