The proposal location Hunter Huo ultimately selected was neither that excessively romantic private beach in Coast City where ocean waves stood on standby at any given time, nor the Huo family's ancestral estate where the mandarin orchard hung heavy with heavy, golden-bright fruits every autumn. He overthrew every single extravagant blueprint submitted by top-tier planning companies, centering the venue within a location that appeared clinical, tedious, and even overbearing with seriousness in the eyes of outsiders—the Beijing University Life Sciences Laboratory.
It was this exact laboratory where they had once stood guard side by side through countless deep nights, where the air was perpetually infused with a faint scent of chemical reagents, and where the background was eternally saturated with the monotonous, low humming of high-precision instruments.
As the night deepened, the clamor within the building had long since scattered into a vacuum. Silas Shen stood before the central workstation as he customarily did, a pipettor gripped in his hand, his expression deeply focused as he injected micro-samples into centrifugal tubes.
The crisp sound of the door being pushed open resounded with exceptional clarity within the silent space.
Stopping the motion in his hand, Silas lifted his head with a trace of confusion, his line of sight traversing beyond the tube rack that radiated a metallic, cool gleam to land across the youth standing at the threshold.
Today's Hunter Huo was completely distinct from the large golden dog who routinely wore loose hoodies and loved to cling and rub against his person inside the laboratory. Breaking all protocol, he wore a highly tailored, deep black haute couture suit, causing his frame to appear exceptionally broad-shouldered, long-legged, and toweringly eminent. That brilliant golden hair, which was usually wantonly flamboyant, had been meticulously styled, exposing his clean, handsome forehead. Yet what caused Silas's gaze to completely freeze was that nestled against the youth's collar was a deep blue silk tie.
It was the exact identical color of the silk shirt Silas wore on his person today.
Hunter stood at the threshold, and within those puppy eyes that were customarily brimmed with laughter, an unprecedented level of tension and panic was currently pooling to the brim. His facial muscles were slightly tight, his broad palm clutching a plastic test tube box designed for cryogenic vials deathly tight, his fingertips turning faintly white from the sheer force exerted.
"Because... this is the location where we first began."
The moment Hunter opened his mouth, his vocal cords were scraped remarkably hoarse. He advanced a step forward, his leather shoes emitting a dull, heavy echo against the terrazzo floor boards. Staring at his lover situated before the workstation, his adam's apple rolled up and down with immense difficulty, even his voice trembling completely out of control:
"Professor Shen, the very first instance I laid eyes on you was right here. At that time, you were freezing cold, refusing to cast even an extra glance in my direction. The very first instance I genuinely offered assistance to you, stabilizing those clinical data sheets that were on the verge of being scrapped, was also right here. The very first instance... you wrote my name within the acknowledgments section of a research paper where everyone across the globe could witness it, was preeminently right here."
He traversed forward step by step, and with every single pace he launched, that scent of blazing oranges in the air—which had originally been deliberately corralled by him—appeared to shatter a certain critical threshold, turning increasingly dense and scalding.
Silas remained standing in his original position without moving, merely watching him draw near with a quiet demeanor. The phoenix eyes behind his gold-rimmed glasses flashed marginally, and that pipettor was gently returned to its rack by his hand.
Ultimately, Hunter came to a halt a mere half-step away from Silas.
The top-tier Alpha, immaculately suited, did not utilize a single advantage or coercion brought forth by his gender classification at this exact moment. His long legs bent, and with extreme solemnity and extreme docility, he dropped to one knee before Silas's person.
Extending those hands that were trembling faintly, he slowly popped open that plastic test tube box originally designed to house biological samples right before Silas's eyes.
At the absolute dead-center of the box, there was no clinical cryogenic vial; instead, there lay a minimalist platinum band reflecting a pure, unadulterated gleam under the cool white illumination.
"Silas Shen."
The youth did not utter the teasing title of "Professor" he customarily deployed; instead, for the absolute first time, scraping his hoarse throat, he called his full name with exceptional earnestness and profound affection.
"Back when I pursued you in the past, I deployed the pheromones of a top-tier Alpha, deployed shameless clinging, played the victim, and even utilized all sorts of methods that appear incredibly foolish and overbearing in retrospect. Subsequently, it was you who taught me bit by bit that genuine love never requires those controls and repressions born of base instinct."
Hunter took a deep breath, his eye sockets flushing thoroughly red at a speed visible to the naked eye within this exact fraction of a second, massive tears of physiological emotion swirling along the rims of his eyes. Yet he didn't dare blink a single time, dreading that he might miss even a minute fraction of an expression on the face of the person before him:
"Therefore, I am not deploying pheromones today. I have deactivated them. Completely deactivated them."
As an Alpha standing at the absolute pinnacle of the food chain, in order to court his Omega, he personally deactivated all genetic cheating apparatuses.
"Currently standing before your person is someone devoid of the Huo Corporation's background, and devoid of top-tier mental prowess. There is merely an individual named Hunter Huo here. An idiot... who has pursued you for a very long duration, and wishes to continue shamelessly pursuing you for a lifetime."
The youth's voice stained itself with a trace of a nasal tone he couldn't mask. He lifted his head, those blood-red eyes entirely filled with a lifelong persistence and certainty:
"Professor Shen, are you willing... to permit me to serve as your lifelong, sole assistant? The type with an indefinite duration, and zero possibility of contract termination."
The laboratory plunged into absolute stillness. Only that aged centrifuge resting in the corner continued to emit its systematic, stable, low humming.
Silas looked down from his height at the small dog kneeling before his frame.
