Douglas sat in his leather chair, his face twitching slightly.
Crackle, crackle. Snap, snap.
Perhaps because Douglas’s gaze had lingered for too long, the two people huddled together cracking and munching on walnuts finally looked up. Petrova, with crumbs stuck to the corner of her mouth, greeted him: “Walnuts, a local specialty from Planet TY. They’re natural, tech-free, and original in flavor. Are you sure you don’t want some?”
“Thanks, you two go ahead.” Douglas’s smile looked more like a grimace. He glanced at the walnut shells littering the floor. “But can’t you two go to your own offices to eat? This is the Principal’s office. What would people think if they saw this?”
“Both of our offices were just fully disinfected; we can’t go in yet,” Petrova muttered while continuing to crunch away.
“Don’t worry.” A mechanical little bird spoke up. Poria jumped down from the sofa with a calm expression and walked out the door, returning with a round, white iron ball.
The white iron ball was quite cute, with two long, sky-piercing ears and two eyes like red pomegranate seeds.
It was a rabbit, but a cleaning robot.
“I just developed this. It’s more meticulous, advanced, and easier to operate than any cleaning robot on the market. It has a perfect exterior and conforms to robotic aesthetics,” Poria stated.
Douglas suddenly felt as if he were attending some new product bidding conference. Then, he saw the rabbit power on with a whir, singing “Little rabbit, be good, open the door—” as it spun circles on the floor, leaving a winding path of cleanliness.
“Forget it.”
He stood up with a headache, planning to head to Qin’s place to find some peace and quiet.
Just as he reached the door of Qin’s office, he saw Qin with his back to the open doorway, a fiber bag of walnuts pressed against the door panel. Qin kicked a walnut in with a swift motion, reached out to close the door, and pressed the lock button.
Douglas: “…What are you doing?”
Qin was holding a stack of documents in his arms. He pushed up his glasses: “Going to class.”
Douglas had sharp eyes; he saw a familiar name on the papers in Qin’s arms, written in a stroke-by-stroke handwriting that was incredibly beautiful. He swallowed his complaints and volunteered: “I’ll go with you.”
Qin gave him a strange look: “This is a class for the Department of Medicine. Why are you joining the commotion?”
Douglas was undeterred: “Isn’t it something about psychological trauma treatment? I’m your successful case; I can serve as a reference.”
Qin checked the time on his brain-computer interface and realized he might be late. He turned immediately. “Who would dare use the Principal as a research specimen? Fine, whatever, do what you want.”
Douglas narrowed his eyes, his mood suddenly becoming much more cheerful as he followed with light steps.
This was a practical class focused on learning first-aid knowledge. The students watched Qin demonstrate on a bionic human on the podium, but their eyes drifted in another direction, whispering absent-mindedly.
Cheng Nian pulled on Elan, who was beside him: “Elan, why do you think Principal Douglas came to our Medical Department class to observe? The majors don’t even match, right?”
“Is he checking discipline? But that shouldn’t be necessary; a task like that could be handled by any administrative teacher.”
Cheng Nian kept his head down, not daring to make eye eye-contact with Douglas, only venturing to whisper to Elan while staring at the floor.
Elan’s gaze drifted over Cheng Nian’s head to meet Douglas’s. He saw Douglas raise an eyebrow at him, his eyes very bright. He had almost never seen Douglas with such an expression, so he felt Douglas was being a bit frivolous.
It seemed he had learned it from that frivolous red-haired Alpha.
Withdrawing his thoughts, Elan twitched the corner of his mouth and said calmly, “He probably took the wrong medicine.”
“Huh?” Cheng Nian felt Elan’s words were a bit disrespectful toward Douglas, but as a student, badmouthing a teacher behind their back seemed normal enough.
“Is everyone clear on this?” After Qin finished the demonstration, he looked at the students who were restless in their silence. He cast a cold smirk at the culprit, Douglas, before turning back. “If you understand, start the practical operation. I will come down to inspect. I hope you take this seriously.”
The students walked to the operating tables in order, recalling Qin’s movements and imitating them as best they could.
Douglas pulled Qin aside before he could leave the podium. Before he could even speak, the person he pulled spoke first.
Qin’s patience with this disruptor of classroom discipline had reached its limit: “When are you leaving?”
Douglas whispered something in Qin’s ear. When Qin looked up, his expression was quite unsightly, his teeth seemingly clenched. The only reason he didn’t kick Douglas out was out of consideration for their friendship.
“Don’t let there be a next time,” Qin dropped the cold remark and walked down toward the podium.
Douglas’s lips curled imperceptibly, then he straightened his face. In an act of “the more one tries to hide, the more one is exposed,” he released a bit of mental power, scaring a group of students into trembling. Only after he felt he had successfully maintained his majestic image as Principal did he slowly walk out.
Seeing him leave, Qin acted as if by chance and walked to Elan’s operating table, tapping his finger on the surface.
Beside the teaching building was a maple forest, as fiery red as clouds.
Douglas leaned against a tree out of boredom as maple leaves drifted down with the wind. In the past, Douglas would have found such a breeze too soft—neither here nor there, making one feel uncomfortable. Compared to a lukewarm sensation, he preferred the biting cold wind of the vast snowfields of Planet SK, which cut through flesh like a dull knife—unseen blood flowing, painful yet clarifying.
But today, he felt this dreamlike, soft wind wasn’t too bad.
Douglas’s ears twitched. The fallen leaves behind him were stepped on. Seemingly because his studies had been interrupted, Elan’s voice held a trace of hidden impatience as he asked, “Is something the matter?”
Douglas didn’t turn around, merely saying casually, “Come here.”
