The S-University experimental building was dead silent on a quiet afternoon, with the occasional sound of glassware clinking together in the laboratory at the end of the corridor.
The only four people in the lab were each busy with their own tasks. Suddenly, a round-faced junior student wearing a lab coat and a face mask broke the peace. She slumped back in her chair and sighed:
“Today is yet another day of missing my dead husband.”
Qiao Jingjing, who was reading academic literature, glanced at her: “You’ve been muttering about this for two days straight, give it a rest, Junior Sister. What is there to like about a 2-D fictional character? You’d be better off watching a TV series instead. Anyway, I will never understand how a comic book character can make you cry your eyes so swollen.”
Li Siyuan covered her face with a book and replied in a muffled voice, “Senior Sister, you simply don’t understand the charm of producers! Fictional characters are people too!”
Qiao Jingjing retorted, “You’ve just never been in a relationship, which is why you’re pinning all your mental sustenance on those so-called fictional characters. Keep your sterile gloves away from your hair!”
Li Siyuan immediately sat up straight and smiled at Qiao Jingjing: “Forgot, forgot!”
Changing her gloves, she muttered, “I really don’t understand why they had to write my husband to death! He was 1.9 meters tall, white-haired, and the absolute ceiling of combat power! How could the author have the heart? How could they?”
Yeah, how could they have the heart?
Sitting in the corner, Lu Yao silently added a line in his heart. He casually sketched a few strokes with a pencil in his lab notebook, and a standard comic panel layout instantly appeared on the page.
The book page depicted two men engaged in a fierce, entangled struggle.
[Senior, your secret has been discovered by me. You’d better figure out a way to keep me quiet.] A half-rimmed glasses, long-haired man lowered his gaze, cornering a short-haired, stunningly pretty man against the wall.
[You… what on earth do you want…] The short-haired man gritted his teeth, his flushed cheeks covered in tear streaks.
[Pleasure me, Senior. Do everything you can to please me.]
[Mm… you… mm!]
Hiss!
Lu Yao’s ear tips turned red as he expressionlessly looked away.
The bespectacled man. A bespectacled man is simply the most delicious thing ever! All those piercing gazes hidden behind the reflection of his lenses, that intellectual type using slender fingertips to gently push up the glasses frame on the bridge of his nose.
Anyone who can’t appreciate a man in glasses is committing a crime. Men in glasses ought to rule the world.
“My husband! My 1.9-meter-tall white-haired husband died at the hands of his dearest friend! If it weren’t for Teacher Rabbit’s fanfic keeping me alive, I honestly don’t know how I’d survive this!”
Li Siyuan’s voice interrupted Lu Yao’s runaway imagination.
He knew which comic book Li Siyuan was talking about. Its most standout character was the 1.9-meter-tall, white-haired combat powerhouse—who unfortunately ended up being written to death by the author.
At the time, Lu Yao had genuinely wanted to join the army of fans sending razor blades to the author. That white-haired character was his only remaining motivation to keep reading through the author’s bouts of madness and mental breakdowns. Who could have expected that when Lu Yao excitedly clicked on the latest chapter, the very first thing he saw was the white-haired character’s upper and lower body separated.
It grossed him out so much he couldn’t eat a single bite of food all day.
As for “Teacher Rabbit,” whom junior sister Li Siyuan mentioned, Lu Yao was more than familiar with the name—because the life-saving spiritual food she kept talking about was actually Lu Yao himself, the comic author known by the pen name Rabbit.
However, Lu Yao never wanted Li Siyuan to find out about this, because besides being a well-known fanfic comic artist in the community, Teacher Rabbit was also a notoriously famous adult doujinshi artist in the community.
Lu Yao’s gaze drifted back to the page filled with holy light he had just drawn: the bespectacled man wearing a white doctor’s uniform, using a scalpel to slice open the short-haired man’s clothes.
Right then, just as Li Siyuan had finished changing her gloves, she heard a knock on the door. As the youngest junior sister in the lab—affectionately dubbed a “low-tier member”—Li Siyuan grumbled as she went to answer it: “It better not be the people from next door coming to borrow spectrophotometer cuvettes again. Their budget is dirt poor; they still haven’t returned the two cuvettes they borrowed last time!”
Wu Bohong, who was busy running an experiment, chimed in, “Go squeeze their little boss for them.”
