From the moment he woke up and watched Liang Qiao put on her uniform, Chu Hui had felt a strange, inexplicable itch beneath his skin. The uniforms of the School of Safety and Risk differed slightly from theirs, but the deep blue remained the dominant tone, with a pristine white collar standing neatly at the throat. Golden cords draped from the shoulders, and the clean lines flowed from broad shoulders to waist and downward, sharp and defined like the ridgeline of a mountain range.
Drawing closer, he could see the dark silver weave in the fabric, like the lingering trail of a shooting star across the night sky. The lapels formed a crisp V-shape at the chest, with gleaming metallic buttons lined up with precision from the top all the way down, tapering into the fitted waistline.
It was the same uniform, but on Liang Qiao it carried an indescribable sense of order and tension. After several glances, Chu Hui finally realized how blatantly he was staring. He bit down hard on the soft flesh inside his cheek and lowered his lashes.
Now his field of vision held only her hands—elegant, with clearly defined knuckles—swaying slightly with her stride, appearing and disappearing among the scattered crowd. He watched without blinking, and couldn't help but recall how those very hands had explored his body the night before.
…Tsk.
Perhaps it was because of the Temporary Marking, or perhaps because he hadn't kissed her when they parted this morning—either way, he simply couldn't rein in his wandering thoughts. His gaze clung to her like sticky tentacles, urging him to step forward and touch her.
She turned her head slightly, the brows and eyes beneath the brim of her cap carrying a hint of cool detachment as she looked back at him from within the faint shadow.
By the time Sheng Fuzhou and the others noticed Chu Hui was missing, he had already gotten his wish and kissed Liang Qiao in her uniform. The furtive, wet sounds were sealed away by the Pheromone Processing Room's ultra-high-standard soundproof doors. The Alpha leaned askew against the doorframe, and the hand that had been swaying in his sight moments ago was now half-embracing his shoulder.
The more he kissed, the less satisfied he became. He called out "Liang Qiao" twice in a clingy tone, reached up to touch her face, and said, "I'm so crazy about you."
His declarations came as frequently as eating and drinking. Liang Qiao used to blush when she first heard them, but now she was completely used to it. She hummed softly in acknowledgment, lowered her head, and continued kissing his lips.
After kissing for a while longer, Liang Qiao frowned slightly and asked, "Are you feeling unwell?"
His enthusiasm today was a bit beyond the usual measure, making her worry about his condition. She ran her thumb along the suppressant patch on the back of his neck and said, "Is it because yesterday…"
"No," Chu Hui denied her guess, saying frankly, "I just want to kiss you."
Liang Qiao still wasn't reassured. "Last night you said…"
She couldn't repeat his pleas for mercy with a straight face, so she let the silence speak for her. Chu Hui understood her unfinished meaning, curved his lips into a smile, and said, "I was lying to you. It actually felt amazing."
Liang Qiao: "…"
Liang Qiao shut her mouth.
Perhaps sensing the helplessness beneath her silence, Chu Hui couldn't suppress the laughter in his eyes any longer. He wrapped both arms around her shoulders and said, "One more kiss."
Liang Qiao didn't move, waiting for him to lean in. Just as their lips were about to meet, a faint vibration came from her wrist.
Her movements paused. She lowered her head to check, but a hand caught her cheek and turned her face back. Chu Hui pressed his lips against hers, continuing the almost-broken kiss, and said, "Ignore him."
"We should go back."
"Yeah," Chu Hui agreed, but he showed no intention of parting from her. His soft, peach-blossom eyes fixed on her as he suddenly said, "We're graduating today."
Liang Qiao said, "Mm."
"Then when do we tell them?"
He didn't really care much about telling people, after all, pretending to be strangers in public didn't stop them from entering the same room and sleeping in the same bed at night. But after graduation, their time together would definitely be much less. He didn't want to have to hide even a kiss in the Pheromone Processing Room just to see each other.
Liang Qiao said, "You decide."
Hearing this answer, Chu Hui curled the corners of his mouth, tightened his grip on her hand, and deliberately said, "Then we'll tell them as soon as we go out."
She had no objection and said, "Alright."
Chu Hui asked, "You're not afraid?"
A trace of confusion surfaced in her eyes, clearly asking what there was to be afraid of.
Chu Hui said, "Pei Qiansu will definitely badmouth me. She might even ask if I seduced you into being with me."
His intention was just to be playful and coquettish—after all, he had never cared about others' attitudes. The reason they had decided to keep it a secret was simply to avoid the hassle of too many people knowing. But whether Liang Qiao didn't catch on or not, she replied calmly and matter-of-factly, "No, I pursued you."
