Before 8:00 AM the next morning, Lu Yao was already sitting in the laboratory. Their lab project had officially concluded a few days ago, and under normal circumstances, the project leader should be holding the wrap-up meeting today.
However, these were normal circumstances.
The head of their laboratory was their principal advisor, who had officially been elected as an academician last year. In his two years as a graduate student, Lu Yao had seen his advisor fewer than 1.5 times in total.
Once on his very first day entering the lab, and once as half a face glimpsed by chance in the school cafeteria.
Therefore, normally they were all just free-range donkeys.
They did all the experimental testing, with no one to teach them data analysis while the senior schoolmates above them took their work to write papers. Aside from listing the advisor as the corresponding author, they even had to surrender first authorship to the assistant advisor. The hierarchy was as strict as the division between 1s and 0s in a Tongtong address book.
Lu Yao sat in the meeting room, intending to use the time before the wrap-up meeting, led by a senior he hadn’t seen in two months, to slip off to the restroom for a cigarette. But after patting his pockets, he realized he hadn’t brought a lighter.
Wonderful.
With a calm expression, Lu Yao began searching Baidu to find out how long it takes to make fire by rubbing wood.
As a result, the moment he raised his head, he saw the alcohol burner radiating a beautiful flame right in front of him.
The senior hadn’t arrived yet, and the four people currently in the lab were exceptionally quiet. Before long, junior schoolmate Li Siyuan couldn’t hold it in anymore.
She quietly complained, “Why is the wrap-up meeting being conducted by a senior we’ve never seen before? Does he even know the project process?”
Wu Bohong chuckled. “Because he has seniority. Work hard, and maybe the next person holding a meeting for us will be you, Junior.”
His words carried a hidden meaning. Everyone knew that Li Siyuan had been brought into the academician’s mentorship circle through her professor father.
“I can’t possibly do that! Besides, I heard that a super amazing Ph.D. senior from an overseas laboratory is joining our research group. I saw his photos on the forum, and he is super, super handsome! Maybe he’ll be leading our project group, oh!”
At this moment, a hand tentatively crept onto the table, hooked the alcohol burner, and after a brief sway, the table was completely empty.
Upon hearing the word handsome, Qiao Jingjing perked up. “How handsome?”
“The kind of combination of a cold, aloof senior, an overbearing CEO, an elite lawyer, and a university professor!”
Lu Yao, who had just acquired humanity’s spark of hope, was seduced by Li Siyuan’s distorted description.
“And he’s precisely my favorite type who wears glasses! In the photos, he looks super gentle!”
Lu Yao sighed in admiration. You have great taste, Junior.
The next instant, Li Siyuan’s words caused Lu Yao’s movement of preparing to leave to freeze completely.
“Plus, his hair is so long! Whether it’s down or tied up, it has so much vibe!”
Glasses, long hair, handsome.
Lu Yao’s heart suddenly went suspended.
The door was pushed open, and the academician advisor, who hadn’t shown his face in two years, walked in smiling broadly. “Is everyone here? Excellent, let me introduce you to the senior who will be leading your new project.”
A man stood beside the plump old man, a faint smile lingering at the corners of his lips.
The advisor patronizingly patted the man’s shoulder and introduced, “This is your senior who just returned not long ago, Ji Cunli.”
Lu Yao’s suspended heart finally stopped beating entirely.
Lu Yao didn’t hear a single word the advisor said. Inside his head, he frantically tried to recall whether he might have, or rather, should have, said anything offensive to the returned-scholars senior when the man walked past him the other day.
No, absolutely not.
After saying a couple of things, the advisor left, abandoning Ji Cunli in the laboratory like an orphaned child.
The first sentence of Ji Cunli’s brief self-introduction after standing up was, “There’s no need for rigid rules in the lab. Usually, you can just call me by my name. I hope to spend an enjoyable year with everyone.”
Very good. It seemed he hadn’t heard anything back then.
Lu Yao’s stopped heart began to rise from the ashes.
After a brief introduction, Ji Cunli began assigning tasks. The meticulous and methodical distribution gave Lu Yao the sudden, illusory feeling of a 25-year-old suddenly tasting their very first sip of mother’s milk.
