The next morning was Sunday. Pei Zhen, for a rare occasion, didn’t laze in bed.
Han Fu was still racking his brains in the kitchen over what new trick to pull for today’s breakfast when he got up on his own.
Wearing his pajamas, he leaned against the kitchen doorframe watching the little wolfdog cook.
Little Orange was obediently eating his breakfast. Outside the window, the early morning sun was very bright. A few small birds flew past, chirping crisply.
Han Fu’s eggs weren’t fried as neatly as usual today, and he even fumbled and broke one. The reason for his subpar performance, he felt, was entirely due to Pei Zhen leaning against the doorframe staring at him!
His Zhenzhen used to be such a meticulous, tight-laced person. Sometimes, even when clearly at home, he’d dress impeccably as if heading to the office.
But now? Waking up, let alone not changing his clothes, he didn’t even bother combing his hair. Slightly messy, paired with a face that hadn’t quite woken up yet, it was super sexy, yet he was completely oblivious to it himself.
He hadn’t even coaxed him into bed yet, and already he’d been raised into a feeling of an old married couple.
He was truly proud of himself.
…
Pei Zhen talked a lot at the breakfast table.
He hadn’t woken up early in eight hundred years, and woke up early specifically to “popularize” competition trivia for Han Fu.
Han Fu was quite moved, to the point where the wave of condescension hitting him — “So, you assumed that, did you?” “You don’t even know this?” — was received as sweetness itself. After eating, Pei Zhen wasn’t reassured and came over to the perfumer’s workstation to teach him color correction by hand.
Han Fu was even more moved.
He envied other contestants whose colors came out beautifully. He hadn’t even told Zhenzhen yet, but Zhenzhen already knew.
This meant Pei Zhen had recently been caring about him more and more, valuing him more and more!
…
At the Perfumer’s Workstation.
Pei Zhen taught him with great seriousness: “Color Correction, actually, should be a step done after filtration and before testing.”
“But since you’re in a competition, making fragrance demands speed and immediate results. It can’t be helped. But make sure not to develop a habit from this.”
“Real fragrance blending can’t be done like this — real fragrance blending, theoretically, after blending, it still has to go through a relatively long, strictly regulated maturation and freezing period, then undergo thorough low-temperature filtration. The steps are many and complicated.”
Han Fu also tried his best to make himself study seriously.
But every time Pei Zhen came to correct his hand movements, especially when pressing close from behind and holding both his hands, he had a strong impulse to immediately toss aside the test tube, turn around, and sweep him up in a lifting hug.
No wonder high school teachers emphasized “no dating allowed” every day.
Juggling romance and studying, it’s hard, truly hard, far too easy for the mind to stray to wild fancies.
After correcting Han Fu’s movements, Pei Zhen, face like a Dean of Students, asked him: “Explain, why can’t you color-correct before filtration?”
Han Fu thought for a moment: “Oh, because the color would also be absorbed away by the filtration machine.”
Pei Zhen: “Why is this step generally not called ‘Color Toning’ or ‘Dyeing,’ but ‘Color Correction’?”
Han Fu: “Perfume works tend to favor retaining their original hue. At most, small modifications are made to the original hue. Over-dyeing is generally not recommended.”
Pei Zhen: Not bad, he really did read the materials seriously!
Probably because he’d gotten too absorbed in playing the teacher all morning, seeing his “good student” answer well, he gave a rewarding head pat.
Han Fu didn’t grow much in height early on, and had actually always especially hated people patting him on the head.
Especially during his adolescence, with hormones often out of control, he definitely belonged to the “if you pat me, I’ll instantly morph into a snarling toy poodle and bite you to death” type.
And yet now, he was being pat into springtime infatuation, extraordinarily docile and well-behaved.
So early in the morning, he’d successively experienced the pajama-kill and the head-pat-kill. He was almost melted by the sweetness. If he weren’t taller than Pei Zhen now, feeling sorry that Pei Zhen having to raise his arm to pat his head would make his arm sore, he’d definitely want to nuzzle a while longer.
He suddenly remembered that many years ago, Pei Zhen had also patted his head like this.
Just once. After the pat, he’d been utterly ungrateful and explosively snapped at him.
…His self back then really was a little moron.
…
The glasshouse for perfume blending had half its roof covered, leaving the interior half-shaded, half-sunny. The sunlight spilled down nearby.
Pei Zhen continued generously imparting the valuable experience he’d accumulated over so many years as a perfumer. After explaining for a while, he discovered Han Fu’s gaze was very straight.
Pei Zhen: “I’m teaching you, are you listening?”
Han Fu nodded, eyes unmoving: “Listening.”