"Ha…" Chu Hui was clearly delighted by these words, unable to resist kissing her several more times before saying, "Forget it, let's just let things happen naturally. Otherwise, on the last day, we'll still have to deal with them interrogating us about everything."
He kept changing his mind, and Liang Qiao, agreeable as always, nodded. She reached out to smooth back his slightly tousled bangs. Chu Hui grabbed her other hand and pulled it around to his lower back, saying, "My waist is killing me. Tonight, I'm on top…"
His unfinished words were swiftly sealed by Liang Qiao's hand over his lips. Chu Hui's eyes narrowed, and he took the opportunity to kiss her palm.
…Sometimes, there was really no handling him.
…
When they returned to the Memorial Hall, the conferral ceremony was still in progress. Chaoye turned around and spotted him, asking, "Where did you just go?"
Chu Hui clapped along with everyone else, his expression unchanged as he said, "Went to eat."
"Oh," Chaoye readily accepted this explanation, saying, "I'm a bit hungry too. Where are we going tonight?"
Today was December 31st—besides being the graduation ceremony at Lan Academy, it was also New Year's Eve. Every year at this time, the Landu Twin Towers hosted New Year's celebrations with spectacular fireworks and a Holographic Light Show. The blue memorial light at the top of the towers was lit specifically to celebrate Langria's graduating class, so every year, many students skipped the academy's graduation banquet to celebrate here instead.
"The spot's already booked—the rooftop garden at the Tregini Center," Chu Hui said. "If you're not attending the banquet, come along."
Chaoye nodded in agreement, saying, "Sure, I'm not interested in the banquet anyway."
The graduation banquet was held in the conference hall at the top of the academy tower, and the alumni who participated in today's conferral ceremony would also attend. Although the graduates were the protagonists of the day, the event was less a celebration for them and more of a networking gathering for power and influence. Students without connections could probably only get a buffet dinner out of it, with little room to even speak.
The conferral ceremony lasted the entire afternoon. As it drew to a close, Liang Qiao returned to the Memorial Hall. Dean Wang Yuwu was delivering his final remarks on stage, and the hall's originally cold white lighting had somehow shifted into something resplendent, with vivid colors sweeping across every face in turn.
"…Congratulations to you all on your smooth graduation. Wherever you go in the future, Langria will forever be your support and your glory," he raised his arm and proclaimed the school motto that had been passed down since the institution's founding, his voice ringing with force: "May the Wind of Truth forever blow!"
"Bang!" As his words fell, countless blue-and-white streamers cascaded from the dome, and majestic music swelled in tandem. The crowd's cheers burst through all barriers, sweeping across the entire Memorial Hall like an avalanche. Applause, laughter, shouts—all converged like countless surging rivers into this vast ocean of celebration.
Standing at the back, Liang Qiao watched the scene before her, and the corners of her lips curved upward involuntarily.
At this time yesterday, she had still been in the Old Third District completing her final trekking exercise. Now she stood in uniform at the heart of this jubilant ceremony—everything felt so unreal, until the spiraling streamers landed on her, and only then did she realize she too had become a protagonist in this celebration.
"Liang Qiao! Where did you go? Come take a photo!"
Pei Qiansu, who had finally caught sight of her, wove through the crowd to her side. A screen adjusted to a suitable size floated before everyone.
Shang Xuefan followed over with a leisurely gait and took her place beside Liang Qiao without hesitation, while Yu Yue wrapped an arm around both their shoulders from either side, squeezing her face between the two of them.
"Wei Ting, get over here!" Seeing Wei Ting still struggling to navigate through the crowd not far away, Pei Qiansu yanked him over and hooked an arm around his shoulder without the slightest ceremony.
"Stop spacing out, look at the camera!" She cut off his dazed hesitation with impatience, flashing a bold, uninhibited smile at the lens.
"***Finally graduated!"
The streamers dancing through the air froze in that moment, capturing the winter of 3795 and the spirited faces of the young.
"Liang Qiao, are you going to the evening gala?"
After the photos, everyone gathered in small groups to chat. Hearing Yu Yue's question, Liang Qiao shook her head without much thought. Pei Qiansu, who had just stepped aside to take a call, came running back brimming with excitement and said: "I just booked the rooftop garden at the Tregini Center—you can see the Twin Towers directly from there. Want to come along?"
That place was practically a rite of passage for Langria graduates; every graduation year it was packed with students going there to celebrate and ring in the new year.
Shang Xuefan hesitated for a moment, then said with a smile: "Yu Yue and I already agreed to attend the gala."
"Ah, you're not coming together? Today is our last—" Before she could finish, her sleeve was gently tugged by a force. Liang Qiao, who rarely spoke, took the initiative to open her mouth for once: "Mm. If you want to come, you can contact us anytime."
