Lin's proposal had been initiated covertly right after the conclusion of Tuesday's routine lab assembly.
The exact millisecond Silas Shen closed his logbook and stepped out of the conference space, Lin executed a quick sidestep into the side parlor, throwing a flurry of frantic winks and expressions toward Hunter Huo, who was bending his head to scan his phone.
"It's not some high-profile, ostentatious engagement banquet—everyone understands the professor's temperament; if we engineer something too grandiose, we're all bound to be sent back to retake Cell Biology tomorrow." Lin dropped his voice low, his hands gesturing a remarkably minute circle. "It's merely our own laboratory personnel, gathering for a private meal to celebrate Professor Shen and Student Huo... Wait, now that it's out in the open, should I alter my vocabulary and call you Mr. Huo?"
"Don't, that sounds far too distant." The exact millisecond the words "Mr. Huo" struck Hunter's ears, his pleasure caused the curvature of his eye corners to shoot upward. He had just intended to delightfully accept the title when, without a single warning, a voice as cool as jade resounded from behind his frame.
"Call him Student Huo."
Silas had returned at an unknown millisecond to retrieve a forgotten fountain pen. His elegant silhouette stood framed at the threshold, the pale golden sun outlining the crisp contours of his white lab coat. Stepping forward, his long fingers pinched the silver pen, his expressionless countenance locking onto his Alpha whose invisible tail was on the verge of wagging into the stratosphere. "He has yet to graduate."
The smile across Hunter's face collapsed near-instantly, his entire person visibly wilting into a massive ball of grievance. Taking a long stride, completely oblivious to Lin standing right beside them, he sticky-sweetly crowded against Silas's flank. Tilting his towering physical frame downward, his chin near-rested across Silas's shoulder, his voice entirely packed with accusation: "Professor, my proposal has already achieved total success, and even my older brother broadcasted it to the entire world on his social feed last night. Why is my official designation still 'Student'?"
Silas didn't even lift his eyelashes. He slotted the fountain pen perfectly straight back into his breast pocket, his refreshing voice as systematically rigorous as it historically was: "Prior to the instance where your graduation thesis defense achieves a passing grade, and prior to the instance where your student registry is officially deactivated within the educational system, you are Student Huo."
Lin inside the parlor and several graduate students currently pressed against the door crevice eavesdropping instantaneously burst into a chaotic chorus of laughter, the entire atmosphere of Life Sciences Lab 301 filling with absolute merriment.
The celebration was ultimately anchored for Friday afternoon inside the laboratory's break lounge.
This sector historically housed nothing more than a single ice maker and a few cool metallic chairs, yet today it had been staged by this band of students—who were routinely battered to the bone by experimental datasets—to reflect a rare trace of lived warmth. Lin had ordered a minute double-layered cake from the most premium confectionery shop outside the university gates ahead of schedule, while Noah Zhou hand-scrawled a pink congratulatory card using exceptionally structured handwriting, delivering an immensely weighty "headliner" alongside several other graduate students with a touch of total mystery.
It was a massive bouquet specifically customized from a floral design studio via their pooled funds.
Calling it a bouquet was a slight misnomer; in factual reality, it was stripped of a single delicate rose. Instead, it deployed a massive volume of winter fir branches bearing a crisp, cool fragrance as its structural bedrock, while slices of dehydrated, caramelized orange slices were woven dead-center with exceptional ingenuity, the entire arrangement bound deathly tight using vintage kraft paper.
"The floral designer was completely stupefied after absorbing our specifications," Noah dared to joke, her eyes alternating between Silas and Hunter. "But we unanimously finalized that this configuration was the absolute most appropriate. It contains both Professor Shen's signature scent and Senior Hunter's signature scent. This is designated as... the physical crystallization of pheromones!"
Hunter stared at this bizarre yet romantically transcendent "bouquet," his puppy eyes instantaneously flashing as if housing an entire field of starlight. He practically swiped it away with a lightning-fast hand, cradling it inside his embrace as an item too precious to set down. Bending his head to violently inhale that scent woven from a woody cool fragrance and a sour-sweet citrus aroma, he nodded in quick succession: "This simply understands my soul far too well! No way, this bouquet possesses far too monumentally critical a significance; I must purchase an ultra-oversized specimen frame to seal it completely and hang it across the absolute most prominent wall of our living room!"
Silas had just brought a paper cup to his lips to sip a draught of warm water. Hearing this, he lifted his eyelids, his cool tone dismantling the youth's fantasy without mercy: "The walls of our apartment's living room do not possess superfluous space reserved for decorations devoid of practical utility."
"Then... then hanging it inside the laboratory is surely permissible, right? Hanging it right beside my workstation, so I can stare at it day in and day out while executing my experimental logs!" Hunter settled for the next best option, his eyes staring wetly at his professor.