“As if I’d dare, Senior!”
Li Siyuan took off her gloves and walked toward the door. After opening it, she exchanged a few words with whoever was outside, quickly pulled the door shut again, jogged back to the lab bench, and whispered excitedly, “Guess who’s here!”
The other two people in the lab both looked up, except for the dark-haired man with ear studs sitting quietly in the absolute corner. He didn’t make a movement, looking as though nothing existed outside of his experimental records.
Wu Bohong pushed up the bridge of his glasses and chimed in with an eager, gossipy grin: “Who’s here?”
Li Siyuan first glanced toward the man in the corner. His eyelashes were long, thick, and lowered, and the line of his profile looked just like the cold, aloof senior stepping right out of a comic book.
She swallowed hard before rapidly blurting out: “You’ll never guess! It’s Senior Cheng Sheng from the Department of Design next door!”
You couldn’t blame her for being this excited. Cheng Sheng was a renowned campus belle in the medical school—cheerful, gorgeous, and with a line of suitors stretching all the way from the Department of Design to the School of Biological Sciences.
Wu Bohong, who had just been playing along, was genuinely shocked this time: “Who is she looking for? Don’t tell me it’s me!”
“Get real, keep dreaming,” Qiao Jingjing teased with a laugh.
Remembering that Cheng Sheng was still waiting outside, Li Siyuan didn’t drag it out. Looking somewhat nervous, she announced the answer: “She’s looking for Senior Lu Yao. She’s right outside now.”
The moment they heard it was for Lu Yao, everyone fell silent. Even the joking stopped. In unison, every head turned to look at the man in the corner.
Two seconds later, Li Siyuan tentatively called out once more: “Senior Lu Yao?”
Her voice abruptly snapped Lu Yao out of his deep immersion in the exquisite feast of bespectacled men. Startled, Lu Yao jumped up, his stool scraping harshly against the floor.
Li Siyuan grew even more terrified. “Did I just disturb you, Senior?”
The very next second, the dark-haired man shifted his gaze toward her. His eyes were cold and sharp, shadowed by a faint layer of bruised fatigue underneath. He looked completely aloof and impatient, instantly making Li Siyuan swallow back whatever else she was going to say.
“I know,” the man said in a low, husky voice.
Lu Yao was startled by the sound of his own voice. He softened his tone slightly and said to Li Siyuan, “Thanks,” before walking toward the door.
As he passed Wu Bohong’s workstation, his peripheral vision suddenly caught the half-rimmed glasses sitting on Wu Bohong’s nose. Lu Yao quickly averted his gaze.
Sure enough, certain character tropes only belong on fictional 2-D characters. My enthusiasm is completely dead.
After Lu Yao left, Li Siyuan let out a long breath, patted her chest, and exclaimed, “Senior Lu Yao is way too scary! His hands are still wrapped in bandages—could he have gotten into a fight with someone? So scary, so scary.”
Qiao Jingjing chuckled, “Don’t let your senior’s appearance fool you. He’s actually quite easy to get along with; he’s just been in a bad mood lately. He’ll be back to normal in a bit.”
Wu Bohong chimed in, “Well, you can’t blame our little Round for that. With that icy expression of his, who dares talk to him anyway?”
Li Siyuan nodded frantically. Thinking back to the inadvertent eye contact she’d just shared with Senior Lu Yao, she sucked in a sharp breath.
It was just so calm. Like he was looking at a dead person.
She had been in the lab for less than two months, and the person she feared most was this senior of hers. He was drop-dead gorgeous—his carved, model-like face had landed him on the campus confession wall countless times on his very first day of school. But he was also fiercely wild; his hands were frequently wrapped in athletic tape, dark shadows always lingered beneath his eyes, and his tone of voice was constantly laced with restrained impatience.
Every single time she spoke to Senior Lu Yao, her face would cycle between red and white.
The red was from shyness; the white was purely from sheer terror.
Outside the door, Lu Yao closed it behind him, raised his head to look at Cheng Sheng, and glared at her with full vigilance: “Why are you here? Didn’t we agree to communicate through drifting bottles?”
Cheng Sheng stepped closer to Lu Yao, scrutinized him carefully, and then let out a slow, brilliant smile: “No choice. Drifting bottles can’t convey how much I miss you, and the speed at which you reply to messages is as agonizingly slow as waiting for the ten-year appointment at Changbai Mountain.”
