Chapter 15: · Pepper

…Hurry up and claim it. Why aren’t you claiming it?

Pei Zhen’s body was tense as he frowned, soaking in the bathtub, staring fixedly at the phone screen touched with a water mark. Annoying.

One second passed, then another. I sent you a red packet, so claim it! Why haven’t you claimed it yet!

He couldn’t possibly… be actually throwing a tantrum at his Sugar Daddy, right?

A touch of despair. He was probably the kind of person who feared the silent treatment most in the world. Blame it on his personality. He was currently also in a cold war with his best friend, two months now without a single word exchanged, no knowing if their friendship was over for good.

And now, his Little Wolfdog was refusing to claim his red packet…

Could it be that when he finished his bath and opened the door, the person would already be gone?

At this thought, the world turned completely gray.

Why exactly… did he have to vent his bad mood from seeing his ex on him? He’d made his own bed, now he had to lie in it. Regret.

Carrying an infinitely heavy heart, he put on his pajamas and pulled open the bathroom door. He almost ran smack into the handsome face of the doggo wagging his tail right at the doorway.

“You!” Standing there silently—scared him half to death!

“Zhenzhen.” His waist was immediately embraced. The Little Wolfdog’s face was full of post-disaster relief and eagerness. Ignoring his still-damp hair, he wagged his tail wildly and rubbed against him. “Mmm~ you smell so good after your bath, like milk.”

“Tsk, all dirty… Don’t touch me with your paws! Are you done yet? Go take a shower!”

He fiercely shoved the man into the bathroom. Listening to the sound of rushing water inside, he lay on the bed and picked up his phone again.

“Your red packet has been claimed.” The reply was, “Mwah mwah mwah mwah mwah, love you (heart emoji).”

So… he wasn’t angry?

“…” Not angry. Wonderful.

……

Early the next morning, when the sky was still barely light, the Little Wolfdog was already up and heading straight for the Perfumer’s Workstation.

Less than four months remained until the domestic PA preliminaries. Since he’d boasted so much, he absolutely couldn’t let Yi Changqing and Lister laugh at them. He had to calm down and seriously prepare for the competition!

Four months. It sounded long, but it was just over a hundred days.

In a hundred days, he had to try his best to gain a decent understanding of a territory he’d never touched before, force himself from complete unfamiliarity to knowing thousands of raw materials and perfume brands, try his hand at successful imitation and replication, and finally, create his own original fragrance… Thinking about it carefully, what a colossal pitfall this was. It was practically an impossible mission!

Because, even if he could split all twenty-four hours of a day, a hundred days was only… 2,400 hours in total.

Even if he didn’t eat or sleep around the clock, how many books could he finish, how many perfumes could he seriously analyze and deconstruct?

For a fleeting moment, Han Fu desperately wanted to call Lister and pick his brain.

Finishing first place and qualifying in only one month—how on earth did you manage it, little mixed-race guy? Wasn’t that just defying heaven?

But, he couldn’t call. Wouldn’t making that call be the same as admitting defeat in advance?

So, he could only start his desperate, day-and-night cramming!

……

Recently, his usually lazy, laid-back Little Wolfdog had suddenly plunged into a state of extreme book-reading, fragrance-blending, and all-nighters. He constantly looked haggard with dark circles and frequently fell asleep on the sofa. Pei Zhen, honestly speaking… watching this made his heart ache.

In France, training a senior perfumer took a full eight years, plus countless sums of money. Knowledge learning, memorizing scent formulas, fragrance experiments over and over—truly, every single item required a great deal of time to prepare.

Even with considerable talent, Yi Changqing had taken a full four years just to be selected for the Library Top Ten. A mere hundred-odd days…

Going from a complete novice to participating in the PA competition and earning a qualifying spot—how could that possibly be achievable?

Sometimes he really wanted to advise Han Fu to maybe just let it go this time.

They could conserve their energy; there would be plenty of time in the future. It wasn’t necessary to fight for a momentary grievance, wasn’t necessary to fight for those two years.

But seeing the Little Wolfdog so deeply invested, desperately refusing to admit defeat, he couldn’t bear to say it out loud.

……

During this period, aside from his frantic reading, memorizing essential oils, and attempting fragrance creation at home, Han Fu had also begun a hellish audit-mode at Grasse Academy.

