Monday's morning light was exceptionally clear and pure, piercing through the spotless French windows of the Life Sciences building to illuminate the marble corridor until it appeared brilliant and bright.
Silas Shen arrived very early. He had changed into his white lab coat, which seemed perpetually ironed without a single crease, and his gold-rimmed glasses reflected a cool, rigorous light under the early morning gleam. At this moment, he was seated before a high-precision electron microscope, his long, pale fingers subtly adjusting the knob, his expression as focused as a jade sculpture devoid of any earthly desires.
That was until a burst of somewhat hurried footsteps shattered the silence of the corridor.
"Morning, Professor Shen!"
Lin burst through the frosted glass door of the laboratory, using his elbow to nudge it open while cradling a thick stack of new project proposals that still radiated the scent of fresh ink. This time, however, he did not dive straight toward the laboratory bench as he usually did; instead, he leaned his body sideways with a touch of secrecy.
Following right behind Lin was a slightly petite, youthful figure.
"Professor Shen, this is a first-year graduate student newly transferred over by the university Academic Affairs Office and the department; she's assigned directly to our laboratory this year," Lin explained, lightly nudging the person behind him forward with a smile. "Come on, Xiao Zhou, don't be nervous. Introduce yourself."
It was an Omega girl who appeared quite young. Her hair was tied into a proper, neat ponytail, and a pair of somewhat heavy black-rimmed glasses rested on the bridge of her nose. Her hands tightly gripped the straps of her backpack, her knuckles turning faintly white from the force.
Meeting Silas's incoming gaze, the girl stiffened her posture instantly like an elementary school student called upon by her homeroom teacher, her voice carrying an un-concealable tremor and panic:
"He—Hello, Professor Shen! My name is Zhou Nian, and I'm a newly enrolled graduate student this year. Back during my undergraduate studies, I constantly followed the molecular dynamics papers on the new blocker patches you published in core journals. At the time, I felt... your research was incredibly magnificent! So when the postgraduate entrance exams came around this year, I registered for your research direction without a single shred of hesitation!"
Due to her extreme nervousness, the pheromones around the girl's person began to fluctuate and dissipate slightly.
Silas slowly lifted his head from the microscope. His perception of pheromones had always been acute, and he captured nearly instantly this scent unique to a newcomer within the air—one carrying a fraction of raw shyness and anxiety.
It was a highly faint, sweet yet un-cloying fragrance of sweet-scented osmanthus.
Silas did not speak immediately; he merely utilized those clear-as-water phoenix eyes to quietly appraise her through his gold-rimmed glasses. His gaze did not possess the high-and-mighty oppression unique to top-tier professors; instead, it resembled a spring of fresh water, slowly smoothing away the terror within the girl's heart.
"Zhou Nian," Silas repeated the name lightly. His voice remained as cool as always, yet he relaxed his cadence in this moment, delivering a quality that brought peace to one's mind.
He retracted his hand from the microscope, smoothly shutting the laboratory logbook beside it, and nodded flatly:
"Welcome to the project group. The current pace of our laboratory is relatively fast; you can follow Lin first to familiarize yourself with the operation procedures of the core instruments, so there's no need to rush into high-difficulty experiments."
Speaking to this point, Silas paused marginally. His gaze lingered for a second on Zhou Nian's slightly flushed face due to nervousness, and some dark, historical fragments seemed to flash across his mind, causing his tone to soften immensely without him realizing it:
"If... you experience any discomfort caused by pheromones during subsequent experiments or routine research, or if you feel the pressure is too immense, come to the office and tell me at any time. In our laboratory, the thing that is least required is forcing yourself to endure through hardships. Do you understand?"
Zhou Nian blanked slightly. She clearly hadn't expected this academic star—who was rumored to be "as cold as frost and devoid of human warmth"—to utter such a sentence in private. In an instant, her chest full of nervousness and unease seemed to melt under warm water, and she nodded her head forcefully, her voice clearing up significantly: "I understand, thank you, Professor Shen!"
"Oh? A new junior sister is joining us first thing this morning?"
