After Julian Liang left, the crowd of onlookers gathered in the corridor dispersed in an extremely bizarre, eerie silence.
Silas Shen could not even remember clearly how he made it back to his office. As the frosted glass door was shut completely under a slight loss of physical strength, the piercing, bright sunlight outside was partitioned away in tandem. The lights were not switched on inside the room; it was dim and silent, with the cold-toned metallic instruments reflecting a rigid, cold glare in the dark.
Silas sat alone on his office chair for a long duration.
He did not tremble, he did not sweat, nor did he disheveledly shrink into a corner in an attempt to conceal himself like he had ten years ago. He merely held his spine slightly straight, sitting there very, very quietly. Laying his hands properly and squarely upon his knees, his gaze settled onto a certain abstract point in the empty air, as if he were using every ounce of strength and reason he possessed in this lifetime just to maintain this superficial layer of tranquility and dignity.
Yet only he himself knew that the back enveloped beneath his white lab coat had long been soaked icy-cold by sticky, cold sweat in that split second just now.
Clack.
Following a prolonged dead silence, the lock of the office door let out an exceptionally faint spring sound.
Hunter Huo did not knock on the door. He had always been a puppy who crashed and charged blindly through Silas's territory without caring about a formal title, but this time, his movements pushing the door open were as light as a passing breeze.
The youth still wore that black pure cotton sweatshirt, steadily—one could even say somewhat obstinately—holding those two cups of coffee that had not spilled even a single drop in the corridor. He did not switch on the lights, merely using his hand behind his back to bring the door closed once more before striding his long legs over to Silas's side with a few steps.
Pulling over an idle swivel chair, Hunter lacked any redundant movements, sitting side by side right next to Silas in an exceptionally submissive manner.
A cup of less-sugar ice latte, still emitting a faint wisp of white steam, was gently pushed to the side of Silas's hand by a distinct-knuckled, heat-bearing large hand.
A prolonged silence expanded within the dim room.
The minimal trace of rotting wood agarwood remaining in the air had long been flushed completely clean the exact moment Hunter stepped through the door, utterly conquered by that rich, burning, and somewhat aggressive scent of blazing oranges on his body. Yet Silas still did not speak, merely staring at that coffee cup until the condensation on the aluminum foil lid gathered into a single droplet of water, sliding slowly down the side of the cup.
Hunter did not speak either. Those puppy eyes that were usually bright and sparkling, as if possessing a never-ending supply of energy, currently rested heavily upon Silas's profile. He did not force himself closer to press against him like he used to, merely keeping him company in silence. Their shadows intertwined across the dim floor, leaking out a silent yet highly textured romantic tension.
A long time passed, so long that the ice cubes inside the coffee cup began to emit an exceptionally faint melting sound.
Hunter was the first to turn his head, his gaze sweeping across that dark blue tie at the collar of Silas's overcoat. His voice was pitched very lightly and slowly, yet it was as heavy as if pressed down by a weight of solid iron:
"It's that person, right?"
Silas's fingertips shrunk back micro-imperceptibly.
"When you were drunk at the apartment before... you mentioned him to me, that 'Professor Liang'." While Hunter spoke, he extended his hand, wanting to grasp Silas's hand.
Silas did not avoid it this time. Following Hunter's movements, he somewhat mechanically lifted the coffee by his hand to take a sip. The slightly bitter and icy liquid slid past his throat, forcing down the nausea that had been churning in his stomach for far too long. However, when that porcelain coffee cup settled back onto the desk surface, it still collided with the hard marble counter, emitting an exceptionally weak yet un-concealable crisp ting sound.
His hand was still trembling micro-imperceptibly.
"Yes."
Silas lowered his eyelashes, his lenses flashing a sliver of cold light in the dimness. This single word of admission was uttered extremely lightly, like a falling leaf.
"What did he... do to you back then?"
Hunter's voice was very light, even carrying a sliver of cautious trembling, as if he were terrified of awakening the deepest scar at the bottom of Silas's heart. Yet Silas, sitting beside him, could clearly hear that beneath that extremely thin, careful layer of ice, a surge of magma capable of burning the entire world to ashes at any given moment was raging furiously.
That was a tyrannical, dangerous murderous intent triggered when a top-tier Alpha's absolute bottom line was breached.
Silas looked at his own fingertips, which had shrunk back into the sleeves of his white lab coat once more. Using a near-objective, ripple-free academic tone, he slowly peeled away that long-standing scab that had grown full of flesh and blood:
"He didn't touch me. In this university, he enjoys the highest reputation, so he didn't even need to employ a single shred of physical violence."