This youth, who had stumbled and charged headlong from the age of nineteen all the way into his twenties to pursue him, was currently dressed in a formal suit yet weeping exactly like a child on the verge of abandonment, his hands trembling to the point where he could near-falsely stabilize the plastic box, yet his spine remained as straight as a rod.
The torrent of memory barbarically washed away cold rationality within a single fraction of a second.
Silas recalled that deep night where torrential rain crashed down, when Hunter had sat entirely drenched by himself along the flowerbed beneath his apartment building, as stubborn as a statue, saying with red eye rims upon witnessing him, "I just want to remain a fraction closer to your scent."
He recalled those deep nights of project bottlenecks, when this large golden retriever had guarded the equipment room until he drifted off to sleep simply to help him stabilize the high-frequency vibrational dampening pads of the test tubes, his palms entirely covered in red indentations pressed out by the gear when he awoke.
He furthermore recalled last night, that black hardcover notebook forgotten on the coffee table. Across the page dedicated to risk assessment, the youth had hand-scrawled with a trembling handwriting—"Contingency Outline: Resubmit application. For an infinite loop."
Silas's eyelashes twitched slightly. He did not immediately reach out his hand to extract the ring resting within the test tube box; instead, he slowly slid his right hand into the pocket of his white lab coat.
His fingertips brushed against a platinum band that was equally cool, yet had been clasped within his pocket by his hand across the entire journey.
"Hunter Huo," Silas spoke down from his height, his voice as cool as it historically was.
"Present!" The youth kneeling on the floorboards snapped his spine straight almost entirely out of muscle memory.
"Your blueprint—"
Beneath the youth's fixated gaze, Silas methodically extracted that ring resting inside his pocket. His long fingertips twitched slightly, directly tossing it downward in a gentle arc, where it landed steadily dead-center inside Hunter's open plastic box:
"I have approved it."
That platinum ring emitted a crisp, minute echo as it struck the plastic enclosure. And across one side of the silver-white interior band, five hand-crafted small characters were distinctly engraved: [Oranges and Fir].
Hunter's entire person thoroughly blanked in original position, even his breathing coming to a complete standstill.
"But I possess one condition." Silas pushed his glasses up, looking at the stunned puppy, the curve of his lips appearing somewhat impossible to restrain completely.
At this current juncture, the tears Hunter had been holding back thoroughly burst their floodgates, crashing down against his suit trousers pitch after patch. As he mindlessly swiped at his tears using the back of his hand without a single shred of decorum, he choked out an urgent inquiry through his sobs: "What condition? As long as you agree, I'll sign a hundred conditions!"
Silas bent his frame downward slightly, the phoenix eyes behind his lenses brimming with a tenderness that was on the verge of overflowing completely:
"When proposing in the future, do not write it within a 'Feasibility Study.' Write it within wedding vows."
Hunter blanked for a full second, and subsequently, that brain which had near-stalled due to extreme tension finally exploded with a resounding roar.
"Holy shit...!!"
The youth shot up straight from the floorboards, not even having time to cap the test tube box in his hand. Extending his long arms, carrying a near-out-of-control, all-enveloping ecstasy, he barbarically slammed Silas's entire person heavily into his embrace.
In that exact millisecond, the blazing orange pheromones he had deliberately deactivated went thoroughly rogue and out of control within the narrow laboratory alongside its master's extreme exhilaration. That wasn't an Alpha coercion bearing any aggressiveness or suppression; rather, it resembled a tidal wave, bearing a blazing sweet fragrance that had reached absolute fulfillment after finally witnessing the moon emerge beyond the scattering clouds.
"You read it! Silas Shen! You covertly read my report!!" Hunter buried his face deathly tight within Silas's clean neck crook, exerting the absolute maximum capacity of his entire frame to rub the person into his chest, his voice entirely filled with a crying cadence mixed with booming laughter.
"...You were the careless one who left it on the coffee table." Silas was compressed until his breath turned a bit short, yet he broke all protocol by failing to struggle, merely submissively resting his chin across the youth's shoulder.
"Then why didn't you say so earlier last night! Do you possess any inkling of how tense I was when I penned that thing?! I specifically went through the standard formats of the most outstanding past project applications in our Life Sciences Department to verify the template!!"
"Consequent to that, your formatting was erroneous." Silas patted his back, his tone a fraction overbearing with rationality, "Across page three's literature citations, you omitted labeling the citation sequence numbers. Within academic circles, this is destined to be returned for revisions, Student Huo."
"Silas Shen—!!"
The roar of a top-tier Alpha bearing a sliver of shame mixed with extreme exhilaration pierced through the heavy, frosted acoustic door of the laboratory within an instant.
It startled Lin—who was currently pressed against the door crevice of the corridor with red eye rims, weeping a mix of mucus and tears from the pure emotion of the scene—causing his frame to twitch, the two plastic test tubes in his hands almost dropping straight onto the floorboards.
Subsequently, Lin outside the door and Hunter holding Silas deathly tight inside the room captured a sound simultaneously.
That Professor Shen—who was perennially renowned across the entire Beijing University Life Sciences Department for his clinical rigor and cold demeanor, and who had never once displayed a shred of his personal self inside the laboratory.
At this exact millisecond, resting within the embrace of his large golden dog, tilted his head slightly, allowing a very light, very clean, yet bone-deep sweet low chuckle to spill forth from between his beautiful, pale lips.
That laughter was exceptionally beautiful to listen to.
It looked exactly like a glacier that had stood unmoved for ten thousand years, finally willing itself to crack open a fissure under the scorching exposure of a certain ray of blazing sun named "Hunter Huo," and from the deepest crevices of the frozen soil, tremulously blooming an entire expanse of passionate and brilliant flowers.