“I’m in the middle of an experiment. What do you want?” Lu Yao rubbed his aching tendons. So carpal tunnel really is the inescapable destiny of every illustrator, huh?
Cheng Sheng didn’t beat around the bush. Cutting straight to the point, she said to Lu Yao, “Five hundred. I’ll buy one night of your time.”
A rich lady!
Lu Yao shook his head and gave a flat refusal: “No.”
“Seven hundred.”
That could buy a Japan-import badge!
Lu Yao gently massaged his wrist. With dark circles under his eyes, he decisively refused again: “I said no.”
“I only need your long, slender fingers! One thousand! Is one thousand okay? I’ll give you half a month’s living expenses! I just need one night!”
Whose fingers are you calling long and slender?! Lu Yao’s fists clenched, and his refusal became even firmer.
Cheng Sheng pressed her palms together and bit her lower lip: “I’m begging you! Have pity on me! Spare a single evening to draw an urgent commission for me! Please, I’m begging you, please!”
Where on earth did she learn meow-speak?
Lu Yao felt his head pounding. He had no choice but to hold up his bandage-wrapped hand to show her: “Seriously, no. The submission deadline is the day after tomorrow, and I haven’t even finalized the manuscript yet. I pulled an all-nighter yesterday, and my cervical spine and wrist HP bars are both completely empty. Go find another target.”
Cheng Sheng was someone he had met at an anime convention when he first entered the community. For a decade, all the cosplay wigs he wore were styled by Cheng Sheng, and he occasionally drew character design sketches for her.
Their relationship resembled a loveless marriage held together entirely by a child—impossible to divorce.
“How can someone speak with a body temperature of thirty-seven degrees Celsius and yet spout words that are thirty-seven degrees below zero?” Cheng Sheng clutched her chest, trembling as she pointed at Lu Yao.
Seeing that Lu Yao didn’t react, she pulled back her hand, put her hands on her hips, and said, “I originally planned to gift you an out-of-print autographed photo of Cosplayer Lang Si after I picked up my commission. Since that’s how it is, fine then. I guess I’ll just have to take my baby and his dowry to find a different daddy.”
The moment Lu Yao heard Cheng Sheng mention the name Lang Si, his body froze in place.
Upon hearing the words “out-of-print autographed photo,” he whipped out his phone with lightning speed, pulled up his payment QR code, and thrust it toward Cheng Sheng while bowing slightly.
“Instead of saying mood-killing things, you might as well scan my QR code. One thousand is too much, let’s give it a deep discount—is one hundred okay, Madame? I’ll pump out the art tonight, modify it however you want, and I will be completely obedient!” Lu Yao quickly added, “My capacity is limited, though. Is two drawings max okay?”
Cheng Sheng fell silent for a single second before muttering, “Just one is fine.”
Lu Yao straightened up and blinked: “He’s worth it.”
“The way you look like you have zero self-respect looks just like true love. Respect and best wishes.”
Once she secured the commission, Cheng Sheng straightened her posture: “I heard your advisor’s direct disciple is back? A Ph.D. from overseas, the big boss academician’s direct lineage disciple—a full stack of buffs. Word even reached our department. I heard he’s an absolute super bigwig who has published twenty SCI papers.”
“Oh, his name seems to be Ji Cunli. When am I getting that autograph?”
“Such a nice name,” Cheng Sheng sighed.
“The autograph.” Lu Yao stared straight at Cheng Sheng.
Cheng Sheng was left speechless, “Wait until you finish drawing. Hand over the art, get the merch.”
Lu Yao was satisfied. “Usually, people with nice names have less-than-ideal looks. An academician’s disciple shouldn’t be too young either; he’s probably a bald old man.”
Lost in the impending joy of owning Lang Si’s out-of-print autograph, Lu Yao didn’t forget to shatter Cheng Sheng’s fantasy.
Just then, a man walking up the corridor stairs brushed past Lu Yao and Cheng Sheng, pausing for a fraction of a second as his gaze swept briefly over Lu Yao.
Lifting his eyes, Lu Yao happened to catch the profile of the man as he walked away: a white lab coat, black gloves, waist-length black hair tied back, half-rimmed gold-framed glasses, and an indescribably handsome face.
Holy shit. An intellectual, bespectacled man.