Silas spoke far too slowly, like he was dissecting a cold corpse. "He merely locked the office door from the inside and used those highly inducing top-tier Alpha pheromones to make me generate a large-scale pseudiestrus. Then... while I couldn't even stand steadily and could only kneel on the floor, he stood before me, using that sorrowful-for-humanity tone of an elder superior to tell me—"
'You see, Silas, your body is much more honest than your reason.'
Snap.
Silas's fingers clenched tightly once more unconsciously.
"He used this method to make all the board members and all the students in the entire university believe that I was the one lacking decency, that I was the one who actively seduced him in his office for the sake of so-called resources and a direct-doctorate slot. In this ABO world dominated by pheromones, no one would believe that the reason and proud bones of a disadvantaged Omega could ever fight against the pheromone dominance of a top-tier Alpha."
The coffee cup let out another faint porcelain collision sound beneath Silas's fingertips.
"He succeeded. He utilized my physiological reactions with absolute perfection to prove my lack of decency. In everyone's mouths, I became that low-手段 plaything who disrupted his family."
Once Silas finished stating these things, the entire room fell into a dead silence once more.
He waited for a long duration, yet the anticipated disgust or the retreat generated due to family reputation did not occur. On the contrary, the exact millisecond his hand lost strength and loosened from the coffee cup, a burning hot large hand extended over with extreme crispness, directly taking that icy porcelain cup away and steadily setting it down on the furthest counter surface.
In the next second, a surge of orange aroma—carrying an intensely rich, blazing, yet gentle-to-the-bone flavor—pressed over like an overwhelming mountain wave.
His long arms opened slightly, carrying a youth's unreserved heat and overbearing manner. Hunter did not give Silas even half a moment to refuse before he clamped onto Silas's shoulder with a single tug, dragging this cool professor—who had fought a lonely war at the peak of the ivory tower for a full decade—fiercely and securely right into his own broad embrace.
"Silas Shen."
The youth's chin pressed deathly against Silas's thin neck crook. The voice traveling from his chest cavity carried a violent vibration, vibrating until Silas's eardrums went completely numb.
"You did not lack decency. Ten years ago, you were merely bitten by an utterly nauseating venomous snake hiding in the dark."
Hunter tightened the strength of his arms, binding the person tighter and tighter, wishing nothing more than to rub this segment of slender bamboo straight into his own bone and blood. "That was absolutely not your fault."
"...Back then, no one thought so." Silas's cheek was pressed against the soft pure cotton fabric of the sweatshirt. His voice sounded somewhat muffled, yet it leaked a trace of self-deprecation that had never existed ten years ago.
"Someone thinks so now."
Hunter lifted his head abruptly, those ice-tempered puppy eyes currently entirely filled with a flush of sheer ruthlessness and aching pain. Clamping deathly onto the back of Silas's head, he spoke word for word, as if declaring an oath to the entire world:
"I think so. I, Hunter Huo, am leaving my words right here today."
The youth's warm breath brushed against Silas's neck crook, that scalding sensation of tears nearly burning his skin. "In the future... whether it is at Beijing University or any place within Julian Liang's line of sight, if he ever dares to approach you or test you by a single step again, I will let him know—"
"In this world, there is a type of orange that isn't meant to be peeled and eaten for its flesh."
Hunter bared his teeth slightly, revealing a sharp, highly wild and aggressive canine tooth. His voice was low and filled with a savage declaration of sovereignty: "—It is meant to bite a person to pieces, chew them up, until not even a single bone is left."
Silas leaned within that warm wall of flesh provided by Hunter.
All around him was the heavy, near-bursting-from-the-chest sound of a violent heartbeat. That frequency was terrifyingly fast, shattering all the remaining coldness and stickiness at the bottom of Silas's heart into powder, beat after beat. That intense orange scent, which had nearly materialized into a physical entity, wrapped him up completely without leaving a single gap. It was not an elder's nauseating dominance, nor was it the heavy, secular pacification of the world; it was a highly pure, unyielding determination to protect his safety even if it meant being smashed to pieces.
Listening as it went on, Silas's fingertips—which had pinched out blood inside his sleeves—finally relaxed completely within the youth's embrace.
He hooked the corners of his lips up, a trace of warmth belonging to Saturday's orange orchard finally tinting his voice:
"...You puppy, your teeth are quite sharp."
Hunter buried his head fiercely, nuzzling it within Silas's shoulder crook as if acting spoiled, yet also as if showing his ruthlessness. His voice was sticky yet ferocious: "Specifically meant for biting those who lack eyes and dare to bully you."