Lu Yao stole a glance at Ji Cunli’s profile. His superior bone structure and high nose bridge made him look unreal.
He looked like a life-sized body pillow of an otome game protagonist.
Lu Yao thought to himself that he truly couldn’t resist a man growing right on his aesthetic bullseye. Just looking at him sent a warm current surging from his fingertips straight to his heart, scalding hot yet tingling all over.
“Ah! Senior, your hand!” Li Siyuan shrieked.
Hearing the sound, Lu Yao lowered his gaze and saw the faint flame on the alcohol burner burning right through his sterile glove.
He stood up and expressionlessly extinguished the alcohol burner. “I’ll go take care of it.”
With Ji Cunli’s addition, the laboratory felt like an abandoned child that finally found a mother. As soon as Lu Yao returned from the restroom, he saw everyone crowded around Ji Cunli, asking questions left and right.
Just look at how worthless you all look.
Lu Yao picked up a pencil and, referencing Ji Cunli’s appearance in his experimental notebook, sketched a chibi cartoon character.
Only after finishing did he realize that Ji Cunli’s character design clashed with the gong in his serialized web comic.
Timely rain from the heavens.
Having never drawn this specific type of character design before, Lu Yao suddenly had a reference target.
Lu Yao stretched his sore cervical vertebrae. Two consecutive days of rushing to meet his manuscript deadline had made his neck feel like it was being pricked by needles, but the good news was that he had finally finalized his draft with the chief editor right before the deadline.
In the past, Lu Yao would have chosen to scroll through his phone and slack off for a bit at this time, but today, with Ji Cunli’s presence, Lu Yao briefly pondered and still conscientiously began observing his cells.
During this time, Cheng Sheng asked him what he was doing. Lu Yao glanced at Ji Cunli, who was smilingly answering Li Siyuan’s questions, and seriously typed out:
[Acting like a pervert away from home]: Enjoying the male model. [Fist-shaking wiping-tears GIF]
Lu Yao didn’t reply anymore. After tossing his phone outside, he entered the sterile room. When he came out, only the male model was left in the lab.
Oh wait, no. Only Ji Cunli was left.
“Where did everyone go?”
Lu Yao belatedly realized that asking like that wasn’t very polite, so he added, “Why haven’t you left yet?”
Ji Cunli answered, “I should be leaving. Sorry for disturbing you.”
“Sorry,” Lu Yao apologized sincerely, once again lamenting how wonderfully pleasant Ji Cunli’s voice sounded.
It was the kind of pleasant where just opening his mouth could buy out an entire school.
Ji Cunli remained calm and steady. “It’s fine. It’s my fault for letting you down; my hair isn’t sparse at all, so feeling somewhat unsatisfied with me is only expected.”
Gasp!
He really did hear it!
Beneath a calm exterior, Lu Yao’s brain went into a frantic storm, trying to figure out how to respond so the other person wouldn’t abuse public office for private revenge in their future interactions.
Finally, under Ji Cunli’s smiling gaze, Lu Yao said seriously, “I shouldn’t have made baseless assumptions about a senior I’d never met. I hope Senior can let bygones be bygones and let us start anew to look forward to the future. Senior, I haven’t introduced myself yet, have I? My name is Lu Yao, my name is on the purging list, I’m 25 this year, 185 cm tall, and weigh 69 kg.”
With clear, innocent eyes, Lu Yao completed the final sentence: “I have some M tendencies.”
So please don’t use this matter to exact private revenge against him, or it would only make him feel good.
After saying that, both Lu Yao and Ji Cunli froze. Lu Yao never expected this was something he could actually say out of his own mouth.
It sounded like he had consumed five pounds of mentally disabled zombie brain matter.
Ji Cunli fell silent for a few seconds and gave him a deep look. “I’ll try my best?”
What are you trying your best at?
Lu Yao felt his head spinning in circles now. Pulling two consecutive all-nighters had severely depleted the health bar of a healthy man with a six-pack.
Glancing at the time, he said to Ji Cunli, “Have you eaten yet? Let me treat you to dinner, Senior.”
Once they finished eating, he needed to quickly forget this incident, or else he would have to try casting the Obliviate spell on Ji Cunli.