"The laboratory constitutes a public academic venue. According to administrative codes, hanging large-volume private items is strictly prohibited." Professor Shen pushed his gold-rimmed glasses up, his refusal stripped of a single millimeter of negotiation room.
"This is banned, that is prohibited..." Hunter let out a sigh, his broad shoulders drooping marginally, yet his arms remained clamped deathly tight around that bouquet of fir and orange slices, looking exactly like a massive canine stripped of its teething biscuit. Yet rapidly, his cognitive gears whirled into high frequency once more, shamelessly crowding a fraction closer to Silas's flank. "Then I'll hold onto it, and we'll snap a commemorative photograph together—this is surely permitted, correct? A photograph stored within a mobile device occupies zero physical space."
Silas cast a brief glance toward Lin, who had already hoisted an aged camera, and ultimately failed to spit out another word of refusal.
"Come on, Professor Shen, Senior Hunter, lean closer toward the dead-center! Yes, Senior Hunter, stabilize your hands, do not tremble!" Lin bellowed from behind the lens.
Having secured a special amnesty decree, Hunter extended his long arm, wrapping it around Silas's shoulder with an exceptional naturalness and a fiercely high level of possessiveness, dragging that cool, elegant person entirely into his embrace by a fraction.
With a sharp clack, the white flash ignited inside the slightly dim lounge space, freezing this split-second frame into a permanent eternity.
Within the photograph, Silas was anchored securely within the tall Alpha's embrace. Though he still maintained his customary cool, un-talking facade, his spine held perfectly upright, those beautiful phoenix eyes were thoroughly brimmed with minute fragments of flowing light, the corners of his lips executing an exceptionally rare upward curve to ripple out a stroke of total tenderness. As for Hunter wrapping his arm around him, he was laughing exactly like a foolish golden retriever who had finally had his personalized collar hand-fastened by his master. Though the rims of his eyes still bore a faint crimson trace from the day's raw excitement, the burning light radiating from those eyes anchored against the lens was on the verge of overflowing the entire composition.
Half an hour subsequent to the shoot, Lin dropped the developed digital version of this photograph straight into the "301 Core Scientific Research Project Group" WeChat channel.
The accompanying text was sentimental to the absolute maximum extreme:
[The entire membership of Beijing University Life Sciences Lab 301 extends our warmest congratulations to Professor Shen and Student Huo for officially ratifying a long-term mutual assistance pact! The doors of 301 shall remain eternally unlocked for the two of you! [Scattering_Flowers] [Cheers]]
The channel was instantaneously flooded beneath a digital wave of all sorts of bizarre and eccentric emojis.
A significant duration elapsed before Silas's account—which historically broadcasted nothing aside from "Received" or peer-reviewed literature web links—slowly generated a single character at the absolute bedrock of the screen:
[嗯 (Mmh).]
Immediately following that, trailing right beneath his input, materialized Hunter's signature personal style—a roaring, near-shouting response dense with exclamation marks:
[I LOVE YOU ALL FOR AN ETERNITY!!!!!!!!]
Another surge of cheering broke across the channel. Yet before the students could launch an organized chant to tease them, Silas's frosty avatar actually generated a secondary line, appended slow-pan style beneath the chaos:
[He is excessively excited, utilizing an over-metric volume of punctuation marks that fails to conform to standard protocol. However, the substance of his declaration is authenticated as true.]
The tumultuous channel plunged into a bizarre, absolute vacuum of silence for a full three seconds at this exact milestone.
Subsequently, an all-enveloping tidal wave of "HA HA HA HA HA" and "SOS I am being killed by the pure sweetness" completely washed over this exceptionally protective, minute text at a frequency that near-forced mobile devices into total freeze.
Noah cradled her half-eaten slice of cream cake, staring at that line of text flashing across her phone screen—so systematically rigorous, yet indulgent to an absolute extreme—feeling a sudden trace of a nasal sting. She wiped her slightly wet eye corners with a touch of raw emotion, slanting her face to murmur in a low whisper toward the senior sister at her flank:
"Senior sister, across the past, I perennially modeled Professor Shen as an immortal existence dwelling atop a sacred pantheon, stripped of base human desires, as freezing cold as a block of ice. But currently, I have finally unearthed the truth... He isn't inherently cold; he simply caches the entirety of his tenderness within the absolute deepest, most hidden recesses. He merely required a very loud, very foolish, yet completely unyielding small dog to continuously, tirelessly knock and scratch against his exterior barrier day in and day out, before he would finally consent to crack open a single door-crevice reserved exclusively for this single dog."
The senior sister seated beside her stuffed a massive mouthful of cream cake, casting a slightly amused glance toward her: "You've only just unearthed this truth right now?"