"Alright." He maintained his smile and nodded. After a simple farewell, he walked out of the Memorial Hall side by side with Yu Yue. Pei Qiansu watched their retreating figures and said with some disappointment: "Didn't we agree to ring in the new year together?"
With that, she glanced at Wei Ting beside her and asked: "You're not going to the gala too, are you?"
Wei Ting quickly waved his hands and said, "I'll go with you."
"That's more like it." Her mood shifted as quickly as it had come, and she was soon cheerful again, draping an arm around each of them as she headed out. "Let's go, let's go—tonight we drink till we drop!"
…
The Tregini Center was Landu's most bustling commercial street, its dense clusters of high-rises encircling the Federation Twin Towers at the very heart. Holographic screens of every size flickered ceaselessly with news, advertisements, or a parade of exquisite faces.
The Grand Roof was the nickname for one particular building, so named for its rooftop sky garden with unparalleled views—a vantage point from which one could take in the entire nightscape of Landu.
Tonight was New Year's Eve, and the streets were busier than ever. The group stepped into the elevator, its curved, high-transparency windows revealing brightly lit towers outside. As the elevator ascended, buildings swept past layer by layer, until the whole of Landu lay spread out beneath them.
Dazzling.
That was the only word to describe the state of the moment.
Liang Qiao's daily life was nothing short of monotonous—reading, training, and competing, with little time for places like this. But standing here at this very moment, she found it wasn't half bad—the Federation Twin Towers within arm's reach, Tregini Avenue forever thrumming with crowds, from the greenery-sprawled Feixin Park to the solemn Nadal Monument, the numbered streets progressing in orderly tiers.
Leaning out from a height of several hundred meters, countless window panes dissolved into pinpricks of starlight, intersecting roads wove into a glowing spiderweb, and the rising tide of noise began to recede—voices and engines fading into the distance, the entire city turning grand and silent.
Liang Qiao felt a genuine vertigo that bordered on rapture.
Beside her, Wei Ting murmured, "The Twin Towers are lighting up."
She tilted her head to look. Both spires blazed to life with deep blue lights in commemoration of Lan Academy's quinquennial graduating year. The brilliant glow against the dusk was nothing short of breathtaking. Pei Qiansu snapped a few photos and sighed once more, "Finally graduated."
Yeah. Finally graduated.
At twenty-one, perhaps it wasn't quite the age for reminiscing about one's youth, but Liang Qiao couldn't help thinking back to the person she'd been five years ago, stepping into Landu for the first time from the Old Third District.
Compared to the perpetually rebuilt, crumbling structures of the Old Third District, Landu's splendor had far exceeded her imagination. Over the years, she'd searched for scarce oxygen among the towering shadows of buildings and within cramped training pods, stealing moments to breathe between one bout and the next, one competition after another. Loneliness had always been her closest companion, and she'd grown accustomed to dissecting her defeats, exhaustion, and confusion within that familiar silence—never once wondering where her future might lead. Until now.
Until now.
Ding—
The elevator arrived. The person who, just hours ago, had been hidden away with her in the Pheromone Processing Room, kissing her, suddenly appeared before her eyes. She stepped out of the elevator doors and heard Pei Qiansu's near-hysterical demand: "What are you doing here?!"
"I should be asking you that!"
The familiar bickering resumed. No one wanted to run into their sworn enemy while out having fun, but knowing they wouldn't resort to violence in a place like this, no one made much effort to intervene. Chu Hui, who had been leaning against the railing watching the sunset, caught her gaze and couldn't help curving his lips into a smile, sneaking a wink at her.
A hint of laughter rippled through Liang Qiao's eyes. Her fingers curled slightly inside her pocket, trying to ease the inexplicable itch that had risen from somewhere deep within.
The rooftop garden was divided into four sections, almost entirely filled with Langria alumni. The group hit it off immediately and issued commands to the nearby service robots, instructing them to push the separate dining tables together into one.
It didn't matter whether they knew each other or had only crossed paths a few times—anyone wearing the same uniform was a friend. They all understood how grueling the journey from enrollment to graduation had been. Perhaps there were still countless matters weighing on their minds, but so what? The future didn't need to be worried about by the people they were at this very moment. At least today, they could let loose without restraint.
Everyone eagerly ordered a mountain of dishes and drinks, piling the table to overflowing. Pei Qiansu absolutely refused to sit anywhere near Sheng Fuzhou and switched seats several times, which inadvertently allowed Chu Hui to get his wish and take the spot beside Liang Qiao.
Only once he was truly settled in his seat did he begin to regret it—he should have told them during the day, because now he had to desperately restrain himself from reaching out to hold her hand.