As the final tail of November drifted away on a quiet note, Beijing's deep winter raised its preliminary curtains amidst an unheralded, sudden cold snap. At this exact milestone, the temporal distance remaining before their designated wedding date sat at precisely three full months.
Within this specific planning cycle—a duration that traditionally induced a vast volume of bureaucratic tedium and high-frequency anxiety across most couples—Hunter Huo had, without a sliver of suspense, entered a state of complete "pre-wedding hyperexcitation" that defied logical medical explanation.
To deploy the precise, private commentary engineered by Lin from the Life Sciences Department: The Eldest Young Master Huo's current physiological indicators suggested that the Siberian Husky attributes anchored deep within his genetic helix had been comprehensively activated. His working metrics across both the Huo Corporation and the research laboratory had mysteriously spiked to double their standard output; the metric volume of daily romantic prose he directed toward Silas Shen remained deathly un-budgeable at triple its historical frequency; as for his deployment of sticky, un-fendable acts of coquetry, the statistical metric had spiked by more than tenfold.
Far from being restricted to these indicators, this aristocratic Alpha—whose fingers had historically never once been contaminated by the common waters of kitchen tasks—had recently begun to cultivate an exceptionally fanatic obsession with the culinary arts.
Prior to this nexus, the solitary kitchen competency he possessed the capacity to display was merely managing to bring a pot of water to a clean boil inside Silas's apartment. Yet under a surge of research-focused rigor that carried a touch of total self-flagellation, the home-style recipe index currently retained within his cognitive database had managed to expand from its baseline origins of "stir-fried tomatoes with eggs and pork rib soup" to encompass "stir-fried tomatoes with eggs, pork rib soup, poached Chinese broccoli, and... rice-cooker sponge cake."
This rice-cooker sponge cake constituted a "secret weapon" Hunter had extracted from a short-video content creator merely last week.
The developmental arc could preeminently be archived as a history of biochemical experimentation packed with dense smoke. During his inaugural attempt, an error across the yeast-to-flour ratio caused the entire cake to collapse flush against the container floor like an abandoned bio-specimen that had failed basic Principles of Cellular Structure; during his secondary attempt, a failure to precisely calculate heat density and temporal benchmarks caused the absolute bedrock of the rice cooker to blacken into a clean chunk of carbonized matter. It was only during this specific dusk—following a tertiary attempt governed by a data-driven micro-tuning process near-clinical in its severity—that a circular pastry radiating a dense aroma of fresh eggs finally materialized in a shaky, structured form.
The kitchen space remained thoroughly saturated under a thick, sweet fragrance of flour. Hunter was currently clad in an exceptionally comical cartoon apron, his frame bent downward as his features locked into a state of total structural tension—looking exactly like an engineer operating a multi-million-dollar electron microscope—as his hand manipulated a disposable piping bag to execute the arduous task of squeezing a layer of white cream across the slightly asymmetrical surface of the cake.
Dead-center across the pastry, he deliberately piped a massive, crooked set of stylized characters: "QZ."
"Professor! Sample this right this second!"
Two minutes subsequent to completion, Hunter dashed into the living space with a touch of fiery urgency, his hands cradling that cake—whose visual aesthetic could honestly not be classified as premium—exactly like an explorer presenting an absolute relic. A pair of flashing puppy eyes were thoroughly brimmed with an expectant light that was on the verge of spilling past his lashes.
Silas was currently sunk deep within the warmth of the sofa cushions, that pair of gold-rimmed glasses propped across the bridge of his nose, his long fingers supporting a heavy, original English-edition scientific volume. Scenting that over-concentrated sweet fragrance weaving through the atmosphere, he slowly brought the pages to a close, his line of sight traversing past the cold glare of his lenses to land square against the absolute center of the white cake.
Professor Shen tilted his beautiful eyebrows slightly, his refreshing voice carrying a stroke of un-hidable helplessness: "Student Huo, what exactly is written across the surface of this item?"
"QZ!" Hunter leaned his physical frame a fraction closer with intense eagerness, practically burning to paste the pastry directly beneath Silas's eyelashes, his tone completely packed with pride. "Qingzhou! The initials of your name! How about it? Do I not possess an exceptional volume of artistic cells?"
Silas extended a single pale, elegant finger, executing a touch of merciless air-tapping against the tail end of that specific letter as he opened his mouth in a slow-pan manner: "...If my cognitive records retain their accuracy, the minute tail appended to the letter 'Q' ought to slash toward the lower right quadrant. Your deployment here is reversed. Student Huo, this constitutes a mirrored typographical error."
"Ah, please do not fixate across these minor, negligible academic parameters! Flavor remains the solitary criterion for validating the success of any experiment!" Hunter was far from discouraged upon having his error clean-pierced; instead, he shamelessly squatted down right beside the flank of the sofa, seamlessly forcing a flashing dessert fork directly into Silas's palm, his gaze glittering. "Take a bite right this second. To blockade any potential collapse of the structural core, the rotation frequency I deployed while whipping the egg whites this time was strictly simulated based across the physical hand-feel of your laboratory's centrifuge machine."
