Chapter 8: Lilac

Of the thousands of scents in the world, Pei Zhen’s Han Fu had a particular fondness for the citrus family.

A basket of basics, and the last two essential oils, stripped of their labels and placed into the black box, were “Daidai Flower Oil” and “Daidai Fruit Oil.”

Daidai, a southern plant, was also known as “Rejuvenating Orange.”

It was a small shrub that bore plump, milky-white flower buds in spring. After the flowers withered, it would produce flat, round, adorable fruits. In winter, the fruit’s color would turn a vibrant orange-yellow, resembling a slightly mutated, small kumquat. It tasted bitter and was inedible, so generally, no one picked them, even birds didn’t peck at them.

Thus, the fruit would just hang on the tree until the following year.

Without shriveling or rotting, it would miraculously turn green again in summer. And so, year after year, old fruit remained while new fruit grew, generation after generation—hence the name “Dai-dai” (meaning “generations”).

The scent of Daidai flowers was very similar to orange blossom and lemon blossom. And Daidai fruit was also a typical citrus scent.

Pei Zhen let out a sigh of relief, then turned his head to see Lister’s selection.

“…”

Lister was… wildly grabbing bottles from within the same fragrance family.

This was actually a common tactic many used during “Scent Identification”—whether ten, fifteen, or twenty scents, they’d simply stick to one family.

Take the citrus family, for example. The scents of orange flesh and orange peel were already very close, plus there were “close relatives” like tangerines, mandarins, pomelos, and lemons with largely similar scents.

Over a dozen bottles from the same lineage would make many professional perfumers dizzy. This was far harder than distinguishing between vastly different scents like rose and jasmine.

However.

What Lister grabbed were precisely ten citrus-family essential oils.

And there was that saying: Han Fu… not only had 14,300+, he also held a deep, profound love for the citrus family.

Wasn’t this just serving his head on a platter?

Ten minutes later, each man took his own small black box and submitted it to the bun-faced youth.

The bun-faced youth swapped their boxes and started his stopwatch. “Identification time is twenty minutes. Student Han will begin. You may analyze and identify using smell, color, touch, texture, etc. We have disposable fragrance blotters here, and an alcohol lamp for heating…”

Han Fu: “No need.”

All: “???”

“Lime, Bitter Orange, Citron.”

“Mandarin Orange, Grapefruit, Tangerine Peel.”

“!!!” The onlookers wore shocked expressions, watching the beauty-marked youth pop open a bottle, sniff it once, and rattle off the name. In just half a minute, he’d opened six bottles and hadn’t missed a single one.

Lister’s expression shifted slightly. The library fell utterly silent.

“Bergamot.” The seventh bottle.

“This one is Teak.” The eighth bottle.

“Tachibana Leaf.” The ninth bottle.

Only the last bottle remained. Han Fu popped the cork. Pei Zhen was trembling with suppressed excitement, his palms sweating—he’d seen Lister pick that one. It was Han Fu’s favorite… impossible for him not to recognize!

From over a meter away, Han Fu raised his eyes.

Gently, with a touch of sly cunning and proud satisfaction, he glanced up at him, his dark eyes sparkling, a somewhat seductive smile playing on his lips.

As if what he toyed with in his hand wasn’t a small essential oil bottle, but a lover’s lips. Wickedly hooking the corner of his mouth, he spoke softly in a slightly hoarse, sensual voice:

“…Orange Blossom.”

Silence, followed by silence, then the onlookers erupted. Lister, however, just gave a cold huff.

The citrus family wasn’t some extraordinary difficulty. Even if he recognized them all, it wasn’t a huge accomplishment. This crowd was making too much of it. Was this the standard of Grasse Academy now?

“10 out of 10, perfect! That’s amazing!”

Even the bun-faced judge was softly clapping with excitement. Lister rolled his eyes at him.

His turn. A sharp glint flashed in his deep blue eyes. As if deliberately trying not to lose to Han Fu, he desperately opened two or three bottles of essential oil at once at breakneck speed.

“Hah… Lavender, Rosemary, Petitgrain.”

“Rose, Jasmine, Rosewood, Benzoin!”

“Damn… Seven bottles in nineteen seconds! Worthy of Cranberry, are you sure this wasn’t rehearsed?”

Someone in the crowd had timed it and couldn’t help whispering to their neighbor.

Lister’s lips curled into a smug smile. But the next second, that smile froze on his face.

The last three bottles were all from the citrus family.

“…”

He suddenly realized he couldn’t distinguish between scents of the same family as quickly as Han Fu just had.

But how was that possible? His nose had been praised by many of his grandfather’s friends, titans in the fragrance world… And this nameless youth tagging along with an industry traitor—how could he possibly be better than him?!

Unobtrusively, he separated the three bottles and sniffed them individually again.

It seemed they were, in order, Bergamot, Orange Blossom, and Mandarin Orange.

But, it also seemed a little strange. Why were the scents of the “Orange Blossom” and “Mandarin Orange” so impure? It was as if they were mixed with a little peel, and hints of pomelo and lemon. But hadn’t it been said that only single-note essential oils could be used, no blended oils?

Could it be… his luck was so rotten that these two bottles had been stored too long and their scents had cross-contaminated?

“Bergamot.”

He first picked up the one among the three he was absolutely sure about.

