╔═════════════════╗

"It takes a split second to recognize my love; a lifetime to weigh its worth, and a heartbeat to seize the moment."

- Lu Kai aka Xuan Mu

╚═════════════════╝

° Xue Bi dismissed the shocked stares of her new students and took her seat behind the teacher's desk. "Don't worry. I just wanted to see your creativity," she said, settling into her chair.

° "As long as you can use the equations correctly in the right places, I don't care if you can remember them or not," Xue Bi continued. "I have other jobs besides spending time on grading your retakes, so try to be quiet and not to fail."

° Her eyes halted on the curious boy before her as if locking on her prey. "Concepts such as temperature and energy were only invented relatively recently, and were probably taken at school in the same way as 'Paris is the capital of France' rather than 'What the hell does this mean, and why does the universe behave in this way?'"

° She continued, "It's hard, but you really have to understand this stuff. I'm Xue Bi, and I'll be teaching Thermodynamics and Electromagnetism starting the following semester."

° Sighing in relief, the students took Xue Bi's words as permission to use their cheats. However, some didn't dare to do it openly.

° This hesitancy led to a few students failing the exam, doing the exact opposite of what Xue Bi had hoped for. Now she faced the task of creating new exam questions for the retakes, cutting into the precious time she could have spent in the laboratory.

° "Did you get lost?" Xue Bi asked the male in a black shirt. She had called out all the names, and not once had he reacted.

° "No," Lu Kai answered, "I'm a special guest."

° "Oh, sorry..." It was definite. Xue Bi decided. She stamped a 'new helper' on his forehead. "...Enjoy your stay."

° "I will," Lu Kai smiled at her. Once Xue Bi broke eye contact, he picked up the pencil and began answering the questions.

° It wasn't that he was a jerk. He didn't argue with teachers, nor did he have that endearing, slightly rebellious spirit that could get his grades docked. He wasn't condescending.

· · ───────── · ⊱❈⊰· ───────── · ·

° After completing her master's in physics, Xue Bi had set her sights on a doctoral program. Her focus was primarily on material science. The prospect of creating new materials and enhancing the properties of existing ones had been her main motivator in choosing this line of study.

° At the age of 25, Xue Bi was not just a student but also a researcher assistant and a teaching assistant. This seven-day a week, low pay work could be described as "slave labor". But what wouldn't one do for the sake of a PhD diploma, right?

° Xue Bi considered herself fortunate; she was not short on funds and didn't have to provide for her well-off family.

° Switching the focus to Lu Kai, he was just a fifteen years old boy who 'accidentally' memorized an entire textbook in his head just to inspect his older brother's arranged date.

° When would his parents finally give up? There was no way his mysophobic, asēxual, and aromāntic of a brother would get interested in a human being.

° Finishing his exam early, Lu Kai rose from his seat and handed the papers to Xue Bi.

° "You forgot your ID, and now you also forgot to write down your name? What's wrong with kids these days, taking exams of their own free will," Xue Bi mused.

° As she skimmed through his paper, she found herself pleasantly surprised. Could that boy do integral calculus in his head? Most answer sheets would at least have a few eraser marks. This one... the answer was just written simply by itself.

"Wow," she twirled a pen between her fingers, contemplating the raw talent displayed on the paper before her, "What a way to make one feel inferior...."

° "..." Lu Kai usually preferred to keep a low profile, so why the sudden urge to impress her? His eyes darted to the two dogs snoozing peacefully at Xue Bi's feet. With these two beasts by her side, getting on her bad side wouldn't be the smartest idea.

° After the exams, all eyes stared at the young man in black who continued to stand by her desk. Was he trying to hit it off with the doctoral student?!

· · ───────── · ⊱❈⊰· ───────── · ·

° After a year...

° Xue Bi glanced at the lab clock. 4 PM. Gently patting her dogs to wake them, she stood up and led them towards a nearby school park. As she walked, she reached into her coat pocket and pulled out a package of cigarettes. Turning to Lu Kai, who had been beside her the whole time, she offered him one.

° Accepting a cigarette without hesitation, Lu Kai placed it between his lips and flicked his lighter. After lighting his own, he extended the flame towards Xue Bi, assisting her in lighting hers as well. They both took a seat on a bench near a small pond and began to smoke in silence.

° Leaning back against the bench, Lu Kai folded one arm behind the chair, resting his elbow on its back. He turned to study Xue Bi's side profile, then broke the silence. "What would you do if you knew that I've been lying about my age this whole time?"

° "You aren't twenty?" Xue Bi asked coolly.

