Wednesday afternoon. The open-air basketball court at Beijing University.
The setting sun stretched the shadow of the basketball hoop excessively long. Hunter Huo was tearing across the court with the ball. Today, he wore a black athletic tank top, and the lines of his arm muscles appeared extraordinarily pronounced under the saturation of sweat. His entire being radiated the wild, vigorous aura of a top-tier Alpha. Leap, dunk—everything was executed in a single, fluid motion.
"Brother燃! Brother燃, something huge happened!"
His varsity roommate came scrambling onto the court, holding his phone high in the air, its screen still illuminated with the group chat interface of the Life Sciences postgraduates.
Hunter landed firmly. Before the basketball in his hand could even stop spinning, it flew right out of his grip, startled by that piercing shriek. With a heavy bang, the round orange leather ball slammed hard against the backboard, bouncing far away and rolling all the way into the bushes at the edge of the court.
"Are you calling for my ghost?" Hunter cursed casually, wiping a handful of sweat from his face as he prepared to retrieve the ball.
"Professor Shen! Professor Shen just admitted in the laboratory that you are his family!" The roommate was panting heavily, his voice so loud it caused nearly half the people on the court to prick up their ears.
The step Hunter had just taken froze instantly, nailing him to the spot.
He whipped his head around, his pupils contracting violently from sheer shock, and he even forgot to breathe. In that split second, the clamor on the court, the sound of dribbling, and the distant screams of girls all dissolved into a blanket of blank tinnitus.
"What... did you say?" Hunter's voice was somewhat weak, each syllable sounding as if it were forced out from the depths of his throat.
"It's true! Truly, absolutely true!" The roommate shoved the phone directly under his nose, the screen entirely flooded with scrolling exclamation marks. "The young master's student from the Life Sciences Department heard it with her own ears. Someone asked the Professor if he was dating you, and the Professor said it himself—'Yes, he is my family'!"
Hunter stood dazed on the spot.
The autumn breeze of Beijing University swept across his sweat-drenched back, triggering a dense layer of shivers. His chest rose and fell dramatically, his heart slamming frantically against his ribs inside his chest cavity—a frequency a hundred times faster than when he had just run the full length of the court to execute three consecutive power dunks.
"Family..." He repeated those two syllables in a low voice, his gaze rapidly transforming from bewilderment into a near-scorching, wild ecstasy.
He snatched up his sweat towel and dark blue jacket from the sidelines. Without even glancing at the ball, let alone greeting his teammates, he shot out of the court like a whirlwind, heading straight for the Life Sciences building.
Those were the exact two words he had dreamed of. That was the official status he hadn't been one hundred percent certain of securing, even when he wrote "A Lifetime" on that grant proposal.
Third floor of the Life Sciences building, the laboratory.
As closing time approached, the students had already dispersed one after another following a carnival-like session of teasing. The laboratory had returned to its habitual stillness, save for a few precision instruments emitting a rhythmic, low hum. Silas Shen stood alone by the lab bench, the pipette in his hand precisely dripping a transparent liquid into a petri dish.
His movements were elegant and focused, looking as though that school-rocking declaration from half an hour ago had not originated from his mouth at all.
Bang—!
The laboratory door was violently thrown open by a massive, brute force, striking the wall with a dull clatter.
Silas's finger trembled slightly, causing a drop of the reagent to accidentally miss its mark. He frowned, but before he could look up, a rich, scorching aroma of oranges laced with the heat of sweat swept over the entire space like a tidal wave.
Hunter stood by the door, his chest heaving violently. His usually neat blonde hair had been whipped by the wind into a messy bird's nest, and his black tank top, soaked through with sweat, clung to his body to outline his taut contours. He looked like a trapped beast newly returned from a bloody battlefield, his eyes holding nothing but a brilliantly blinding light that could practically melt a person down.
"You—you told them—told them that I'm—your family?"
Hunter asked each word deliberately, his voice raspy, carrying a breathlessness that hadn't yet settled.
Silas slowly laid down the pipette in his hand and peeled off his milky-white disposable gloves. He turned around, leaning halfway against the cold, hard lab bench. His expression remained as calm as if he were announcing a routine experimental metric at a symposium, except for the eyes concealed behind his lenses, which harbored an exceptionally faint ripple dyed red by the evening sun.
"Yes," Silas lifted his eyes to look at him, his voice as cool as ever. "Any objections?"
"None! Absolutely none!"
Hunter crossed the distance to Silas in two or three strides. He was exceptionally tall, and as he lowered his head to stare fixedly at Silas now, the oppressive presence belonging to a top-tier Alpha became almost unmanageable due to his extreme excitement.
"But Professor Shen, I need to confirm something—" Hunter's voice dropped low, carrying a magnetic rasp. He braced both hands on the lab bench on either side of Silas's body, securely pinning this cool, high-altitude flower within his enclosure. "What exactly is the definition of 'family' in your dictionary, Professor Shen? Is it the kind... that can naturally live together, eat together every morning, help you with your buttons every morning, and even appear in the acknowledgments of every single one of your papers... the sole, official family?"
He asked with extreme speed, terrified of missing a single word, his breath fanning across the tip of Silas's nose.
Looking at his urgent, almost pathetic state, Silas thought of the soup dumplings he woke up early to buy, thought of his small, nesting calculations, and thought of his earnest profile by the back lake.
The permanently restrained Professor Shen finally allowed a very, very light smile to surface in his eyes—like the first trace of spring water breaking through a melting glacier.
"All of it," Silas said softly.
Those three syllables acted like the final spark igniting a fuse.
Hunter froze for a full second. Then, emitting a whimper akin to a puppy's, he violently reached out his massive hands, locked them around Silas's waist, and dragged the man heavily into his embrace.
In that exact instant, the orange-scented pheromones erupted completely.
Not for a marking, nor for suppression; the aroma was as gentle as the mildest sunlight of a summer afternoon, carrying a vigorous vitality that wrapped Silas up thoroughly from head to toe, from every strand of hair to his fingertips.
Silas crashed against that scorching, slightly damp chest, his nasal passages entirely occupied by Hunter's scent. He could hear the other's heart thumping like a war drum, beat after beat, vibrating against his eardrums.
"Let go... this is the laboratory..." Silas pushed against him tokenly, but his voice was too soft to carry a shred of deterrence. "What if someone comes back..."
"Just a little longer," Hunter buried his face deep into the crook of Silas's neck, greedily drinking in that crisp fragrance of fir. His voice sounded muffled, yet it carried an unmistakable streak of roguishness. "Just for a moment. This is a reasonable right of family, Professor. You can't skim on my research stipend."
Silas fell silent.
Inside this room packed with cold data and precision glass tubes, their two silhouettes overlapped completely.
"Hunter Huo."
"Yeah?"
"The sweat on you is rubbing onto my lab coat," Silas complained in a low murmur, yet his arms tightened their hold around the youth.
"It doesn't matter. I'll wash it for you when we get home," Hunter nuzzled against the tip of his ear, his laughter low and deep. "I'll wash it for a lifetime."