Hunter Huo had been very anxious lately.
This anxiety had arrived with an aggressive momentum and absolutely no advance warning. Reasonably speaking, the research on the blocker patches had officially achieved its phased implementation, that old bastard Adrian Liang was completely locked away, and all the crises that had caused such a stir in the Life Sciences Department had thoroughly settled.
By all accounts, Hunter should currently be the most triumphant, tail-wagging golden retriever in the entire Beijing University Life Sciences building. Yet, of late, even his steps when clinging to Silas Shen's side after class had become a bit unsteady. He was acting exactly like a squirrel harboring a massive secret, spending every single day in a state of scalp-numbing, sweet torture.
He was anxious about a matter that was ten thousand times more complex than unraveling the molecular alignment formula of a polymer membrane—how to propose.
After all, his Professor Shen was no ordinary person. That was a rigorous scientist who would coldly scrawl "Childish" as a commentary even when someone doodled on his private logbook. If the proposal blueprint wasn't flawless, or if it ended up too cliché and overly flamboyant, Hunter severely suspected that Silas would ruthlessly blast him out of the laboratory with a single look meant for an absolute idiot.
Adhering to a rigorous academic attitude, Hunter decided to conduct a baseline clinical survey among those around him first.
The very first test subject he snared was Lin, who had just finished washing test tubes in the laboratory and was preparing to clock out for the day.
"A proposal?"
Lin was still holding two freshly dried graduated cylinders, looking with some sympathy at the top-tier Alpha who had suddenly turned somewhat deflated. Pushing his glasses up, he offered an incredibly mainstream advice that was full of the flavor of routine life:
"You've asked the right person. Honestly, it's not as complex as you think. Just find a place that holds exceptional commemorative significance for the two of you, and speak the words you want to say most from the bottom of your heart without any reservation. Seriously, the format is entirely secondary."
A trace of a seasoned veteran's sweetness surfaced across Lin's face:
"To be frank with you, I proposed right at the main entrance of our experimental building. It was late at night, the streetlamps had just flickered on, and the exact millisecond I pulled out the ring, my wife burst into tears of emotion on the spot. Looking back now, though that location was ordinary, it held extraordinary meaning for us."
Sitting on a high stool with his chin resting in his hands, Hunter let out a thoroughly deflated sigh.
Proposing at the laboratory entrance?
He simulated the imagery in his mind. At the entrance of the Life Sciences building, on a freezing winter night, he would drop to one knee cradling a ring, while Silas would most likely be wearing that meticulously ironed white lab coat, pushing his gold-rimmed glasses up, and telling him coldly: "Hunter Huo, according to campus management regulations, obstructing traffic at the main entrance of the building is prohibited. Furthermore, your kneeling posture compresses the quadriceps femoris, which does not conform to human ergonomics."
Hunter shuddered, silently slashing a massive red cross over Lin's "Option One" in his heart.
Since the experience of an ordinary Beta like Lin wasn't applicable, Hunter turned his head and locked his sights onto his biological elder brother's exclusive "soft underbelly"—the perennially cold, highly psychologically resilient Dr. Louis Lu inside the East District old street clinic.
On Wednesday afternoon, taking advantage of a gap between classes, Hunter broke protocol by not clinging to Silas. Instead, with a guilt-ridden conscience, he slipped stealthily into Louis's clinic.
The clinic was as quiet as always, and that scammer orange cat was currently snoring loudly on a soft cushion.
Louis was seated behind a spotless consultation desk, his long fingers rapidly recording something within a medical chart. Hearing the commotion, he didn't even lift his head; he merely pushed his lenses up out of habit, his tone as flat as a stagnant pool of water:
"Hunter Huo? Are you here to deliver some sugar-free stomach-nurturing medicinal cuisine for your brother again today? Or are you here on his behalf to supervise whether I've been drinking black coffee?"
"Neither, Senior Brother Louis."
Hunter shifted somewhat awkwardly onto the consultation chair and sat down. The youth, who was usually incredibly flamboyant on the sports field and before negotiation tables, actually had the tips of his ears turn red in a rare display. He cast a somewhat defensive glance out the door, then leaned in slightly like a thief, lowering his voice to the absolute minimum to beat around the bush:
"Well... I just wanted to ask on behalf of a friend. If... and I do mean if, a certain Alpha wishes to propose to a family member who possesses an exceptionally cold temperament, is highly rational, and deals with data day in and day out, how should he execute it so it appears entirely sincere, without being rejected as a joke?"
The tip of the fountain pen Louis was using to record paused marginally.
He slowly lifted his head, those clear-as-ink eyes scanning Hunter's handsome face—which practically had "I am that friend" written all over it—with perfect tranquility through his lenses.
Subsequently, Dr. Lu set his pen down expressionless, stripped off his medical mask, and exposed his delicate yet emotionless visage:
"Don't make it too complex. Sincerity is paramount."