A loose, bantering voice abruptly erupted from the rest area by the laboratory window.
Zhou Nian followed the sound, spotting a tall young Alpha with a near-perfect physical proportions. The man possessed an exceptionally flamboyant and dazzling head of brilliant golden hair, which sparkled glaringly under the morning sun. At this moment, he was half-leaning casually against the laboratory bench, his slender, long legs crossed lazily, while his arms actually cradled a bundle of red mandarins that hadn't been fully peeled yet.
Hunter Huo arched an eyebrow, throwing a wedge of mandarin into his mouth with practiced movements. While chewing indistinctly, he poked his fluffy head out from behind that bundle of mandarins:
"Rest assured, new junior sister. Although our project group inevitably contains one or two Alphas with an excess of energy," he boasted, using his thumb to point proudly at himself while grinning to reveal sharp canine teeth, "in the grand scheme of things, every single member is absolutely a law-abiding, good citizen. Especially..."
Hunter intentionally dragged out his tone, his sticky gaze traversing half the laboratory to land un-errisngly upon the slender, attractive nape of Silas Shen's neck:
"Especially this assistant right beside Professor Shen—that's an officially certified, number-one good citizen in the entire universe. If there's any manual labor in the future, like moving reagent crates or something, call me at any time. Don't be polite with your senior brother."
The entire laboratory was instantly flooded with a rich, burning, and utterly aggressive aroma of blazing oranges. Although that scent was overbearing, it transformed like tempered steel turning into a soft ribbon the moment it approached Silas's perimeter, becoming exceptionally docile and comforting.
Silas didn't even turn his head. Expressionless, he merely extended his pale, jade-like hand, smoothly picking up a pair of stainless steel tweezers from the bench surface, and tapped them warningly against the edge of the cold laboratory tray.
Clink.
The crisp metallic collision sounded exceptionally clear within the quiet room.
"Hunter Huo, finish peeling your mandarin and set it down before you speak. Eating is prohibited inside the laboratory. Safety Regulation Number Three—do I need to assist you in writing it out from memory again?" Silas's voice was icy, his eyelashes not even lifting a fraction, yet the familiarity and indulgence within his tone was entirely impossible to conceal.
"Yes, Professor. No problem, Professor. I'll set it down right away."
The top-tier Alpha who had just displayed an attitude of 'I am the absolute authority' instantly shrank his neck like a large golden retriever caught by the scruff of its neck. Hunter hurriedly set the bundle of mandarins properly onto the coffee table in the rest area, even brushing the residual traces from his hands in a guilt-ridden manner, blinking his starlight-brimmed puppy eyes pleasingly at Silas.
Standing to the side and witnessing this scene, Zhou Nian's heart—which had been hanging in her throat—finally dropped completely back into her stomach.
She looked at the cool, ethereal Professor Shen, and then at the golden-haired Alpha beside him who, despite his talkative nature, constantly stared at the professor with an indulgent gaze, his tail practically wagging into a residual blur. The eyes behind her black-rimmed glasses brightened marginally.
Zhou Nian suddenly recalled the original intention that had driven her to resolutely fill in this name on her application form during countless late nights of preparing for the postgraduate exams.
At the time, her classmates had all advised her that the waters within the Beijing University Life Sciences Department ran too deep, and that while Silas Shen's project was wildly popular, it had offended the established old guard. Yet Zhou Nian could not forget that at the absolute conclusion of a certain authoritative literature piece, she had seen the line written by Professor Silas Shen within the acknowledgments section of the blocker patch's phase-one clinical trial—[My heartfelt thanks to my laboratory assistant, Mr. Hunter Huo, who granted me every ounce of light required to cross the darkness.]
In an academic community where the majority of research perceived Omegas as nothing more than cold, lifeless data, here was a professor who would properly write the name and brilliance of his "assistant" into his very life.
The breeze rustled past the window frame, and the scent of sweet-scented osmanthus in the air interlaced with the passionate pheromones. Zhou Nian quietly hugged her backpack tightly, feeling from the bottom of her heart that this time, she had truly made the right choice.