School days used to be quite relaxed. Just two leisurely classes in the morning, and three comfortable ones in the afternoon. The school provided a dorm, conditions weren’t shabby, and he could take a short nap at noon. There were even complimentary delicate tea snacks during breaks, and he could chat with new friends while discussing which one was tastier.

But now, for him, the so-called “break between classes” no longer existed.

If his own class had no lessons, he’d rush off to audit senior-level courses, burying his head in frantic note-taking. He didn’t dare stop when he got home either. After dinner, he’d immediately go to the workstation to study fragrances, practicing until bedtime every day, racing against time, not daring to pause for a second.

……

“Dragon’s Blood Red,” derived from the resin of the Dracaena tree, possessed a unique aroma.

As the name implied, the color should be like dragon’s blood—a pure, beautiful red liquid with a gem-like luster.

At the very least, it definitely shouldn’t look like congealed, clumpy, solidified… well, something utterly unsightly.

So what was going on?

Han Fu sometimes felt like he might be cursed.

“…” Pei Zhen also thought he was cursed.

If his Han Xiaohua’s sense of smell was outstanding, exceptionally gifted even, then the degree of his hand clumsiness was probably unprecedented and utterly shocking, something no one could bear to witness.

Sedimentation. Sedimentation again! Going crazy—why did it sediment every single time?

Seriously! Normal pressing, distillation, extraction—how hard could it be?! Even a total outsider trying fragrance creation for the first time probably couldn’t produce something this weirdly congealed.

Pei Zhen had demonstrated the process for him many times.

Clearly, Han Fu followed his steps attentively, step by step. Yet, the result was that what Pei Zhen produced was the beautiful, clear Dragon’s Blood Red—something that could instantly be bottled and sold for a good price—while Han Fu’s product persistently continued to coagulate, sediment, and no specific reason could be found. It was simply maddening!

Almost another entire evening wasted. Han Xiaohua was haggard and exhausted. He looked up at the clock pointing to 10:30.

At eleven, he was supposed to accompany his Zhenzhen to bed. Zhenzhen’s health was poor; he couldn’t stay up late. Anxious!

“All of you!”

He stood up, pointing like a strict drill instructor at the row of fresh flowers, herbs, and essential oil bottles before him. “Last half hour! Last attempt!”

“If you fail again, I’ll drink you all!”

Thirty minutes later.

Faced with yet another beaker of some ghastly precipitate, Pei Zhen, resting his face on his hands, said very coldly, “A man keeps his word. Drink it.”

“…”

“…”

Han Fu looked at him pleadingly. “Zhenzhen, your Rising Star of Tomorrow will fall because of this!”

Pei Zhen: “My Rising Star of Tomorrow probably fell long ago. Drink it and atone with your death.”

……

Sleeping into the middle of the night, Pei Zhen, groggy, felt the person beside him tossing and turning.

The person probably assumed he was sound asleep and gently hugged him. He whimpered, very much like a big, sad dog wallowing in self-abandonment and self-pity.

“…” In the past, Han Fu’s sleep quality was excellent. He couldn’t even be woken by thunder and rain in the dead of night, always sleeping straight through till morning.

But now? The pressure was so immense he couldn’t sleep all night. Sometimes, when he got really restless, he’d even sneak out of bed in the wee hours, tiptoeing to the Perfumer’s Workstation to try making fragrances.

During the daytime, despite his obvious mental fatigue, he always forced himself to act energetic. He even insisted on making nutritious breakfasts for him.

Although Pei Zhen wanted to do something for the Little Wolfdog as much as possible, he also had to work. As the Sugar Daddy, he had to work hard to earn the allowance money. He could only try to accompany him at the workstation after work and think of ways to teach him more practical knowledge and techniques.

“Listen carefully. When distilling, you must strictly control the temperature. You should know citrus notes at different temperatures best. Controlled well, it’s incredibly enticing; slightly off, and it turns bitter. For other types of spices, the differences can be even more noticeable than with citrus.”

“You must pay attention to the differences in evaporation rates of different raw materials.”

“Remember those whose evaporation effect is far higher than similar spices. Otherwise, during the competition, that ingredient’s scent might fade and disappear too early. If your creation happens to use that ingredient as the Main Note, it’s basically over.”

“Pay attention to observing the changes inside the container—color, texture.”

“Read more books. The proportions of the ‘classic’ combinations in books are often the culmination of years of experience from predecessors. These combinations can form ‘azeotropic mixtures,’ allowing all the scents to evaporate in a balanced, gentle, even rhythmic way, producing a very harmonious and stable aroma.”