° "No." Lu Kai exhaled a puff of smoke, "I'm sixteen."

° "..." Xue Bi narrowed her eyes at her lanky assistant, who towered over her by a full head. "Just remember, I wasn't the one who got you addicted to nicotine."

° "If only nicotine..." Lu Kai chuckled, releasing a cloud of smoke from both his lips and nose. He found himself reflecting on the times he'd attempted to persuade her to quit smoking, only for her to try to silence him with a cigarette.

° It was like the dynamics of a crystal lattice—once atoms began to stray from their stable positions, the whole structure risked collapse.

° Human relationships were no different; cross certain boundaries, and you lost equilibrium. The connection between them was becoming intricate, or rather, Lu Kai's feelings for her were.

° Lu Kai had no idea how he ended up doing research with a woman whose thesis was about a new technology that would be able to neutralize neutron embrittlement during a fusion reaction. She was an individual who was curious and determined to find 'real solutions' to phenomenons that many believed to be unsolvable.

° There were all sorts of approaches to designing new products. But in the end, everything was still limited by the material properties. With the proper combination, one could make even a weak matter super strong.

° To truly get to the next level of performance, one would need to develop a new material which required knowledge of engineering, chemistry, physics, and nowadays biology too. Xue Bi's drive and passion to do big, odd things made him feel... strangely... excited?

° "You knew?" he asked.

° "Zu Kai, the renewable energy entrepreneur, who always pays his younger brother to get rid of his dates..." Xue Bi shrugged her shoulders, sighing, "Yes. I always force my mother to spew everything about my dates out. It's easier to deal with them later. "

° Fiddling with the cigarette between his fingers, Lu Kai avoided looking her in the eyes, "You're sharp for someone who hates human interaction."

° Xue Bi took a long drag from her cigarette and exhaled slowly before locking eyes with him, "I don't know how I can discern other's feelings. Something is telling me that you have a crush on me. Is it true?"

° Captivated by the subtle curve of her lips, Lu Kai felt a surge of emotion. Tearing his gaze away, he bit his bottom lip in frustration and took a couple of quick, deliberate puffs from his cigarette.

° Mustering the courage, he turned back to her and said, "Be mine, please."

° "So it's true." Xue Bi said, almost surprised by her own intuition. "Lu Kai, you really want me to end up in prison, don't you?"

° Lu Kai tapped the ash off the ashtray next to the bench, "Do I have to wait until I'm legal before asking again?"

° "I'm like your brother. I can't give you what you desire. I'm sure that sooner or later, you'll try to find it somewhere else, like your brother's exes." Xue Bi took a final drag on her cigarette and snuffed it out in the nearby ashtray.

° Whistling to call her dogs to her, she stood up from the bench. "These past few days, I've been unable to focus on my work. I plan to meet with your brother and put an end to this hassle our families put us through."

° Maybe because Lu Kai had a brother like that, he could understand this side of Xue Bi pretty quickly. Though he tried to ask her for more, he never demanded from her things she couldn't offer.

° She always held the matter-of-fact approach and didn't let emotions distract her. She wanted to spare themselves of the hardships they would have to deal with as a couple. Xue Bi was freezingly pragmatic, but also freakingly considerate.

° Even as Lu Kai battled the instinct to run away from the piercing pain of rejection, another fear anchored him in place: the terrifying notion that distancing himself would mean losing her completely.

° Clutching his chest, Lu Kai felt a sharp, gut-wrenching agony, "Have you never even considered hugging our holding hands with someone?" he managed to ask. Pursuing her further would surely cause her to push him away, sealing his fate as a mere footnote in her life.

° "No, never. Why would I want to do that?" Xue Bi rubbed her arms, "I'm getting goosebumps just thinking about it."

° "You touch your dogs." Lu Kai patted her two canine bodyguards as he helped her secure their leashes.

° "It's my responsibility as their owner. I can't neglect my dogs' needs," said Xue Bi.

° Bing Shi seldom played with her dogs; their primary role was to ensure her safety. With these two beasts besides her, even a group of men would think twice of whether or not they should bully her.

° This girl used her family's connection to get these two trained specially for her and to gain access to most facilities in the school.

° Her instructors thought that even if Xue Bi learned martial arts, she wouldn't be able to execute the things she learned in real life. Most normal people wouldn't. To prepare for worst-case scenarios, such as kidnapping, her parents ensured she had special training.

╔═══ Author's note ════╗

Lu Kai has the highest EQ and LQ (Love Quotient) among all his lifetimes.

╚═════════════════╝