Pei Zhen: “Looking like that, it’s obvious you aren’t listening seriously! Think you’ve already learned? Fine, you’ve learned it all. Right now, blend me a perfume. I don’t want transparent, I don’t want gold. I want exactly the rose red of ‘Berlin Girl’!”
Han Fu: “Coming right up.”
…
Pei Zhen really couldn’t even get angry. Who told him he’d personally mentored a little genius?
Clearly not paying attention in class, yet acing the exam. A teacher meeting this kind of student was speechless too.
Very quickly, in the clear liquid, a beautiful rose red color had taken embryonic form. A shallow rust scent, then the rose fragrance in melted snow water, as if the prologue of a bloody fairy tale.
Clearly such a slightly cold, even morbid beginning, yet the subsequent main note was gently warmed by a woody fragrance wrapped in rose.
Just like a sudden turn of fortune, Little Red, madly fleeing hungry wolves through the ice and snow, burst into a warm little log cabin. The handsome hunter was brewing herbal soup, the fireplace blazing, full of security.
“Zhenzhen,” as he sealed the bottle and set it to rest, Han Fu asked him with a very serious face, “do you want to hear the story of this perfume?”
“…” This little wolfdog really had been getting more and more capable lately.
He’d only requested a “rose color,” and as a result, someone had not only produced a perfume with such a sense of narrative, but actually came with an attached “story”!
“Once upon a time,” Han Fu declared with great gravity, “there was a Little Prince who liked the king of a neighboring country.”
Pei Zhen: “…Shouldn’t he like the neighboring country’s princess?”
Han Fu: “The Little Prince liked the king. The neighboring country’s king was very young, and handsome. No princess!”
Pei Zhen: “Fine, fine.”
“Unfortunately, the king already had someone in his heart back then. The someone in his heart… was a pigeon.”
Pei Zhen: “???”
Raising his head, on the glass roof above at that very moment, several pigeons were cooing, perched there. Fine, a story improvised on the spot probably couldn’t be held to too high a standard. A pigeon was a pigeon. Romance with an animal was romance with an animal.
“The Little Prince was very unwilling. Every single day, he would go and peek through the king’s window, watching the king being lovey-dovey with the pigeon, so envious he almost died. Every day he thought, if only the person at his side could be me, how wonderful would that be?”
“Later, the crush was discovered by the Little Prince’s imperial father. The imperial father, of course, disapproved, and the Little Prince began to cry. His tears fell, nearly flooding the entire castle.”
Pei Zhen: “…”
“The imperial father had no choice, so he told the Little Prince: I give you five years. Take off your crown and become self-reliant. No matter what happens, don’t shamelessly come running back begging your dad—me.”
“And so, the Little Prince became a commoner, chopping wood in the forest, building himself up and making a living through his own efforts.”
“Later, the king’s country was engulfed in war, and the pigeon flew away too. The king wandered into the forest and happened to meet the woodcutting Little Prince. The two fell in love at first sight, and together lived a happy and joyful life in the forest.”
“The end.”
Pei Zhen: “That’s it?”
“That’s it.” Han Fu placed the rose-red perfume into his hand. “After that, it was sweet and happy every single day. Super wonderful.”
Pei Zhen knew, of course, that fairy tales weren’t meant to be logical.
A poisoned apple, one kiss and you wake up. Long hair let down as a rope ladder. A glassmaker can repair a Glass Heart Princess’s heart… Yet he still couldn’t help but criticize one point: “A prince able to run over and peek through the neighboring country’s king’s window every day, just how small were the territories of these two countries, exactly?”
And then, he was suddenly seized around the waist.
Their bodies pressed tightly together. Han Fu looked at him tenderly with those pure black eyes.
Pei Zhen turned his face away, dodging that gaze to continue critiquing: “Also, what about after five years? Is the prince really going to take the king back to be his dad’s daughter-in-law?”
“Either works,” Han Fu smiled. “Whether living together in the palace or continuing to chop wood back in the forest, actually, for the prince, as long as he could stay by the king’s side, that was enough.”
“He used to be so incredibly envious of that pigeon, but afterwards, everything the pigeon had, he had too. Every day of the Little Prince’s life from then on, he lived the life he’d always dreamed of.”
As he reached this point, he lowered his head slightly, intimately touching Pei Zhen’s forehead, their noses gently nestling together.
“Zhenzhen,” he said, “I want to kiss you.”
…
Honestly, Pei Zhen really wanted to kiss him too.
In this sunlight, in this soft atmosphere, just after hearing a silly story that seemed to contain some subtle metaphor, or perhaps was just made up to flirt with him.
They had kissed before.
But always either at the hospital punishing him for talking nonsense, comforting him at the library, or deliberately showing off affection at Ruijing in front of Yi Changqing. Anyway, always assigned some “reason” making it absolutely necessary.
But this time, finally, there was no longer any “reason.”