“Most importantly, use your nose to perceive the changes in the scent every single moment. You can’t slack off for a second!”

As he spoke, he laid out a row of empty test tubes for demonstration.

Han Fu, meaning well, reached out to help, but accidentally, “Ah!”

Oh no! Clumsy hands again!

Just as the test tube was about to smash into the corner of the table, Pei Zhen’s hand, wearing the Black Jade Ring, swept past like a gust of wind. He tossed it into the air—a 360° spin—and the little test tube landed steadily back in his palm.

The incredibly fluid motion was like flowing water. The Little Wolfdog’s eyes shone with amazement. Pei Zhen, calm and collected, lowered his head and continued lighting the alcohol lamp without changing his expression.

“Zhenzhen, just now that…”

Pei Zhen: “That was flashy and impractical. Don’t bother learning it.”

“I know, but, it was so cool!”

Pei Zhen felt secretly pleased. Actually, that move just now, although meant to save the situation, was indeed… a bit of a veiled show-off.

Skill honed over ten or twenty years of obsessive fragrance blending. Even though one eye was nearly blind now, and his accuracy was far from what it used to be, once you had this kind of muscle memory, you really did know where to reach even with your eyes closed!

As a Sugar Daddy who wanted to be continuously admired and cherished, he had to occasionally show off his talents, let the Little Wolfdog who hadn’t seen the world keep thinking he was awesome and good, right?

……

Light the lamp. Mix essential oils. Grind and filter along the way. Han Fu continued watching intently without blinking.

“Han Xiaohua, don’t just focus on the techniques.”

“Techniques are just techniques. What truly matters in fragrance blending is using your ‘heart’ to perceive the scent, not just your nose.”

“In our industry, innate talent is certainly best, but the sense of ‘smell’ will inevitably degrade with age. Great perfumers, like the legendary master Carter of Les étoiles, even created his timeless masterpiece, Miss Candy, after completely losing his sense of smell.”

Han Fu was stunned. “What? Completely lost his sense of smell?”

Without the sense of smell, he could still create perfume?

“He could.” Pei Zhen said. “Because fragrance blending has never been a precise science.”

“It isn’t now, and it never will be.”

“It’s not just perfume blending—cooking, literature, music, painting are all the same. Beethoven composed ‘Fate’ and ‘Pathétique’ after going deaf. Van Gogh created ‘Vase with Daisies and Poppies’ after going mad. Famous singers without hearing, legendary dancers without sight. The world of art is always mysterious and wondrous, utterly impossible to explain with ‘science’.”

“So, maybe what you need right now is just to relax your body, stop rushing, and let yourself peacefully immerse into the world of scent.”

So saying, he reached out a hand and covered the Little Wolfdog’s eyes.

“Now, try closing your eyes.”

“Calm your mind and think about the happiest experiences you’ve had before.”

“Your most unforgettable, most regretful, most painful encounters.”

“As you think of those things, merge your emotions and thoughts into your creation. The most important thing for a perfumer is to ‘use the heart.’ What you are looking for isn’t at your fingertips, but should… have been in your heart from the very beginning.”

“…”

For a rare moment, Pei Zhen coaxed the Little Wolfdog with a voice almost as gentle as hypnosis.

But in his palm, he slowly detected a trace of moisture that shouldn’t have been there.

His heart trembled, and he jerked his hand away as if shocked. Yet the Little Wolfdog seemed not to realize he’d withdrawn his hand. He still sat there woodenly, his handsome dark pupils filled with a floating mist, the dim lamplight reflecting only indecipherable complexity.

For a moment, Pei Zhen didn’t dare speak to rouse him. After a quiet moment, Han Fu finally pulled himself together.

Pei Zhen: “You…”

“Oh,” The Little Wolfdog seemed a bit embarrassed, “Didn’t you say… to think about sad things?”

So, this young man who was always beaming and acting silly actually had sad things, too.

Pei Zhen looked at him, his heart aching slightly.

“What were you thinking about?”

Han Fu was startled and visibly averted his eyes. “…Goose.”

Pei Zhen: “Goose?”

“The big white goose in the yard when I was a kid. It was super vicious, chased me whenever it saw me. Years of psychological trauma!”

Pei Zhen: Fine. Getting bolder by the day, huh?

Already learning to dodge the real issues. Not telling the truth anymore?