Saturday morning was a rare, radiant day with no early classes and no urgent need to rush to the Life Sciences building to guard experimental data.
Sunshine streamed through the apartment's massive floor-to-ceiling windows, scattering finely across the soft, greyish-white carpet of the living room, where tiny golden specks of dust danced in the air. Silas Shen was nestled in a corner of the sofa, dressed in the deep blue silk shirt that Hunter Huo loved best. The top two buttons were undone, exposing a pale, elegant stretch of collarbone.
Perched on the bridge of his nose were his gold-rimmed glasses, and his long fingers methodically turned the pages of a printed booklet of cutting-edge international literature, his countenance cool and focused.
Right at this moment, the crisp sound of a key turning echoed from the entryway, followed immediately by the motion of the security door being pushed open.
Hunter strode in entirely unabashed, stepping across the sun-drenched floor. He wore a loose white hoodie today, his brilliant golden hair flashing blindingly under the morning sun, his entire person radiating a vigorous, clean vitality freshly gathered from the outdoors.
The youth's hands were occupied with heavy bags—one was the weekly routine purchase of fresh groceries, where the tips of the green vegetables still held crisp droplets of water; the other was significantly smaller, wrapped in thick, retro kraft paper and secured at the seal with a somewhat clumsily tied twine bow, making its contents un-discernible.
"Professor, I bought some things."
The moment Hunter crossed the threshold, his sparkling puppy eyes pinned themselves onto the figure resting on the sofa, his canine teeth faintly visible through his smile.
"Yes."
Silas didn't even lift his head. His long finger merely twitched slightly, calmly turning the literature to the next page, his cool voice devoid of much emotion.
Hunter had long since grown accustomed to his professor's perennially frost-like yet thoroughly indulgent demeanor. Letting out a chuckle, he padded in his soft slippers toward the kitchen to put away the fresh groceries. Following a practiced sound of the refrigerator door opening and closing, he jogged right back.
Clutching the kraft paper bag, the youth stepped up to the side of the sofa. Instead of sitting down directly, his long legs bent, and he crouched down onto one knee before Silas with exceptional docility.
Extending his long, well-defined fingers, he tore open the twine on the paper bag with a few quick motions, carefully extracting two delicate, deep amber glass vials and placing them side by side on the white porcelain coffee table.
"What are these?"
The finger Silas was using to browse the literature paused marginally. He turned his elegant face slightly, his phoenix eyes behind the lenses tracing Hunter's fingers.
"Aromatherapy essential oils."
Hunter lifted his head to look up at him, his beautiful eyes brimming with fine fragments of light, his voice carrying an un-concealable air of presenting a treasure:
"I went over to the old street to get groceries today and just happened to pass by a handmade shop that specializes in plant extraction. I went in to take a look. As for these two vials—one is Blazing Orange, and the other is Fir After Snow. The shop owner there is exceptionally interesting; he said the flashpoints and volatility speeds of these two essential oils are near-identical, so they can absolutely be blended and used together."
The line of sight Silas had trained on the smoothly formatted literature finally pulled away completely. He set the paper down, leaning forward as he extended those long, pale hands—hands perennially soaked in laboratory environments—to pick up the vial labeled with fir.
A rustic white handmade label was adhered to the deep amber glass surface.
Written across it in a black sign pen, with a stroke-by-stroke force that carried an exceptionally earnest weight, was a line of hand-scrawled text—[Fir · Picea asperata].
That was Hunter's handwriting. Every single curve of the letters carried the unique flamboyance and sharpness of the youth, impossible to erase. This fellow... had actually gone into someone's handmade shop and personally written out the Latin scientific name of the essential oil, exactly as if he were labeling test tubes in the laboratory.
"Why did you buy this?"
Silas's fingertips lightly traced the handwritten label. The cool glass texture pressed against his skin, his voice sounding somewhat deep inside the quiet living room.
"I just felt—"
Suddenly feeling a bit self-conscious under that gaze, the top-tier Alpha shifted his head slightly, extending his index finger to scratch the bridge of his high nose. His voice, which had originally been a bit cool from the outdoor wind, turned somewhat light and soft within the narrow physical distance:
"Just in case... and I mean in the future. When our blocker patches are completely universalized, or when we are both old and no longer require pheromones to express or test anything... there can still be another scent to help us remember, room by room."
Remembering every single morning and deep night they spent together in this small apartment.
Silas's long eyelashes trembled slightly, and he didn't reply immediately. He slowly returned the vial of fir essential oil back to the white porcelain coffee table, placing it flush against the neighboring vial of blazing orange.
The near-midday sun slanted inside through the pristine windows, falling without reservation onto the two glass vials, refracting a warm, viscous amber aura through the clear liquid.
One vial held the herbal, slightly bitter restraint belonging to fir; the other held the sweet warmth belonging to orange, burning wantonly under the sun.