Silas cast a brief glance toward that handsome face which appeared exceptionally sharp under the warm amber illumination, yet currently bore a minute speck of white cream across one cheek. He refrained from engineering further critiques, submissively pinching the fork to slice off an exceptionally minute, warm section of cake from the outer perimeter, passing it into his mouth.
The sugar density had been deliberately micro-tuned to a lower threshold, evidently structured to accommodate Silas's perennially light palate. Because the manual whipping process lacked the ultra-fine texture of industrial machinery, the outer cream layer even retained a barely perceptible, sandy granularity across the tongue. Yet this factually constituted an exceptionally qualified cake—the mouthfeel was fluffy, the structural core remained warm, carrying the most primal, untainted wheat aroma generated subsequent to eggs and flour traversing a high-temperature bake.
"It passes parameters." Silas swallowed the sweet softness, delivering his evaluation in a cool tone.
Yet these simple characters acted exactly like an absolute decree of supreme amnesty.
Within a single fraction of a second, Hunter's eyes went thoroughly and completely bright, his physical frame practically springing clean off the floorboards, his messy golden hair shifting violently beneath the illumination: "Factual reality? Then I shall continue manufacturing them tomorrow! Professor, during my next iteration, I shall acquire the competency to engineer Tiramisu! Or Mango Mille-Crêpe! Or all variants of French patisserie—I guarantee I shall jam our household refrigerator completely to maximum capacity—"
"Acquire the competencies one index at a time." Silas set down the dessert fork, watching this top-tier Alpha who appeared ready to wag his invisible tail into a literal propeller based across a solitary stroke of praise, his tone maintaining its unhurried pace. "It isn't as if tomorrow constitutes the literal apocalypse. What exactly is the source of your urgency?"
Hunter's entire frame suddenly froze dead-center in position.
The television set inside the living space was dutifully broadcasting an aged black-and-white cinematic production, the raspy dialogue tracks adjusted to an exceptionally low volume. Beyond the window panes stretched the boundless winter night of Beijing, the plane trees lining both flanks of the avenues having long since shed their final withered leaves, while minute fragments of light snow drifted noiselessly down from the night sky, refracting a cool glare beneath the streetlights.
Yet the interior of the apartment remained exceptionally warm.
The essential oil fragrance of oranges and winter fir slowly diffused through the air, melting perfectly into the sweet warmth of the cake resting across the table.
Hunter stared at the frosty professor at his flank—who maintained an entirely calm countenance while slow-pan deploying a tissue paper to cleanse his fingertips—and a certain corner of his heart that had historically remained slightly suspended for a vast duration felt, at this exact milestone, as if it had been comprehensively filled by a massive, tender marshmallow.
He suddenly recalled those initial years when he was nineteen and had just begun his pursuit of Silas. The youth of that era was arrogant, overbearing, yet simultaneously plagued by an un-controllable panic whenever he stood before this Omega who appeared as un-yielding as a glacial wall. He was perennially terrified that Silas would abruptly push him away on an unannounced morning, terrified that his methods of relentless clinging would one day induce absolute aversion across the other party, terrified that this relationship—which he had pursued across such a vast stretch of time—would mimic a data point that had achieved accidental success inside a laboratory yet possessed zero capacity for replication, abruptly reaching a absolute conclusion at the break of dawn.
But currently, he had unearthed the truth—it would not.
Silas had never granted him high-profile, earth-shattering vows, yet he had already deployed an exceptionally brutal, exceptionally tender brand of rationality to permanently slot the name 'Hunter Huo' into every single trivial, mundane detail of his future blueprint.
This included instructing him to learn cooking "one index at a time," included those fruit storage boxes tagged with personalized labels reading "Special Supply for Professor Shen" inside the refrigerator, and included the plain band rings engraved with "Orange & Winter Fir" currently fitted perfectly straight across their respective ring fingers at this exact milestone.
"Understood."
Hunter sat himself down right against the edge of the sofa, shamelessly resting his heavy skull directly across Silas's shoulder. Utilizing the leverage to extend a long arm, he drew the elegant person halfway into his embrace, his voice dropping low, carrying a stroke of total fulfillment now that the dust had ultimately settled. "One index at a time. Regardless... we possess an entire existence's worth of time, Professor."
Silas was bumped by his massive physical frame until his shoulder bore a heavy weight, his body slanting slightly.
Yet during this specific instance, he refrained from throwing a frosty countenance to push the youth away as he historically did.
Professor Shen exhaled a low sigh of complete helplessness, permitting that dense aroma of blazing oranges to comprehensively wrap around his person. He slowly extended his long, pale right hand—a hand customarily reserved exclusively for interacting with cool laboratory instruments—his fingertips twitching slightly as he executed an exceptionally tender, soothing stroke to massage through Hunter's perennially messy, fluffy golden hair.