Before Hunter's eyes could even brighten, Louis methodically leaned against the back of his chair, extending his long fingers to pinch the bridge of his nose, though the words tumbling from his mouth resembled a sudden crack of thunder:
"And just to inform you, regarding this exact query of 'how to propose,' you are the fifth person to come to my clinic to beat around the bush and consult me within the past half-month."
Louis's tone carried a sliver of a slight headache and helplessness as he lifted his eyes to look at Hunter:
"And your billion-dollar-net-worth elder brother who is perpetually snowed under with myriad corporate affairs, Julian Huo. He was the fourth."
"...My brother?!"
Hunter almost bounced straight out of his chair, his beautiful golden hair turning a bit disheveled under the afternoon sun. "My brother came to consult you about this too?! What did he ask?! Did he succeed?!"
"He consulted me three times."
Louis lifted the clearing tea beside him to take a light sip, calmly exploding a staggering piece of intel with a flat countenance:
"In the end, he overthrew all the island and castle blueprints offered by the planning companies, deciding to propose right inside my clinic's waiting room. His rationale was that this is 'the place where we first met.' Not only that, he even intends to manufacture a pure gold commemorative booklet out of that medical chart where I wrote 'stop fabricating excuses.'"
Hunter swallowed his saliva, pressing forward somewhat urgently: "Then... then did you agree? Did he succeed?"
Louis set his teacup down with perfect composure, the corners of his mouth hooking into a half-smile:
"I told him I would consider it further."
When he stepped out of the clinic, Hunter felt as though his entire person was floating.
He felt deeply that whether it was Lin or his biological brother, the blueprints of these two strategists were absolutely unreliable when applied to Silas Shen. His brother proposing at the clinic worked because Dr. Lu held sentiment for that location; but if he were to drag Silas to that bar where they first met, or to that penthouse suite filled with certain un-describable, absurd, and chaotic memories to propose...
Silas would absolutely look at him with a gaze reserved for a total pervert, and then directly ban him from stepping through the laboratory doors for the rest of his life.
If you want a job done right, do it yourself.
Returning to his apartment, Hunter decided to blaze a new trail. Since he couldn't play tricks with the format, he had to target the absolute thing that Silas loved most and found most impossible to resist—not humans, but objectively existing matter and science.
In the deep of the night inside his room, the fluorescence of the computer screen cast a somewhat tight contour across Hunter's handsome visage.
He opened his phone, logged directly into Beijing University's core academic database, took a deep breath, and began a carpet-style search of every single academic paper Silas had published over the past five years.
From cover masterpieces in Science to various top-tier sub-journals of Nature, Silas Shen's name perpetually sat at the absolute apex of the author list. Hunter pulled up every single paper with immense patience, scrolling down to the absolute bottom to locate those acknowledgments sections that were exceptionally easy to overlook.
Silas's style of acknowledgment was identical to his person—rigorous, restrained, bordering on clinical.
It was forever a standard template of two sentences: "Heartfelt thanks to all members of the project group for their industrious efforts," and "Gratitude to the Beijing University Life Sciences Department for providing the platform and funding support." An extra character would seem like a desecration of scientific rigor.
However, when Hunter's finger scrolled down to the most recent paper, his breathing abruptly missed a beat.
It was the exact paper published in a core sub-journal of Nature regarding the massive success of the blocker patches' clinical data. And at the absolute conclusion of that immensely weighty paper, directly beneath that originally rigid acknowledgment template, a line of hand-typed small characters that thoroughly defied Professor Shen's customary style materialized out of nowhere:
[My thanks to Assistant H, who constitutes the sole irreplaceable variable within this study.]
Sole. Irreplaceable. Variable.
This string of academic vocabulary, which was cold and lifeless within the biochemical sector, resembled the most covert yet deepest love letter in the world at this exact moment, crashing heavily against the absolute center of Hunter's heart.
"H"... who else could it be.
Aside from his person—this large golden dog who spun around him inside the laboratory day in and day out, and who had even had the "Huo Patch" named after his surname—who else could it possibly be.
Hunter stared deathly at that letter "H," staring at that line of characters printed inside a top-tier international journal that would be cited and read by countless scientists across the globe, for a full five minutes. He merely felt that the heart belonging to a top-tier Alpha inside his chest was beating frantically, blindingly, and uncontrollably, bringing along a sliver of sweet blazing orange fragrance that leaked into the air.
As it turned out, his Professor Shen had already utilized the method that conformed most to a scientist to write him eternally into his life and faith.
"The sole irreplaceable variable..."
Hunter let out a low laugh, and within those handsome puppy eyes, the anxiety and disorientation from moments ago dissolved away into a vacuum, replaced by a near-paranoid, overflowing tenderness and certainty.
With a clack, he shut his phone down, took a deep breath, and rested his long fingers onto the keyboard of the laptop before him.
Accompanied by crisp typing sounds, a proposal blueprint that was completely distinct from Lin's and the elder Julian Huo's—one belonging exclusively to a scientist and an assistant—began to take form on the pristine document, word for word.