They were exactly like the two of them. One forever building walls of restraint within rationality, the other forever burning with abandon within instinct. Yet when these two souls collided violently across the expanse of time and were placed beneath the same roof, they generated an exceptionally subtle, perfectly balanced warmth that could envelop one another.
"Let's try it then."
Silas withdrew his hand and leaned back into the soft cushions, his cool voice harboring a trace of indulgent compromise.
"Awesome!"
The golden retriever, having received his amnesty, instantly snapped back to life, practically bouncing straight off the carpet. With a long stride, he turned around impatiently to grab the white ultrasonic aroma diffuser resting near the TV console.
Adding purified water, carefully counting out the exact drops of essential oil according to a strict ratio, closing the lid, and pressing the switch—Hunter executed this entire sequence with a solemnity that mirrored a precise titration before a sterile workstation.
Within less than five minutes, an unprecedented, composite fragrance quietly diffused through the quiet living room.
It wasn't a pure physiological pheromone belonging to an Alpha or an Omega; it held nothing of the aggressive, predatory coercion born of genetic instinct. Yet strangely, this scent made one feel far more at peace and more tenderly attached than any high-matching pheromone in the world ever could.
The sweet, tart fruitiness of orange spread through the air, perfectly neutralizing the overly sharp, bitter woody edges of the fir after snow; meanwhile, the quiet, lingering base note of the fir anchored the overly flamboyant, lively sweetness of the orange, settling it into an exceptionally rich texture.
Silas submissively leaned against the back of the leather sofa, closing his eyes with a trace of exhaustion, allowing this peculiar fragrance that blended orange and fir to completely envelop him.
Hunter softened his footsteps as he walked over. Instead of returning to his own room, he sat down with exceptional docility in the vacant space right beside Silas.
The only sound inside the living room was the exceptionally light, fine "hissing" water mist emerging from the diffuser.
Amidst the absolute quiet, Hunter turned his head with a somewhat guilty conscience, staring at Silas's exquisite profile—which appeared near-transparent under the warm sun—for a long duration. Subsequently, as if having finalized a massive resolution, he tentatively extended his broad palm millimeter by millimeter, exceptionally gently covering the back of Silas's hand resting on his knee.
The youth's palm was scalding, bearing a thin layer of sweat; when it pressed against him, it resembled a tiny cluster of flame.
Silas's long eyelashes twitched slightly, but he didn't open his eyes, nor did he coldly wrench his hand away as he routinely did inside the laboratory.
He simply allowed that scalding temperature to seep bit by bit through the back of his hand and into his cool bloodstream.
"Hunter Huo," Silas spoke, his eyes remaining closed, his cool voice sounding somewhat surreal amidst the fragrance.
"Yeah? I'm right here, Professor." Hunter couldn't resist tightening his grip slightly around his hand, his thumb longingly caressing the other's delicate skin.
"When it runs out in the future, go buy more."
Hunter's entire person visibly blanked for a second.
In the next instant, that invisible golden tail practically whipped out a blur of afterimages against the sofa. He snapped his spine straight, nodding frantically while elongating his cadence, his voice entirely filled with an excitement he couldn't suppress:
"Yes, yes, yes! Whatever you say! Next time I go to that handmade shop, I'll place a massive bulk order directly with the owner so we can hoard a few more vials at home! Let's just buy ten or eight vials and pack the kitchen storage cabinets completely full!"
"...Two vials are sufficient. Essential oils possess an expiration date." Silas opened his eyes with some helplessness, casting a somewhat un-definable glare sideways through his lenses at the Alpha who was getting ahead of himself.
"No! I want ten vials! I want to arrange them all across the entryway and keep them there until they expire without ever throwing them away!"
Hunter puffed his chest out, adopting a childish posture of 'I'm wealthy and I do what I please.'
Silas pushed his glasses up once more, his eyes clearly flashing with the words 'Are you a primary schooler?' But ultimately, he merely tugged the corners of his mouth indulgently, failing to utter a word to refute the youth's near-preposterous declaration.
Because the exact millisecond he had closed his eyes moments ago, the professor—who historically only placed faith in concrete data and logical deductions—had actually envisioned a very distant future with a trace of absurdity, yet also a sense of destiny:
If decades later, when they were both old, and when their respective secondary gender characteristics and gland functionalities gradually degenerated and faded away within the passage of time.
When that scent of blazing orange belonging to a top-tier Alpha, and that scent of fir after snow belonging to a top-tier Omega finally scattered into the atmosphere.
As long as they pushed open this door, there would still be an entire room of essential oil fragrance—chosen by their own free will and destined never to dissipate—to take the place of ancient genes, helping them firmly remember this sun-drenched Saturday morning.
Remembering every single minute heartbeat, and the scalding heat when their fingertips converged.