Those two words were familiar to Elan. Before he had received that tobacco-flavored kiss, Douglas had called him just like that. Elan frowned, puzzled, yet he still walked over.
Douglas looked at him deeply and said, “I’m in my susceptibility period. I need pheromones.”
Elan gave him a suspicious glance. Douglas looked perfectly calm at the moment, and there wasn’t a trace of pheromone scent on him. He was as normal as could be; he didn’t look like he was in a susceptibility period at all.
“I don’t smell your pheromones.”
Douglas gave an “oh” without any change in expression. Gradually, a woody fragrance began to diffuse into the air. He said, “Now you do.”
Elan: “…”
He took a deep breath, angered to the point of laughing: “Is it fun to play with me?”
Elan turned to leave, but his wrist was caught. A force dragged him, causing him to fall in the other direction.
Without any warning, a shadow fell over him, and his lips were bitten. Elan closed his eyes. He had originally wanted to push him away, but even though his hands touched the other’s chest, he lacked any strength to push.
He suddenly thought of what Douglas had said before about exchanging something for a leave slip. For a split second of hesitation, his hand on Douglas’s chest moved up to hook around the man’s neck.
Sensing the person in his arms responding, a dark light flashed in Douglas’s eyes—the primal urge of a beast before a hunt. His previously restrained, light-tasting movements suddenly became intense and overly deep, one tongue pressing against the other.
A long, long time passed, so long that both of their mouths felt a bit dry, and all the original moisture had been greedily swallowed down Douglas’s throat.
He finally let go of Elan. Elan’s blinking eyes held a trace of daze caused by oxygen deprivation. He blinked and heard Douglas say: “Tilt your chin up a bit more.”
“Kissing with a lowered head makes the cervical spine really hurt.”
Elan took deep breaths, his chaotic mind finally clearing a bit. Hearing this, he retorted almost instinctively: “You sure have a lot of demands.”
His hand on Douglas’s shoulder slid along the neck line, then he grabbed Douglas’s tie and yanked it hard, pulling the complaining man toward him with a forceful tug. He then pressed against him, biting the other’s lip in a sort of retaliation.
Douglas’s muffled groan was drowned out by the tight distance between them. He soon took the lead again, hugging the body in his arms tightly—with enough force to embed the person into his own body.
As the lingering kiss ended, both of their heads were a bit groggy. One held the other, one leaned against the other; neither spoke, only quietly and greedily smelling the pheromones on each other.
No one asked why they kissed today.
One believed the other was paying back the leave slip, and the other believed it was just a physiological need.
Both had found excuses for the other.
In any case, it couldn’t be love. Between them, it was merely a marriage that existed in name only—from the beginning until now, and even into the future, that would not change.
Douglas’s hand brushed over Elan’s eyelids, pressing lightly. Elan lowered his eyes and wouldn’t look at him. Douglas couldn’t help but think: Why won’t he look? Does he not like being kissed?
In a moment he hadn’t even realized himself, he spoke: “What are you thinking about?”
Elan finally lifted his eyelids: “Thinking about what your pheromone scent actually is.”
Douglas was stunned for a moment, not expecting Elan to be thinking about that. Even if it wasn’t what Elan was truly thinking—even if it was just a lie made up to avoid ruining the atmosphere—a faint, imperceptible trace of joy bubbled up from the bottom of his heart.
He chuckled: “It’s cedarwood. Burning cedarwood.”
Planet SK was covered in snow year-round; the white expanse was so bright it made one’s eyes ache. There were no natural sources of fire; only when a mecha crashed would the soaring war-fires swallow all the frozen life.
Possessed by a strange impulse, he looked at the somewhat surprised Elan and suddenly wanted to ask him: Do you want to go see it? It was a scenery that the Capital Planet didn’t have, unique to Planet SK.
But the words circled in his mouth before being swallowed back down. He felt Elan wouldn’t want to go. A precious flower blooming in the greenhouse of the Capital Planet wouldn’t want to experience wind and frost.
After holding him for a long while, a delayed sense of unnaturalness and shame surfaced on Elan’s face. He broke free from Douglas’s embrace and took a step back. The scent of Douglas’s pheromones rising from his own clothes almost completely enveloped him.
He pursed his lips, remembering his half-finished class, and said with some frustration: “I’m going back; I still have class.”
Douglas felt that quickly fading warmth. He didn’t speak or stop him, allowing Elan to walk away with hurried steps.
Just as Elan stepped out of the exit of the small woods, he saw Cheng Nian turn around and whisper: “Elan! Why are you here? Where did you go just now? What did Teacher Qin ask you to do?”
Elan couldn’t answer. He tried not to attract the attention of other students as he walked to Cheng Nian’s side, asking softly: “Why are you all here?”
“Teacher Qin said the indoor environment is too standardized, and real first-aid scenes might not have the relevant environment or facilities. To get us used to emergencies, he specifically brought us here to train,” Cheng Nian explained.
He suddenly noticed something and asked: “What happened to your mouth? It’s a bit swollen, and there’s a cut.”
Elan’s palms felt a bit sweaty, but his tone remained calm: “A mosquito bit it.”
“What kind of toxic mosquito can bite that badly…” Cheng Nian muttered. Hearing a sound behind him, he instinctively looked back.
Douglas’s collar was a bit messy, and his lips were also somewhat red. Seeing him look over, Douglas gave him a cold but warning glance.
Cheng Nian: “!!!”
Cheng Nian’s brain wasn’t sharp enough to perceive the warning in Douglas’s gaze; he thought he had been caught slacking off in class by the Principal. He quickly turned his head back, and only after the terrifying aura behind him vanished did he say with lingering fear:
“That is indeed a very toxic mosquito! Principal Douglas was bitten too! It’s even worse than yours!”
Elan: “…”