Ji Cunli readily agreed. After arriving at the cafeteria, the two finished their meal in a harmonious yet bizarre atmosphere. When walking out of the cafeteria, Lu Yao stopped by the campus convenience store to buy a carton of milk.
Lu Yao was heading back to the dorms, while Ji Cunli lived in an apartment near the school gate, so they had a fair distance to walk.
It was the campus activity season, and booths were set up on both sides of the walkway as various student clubs began their second wave of recruiting freshmen.
Along the way, Ji Cunli and Lu Yao were stopped by quite a few clubs, all of which Lu Yao politely turned down.
He considered his rejection of the junior students friendly: “Thank you, we don’t need it.”
This provoked a wave of dead silence from them, and only after Lu Yao and Ji Cunli had walked past did someone dare to say, “Oh my god, he’s so fierce. I thought he was going to curse me out for blocking the way.”
“In a civilized society, don’t exaggerate. I think he was going to beat you up.”
“Although, wait, is that long-haired person next to him his girlfriend?! He’s so handsome and tall!”
“I couldn’t see clearly, looks like a guy. Both of them are so handsome.”
Lu Yao, who had already walked far away, couldn’t hear the discussion behind him. Feeling physically heavy, he just wanted to get back to the dorm and sleep quickly.
“Did you not join any clubs?”
A gentle, deep voice sounded beside him, and Lu Yao belatedly realized Ji Cunli was talking to him.
Glancing sideways at a female student handing out flyers in a Lolita dress not far away, Lu Yao looked straight ahead and softly replied, “Senior, workhorses are not qualified to join clubs.”
Ji Cunli had an epiphany. “True.”
Lu Yao glanced out of the corner of his eye at his expensive senior: the superior contour lines of his profile, his straight nose bridge, the glasses resting upon it, the eyes whose expression remained hidden behind the lenses, and the subtle smile playing at the corners of his lips.
Lu Yao swallowed quietly.
Top-tier quality.
Then he heard Ji Cunli say, “After all, university clubs don’t have BDSM chapters.”
… (Wait, use punctuation instead of ellipses:)
Period.
What kind of filthy nonsense are you spouting with that pretty mouth of yours?
The warm light of dusk poured over the campus, casting a uniquely hazy atmosphere.
Lu Yao stopped, looked straight into Ji Cunli’s eyes, and asked sincerely, “Senior, do you also chat about such open topics with your junior lab mates in foreign laboratories?”
Ji Cunli seemed to ponder for a moment, the smile on his lips suddenly broadening, his voice sounding so gentle it seemed ready to drip water.
“No, because my foreign junior lab mates wouldn’t tell me their bedroom preferences on the first day.”
Victory and defeat decided, KO.
Lu Yao planned to end this fainting-inducing topic with silence and quickened his pace back toward the dormitory building.
The area beneath the dormitory building was shrouded in shadow, the sunlight unable to pierce the corners of the wall. Stepping into the shadow, Lu Yao turned around and said to Ji Cunli, “I’m at my dorm, see you later.”
A pure black kitten limped out from behind Ji Cunli.
“Lili?”
Ji Cunli and the kitten both looked at Lu Yao.
“Meow.”
Noticing something wrong with Lili and thinking of nothing else, Lu Yao squatted down and picked Lili up, only to find his hand soaked with wetness upon touching it.
It was bright red blood.
Ji Cunli walked over and gently lifted the kitten’s paw with his hand. “Looks like it got stepped on. Your cat?”
“A stray. Abandoned right after birth.” Lu Yao frowned, checking to see if the kitten had any other injuries.
“Let’s go to the vet,” Ji Cunli said.
Lu Yao lowered his head, murmured an acknowledgment, and headed out of the campus carrying the cat.
Ji Cunli opened his phone. “I’ll call a ride.”
Pausing for a moment, Lu Yao looked up. “I have a ride.”
At the school gate, Ji Cunli stood before a red racing motorcycle, looking at Lu Yao holding the cat. “Your ride?”
After gently placing the cat into Ji Cunli’s arms, Lu Yao turned, straddled the motorcycle, and said to him: “Get on.”