Although Bergamot was a fruit, its scent was relatively sour-sweet, closer to a floral scent than ordinary lemon fruit. The fragrant peel of this fruit could produce bergamot oil. Back home in England, his family drank afternoon tea every day, and bergamot oil was the most common companion of Earl Grey tea.

As a foundational essential oil in many world-famous perfumes, it couldn’t be mistaken.

…

The judge nodded slightly.

Gaining some confidence, Lister picked up another bottle. “This should be Orange Blossom.”

The main note was citrus, with a hint of lily, but carrying a subtle, returning bitterness, likely a remnant of high-temperature distillation. Wait—no, that faint, crisp fragrance and acidity… it was more like overly distilled lemon peel than orange blossom?

“No, wait, it’s Lemon… no, Lime peel?”

The bun-faced youth confirmed: “Are you sure it’s Lime?”

He wasn’t sure.

Damn, how could this happen!

The citrus family was roughly considered medium difficulty, and Lister had never stumbled on it before. He couldn’t help but wonder what was wrong with him today.

It couldn’t be that he suddenly couldn’t identify them! It must just be… yes, it must be that his mind was muddled by that nauseating pair of lovebirds and their PDA!

His gaze flickered, catching sight of the alcohol lamp.

Honestly, if he just heated it slightly, he should be able to immediately confirm what it was by its texture and viscosity.

But, Han Fu hadn’t used the alcohol lamp! The grand young master of Cranberry, competing against a traitor’s apprentice (boyfriend, lover, whatever), and he was supposed to use the lamp when the other guy hadn’t?

…So humiliating! No, he had to tough it out!

However, he couldn’t.

Lister just couldn’t understand. Wasn’t the bottle in his hand actually a blended essential oil? It clearly had more than two types of citrus notes, just like half Orange Blossom and half Lemon!

Tick, tick—in reality, only two or three minutes had passed.

The oppressive silence, the cold sweat beading on his forehead: these were absolutely the longest two or three minutes of Lister’s life.

“This one is Orange Blossom!” Finally, throwing caution to the wind, he handed over two bottles. “And the remaining one, it’s Tangerine Peel!”

“Are you certain?”

“Certain.” They were just the simplest essential oils. He had to trust his own judgment!

“Correctness: 8 out of 10. 8/10 versus 10/10. The match is over. Student Han is victorious.”

What…

“What! Not Orange Blossom, and not Tangerine?!” Amidst the explosion of chatter, Lister absolutely could not believe his ears.

Fine, misidentifying one was one thing, but simple citrus notes—at his level, it was impossible for him to get both wrong!

“…Daidai flower, Daidai fruit.”

Pei Zhen pulled out the labels and handed them over. Lister looked utterly dumbfounded.

“Daidai?! What the hell is Daidai?!”

Pei Zhen: “An evergreen shrub primarily grown in various parts of southern China. Very rare in the UK. But lately, a few classic perfumes on the market have used Daidai. Have you been out of touch with the industry for too long?”

Lister: “What kind of bizarre name is that? This thing is practically a subspecies of orange! There are too many names for oranges in China, ‘Oranges grown south of the Huai River are tangerines, grown north they are trifoliate oranges.’ Don’t think I don’t know that!”

“However,” Pei Zhen said with a look of regret, “Daidai is actually not an orange.”

“Daidai is a shrub. Trees like tangerines and oranges belong to the arbor family. They are fundamentally different. The difference…” He stretched out his arms to gesture to the youth in existential crisis, “is about this big.”

“Don’t believe me? Why not Wikipedia it yourself? Or check your family’s old rival Les Étoiles’ new fragrance ‘Lakeside Beauty’?”

“…” Lister actually did pull out his phone to search. After searching, he bit his lips until they turned white.

Pei Zhen lowered his eyes and smiled faintly. How he wished Senior Chen She could see this—the haughty young master being brought to such a state.

Then he furrowed his brows.

He raised his eyes and studied the mixed-race youth a bit longer. He felt… his current expression was vaguely familiar.

…

That was something from many years ago.

Back then, Pei Zhen was the high-spirited, rising “industry newcomer” amidst S City’s wealthy circles. In protecting Yi Changqing, he had once taught a lesson to a wealthy young master.

It seemed to be a second-generation heir from some mega-conglomerate group.

All Pei Zhen remembered was that, like Lister, he wasn’t tall, had a shock of weedy, punk-rock yellow hair, and a rebellious streak. He had a small rose tattoo on his right cheek and was always coming around to provoke them.

Perhaps young masters who had never faced setbacks all wore the same expression after being humbled.

A look of utter devastation, as if the sky had fallen, even the action of biting his lip was exactly the same as Lister’s now. Oh, right, there was also a classic line Pei Zhen had remembered to this day.

[You dare… Even my dad has never hit me!]

…

Later, some more things happened.

Days linked to Yi Changqing were always heart-rending, and Pei Zhen usually didn’t like to recall them.

And the yellow-haired youth was just a small interlude in those messy days. He remembered the last time they met, it had rained, and that kid had cried so bitterly. Later, whenever Pei Zhen remembered, he felt a bit of regret. He shouldn’t have treated him that way.

“Zhenzhen.”

Han Fu’s face suddenly appeared.

The already blurry memory of the punk-rocker youth was suddenly replaced by his image.

…They looked nothing alike!

Gentle, sensible, capable, the ultimate little wolfdog you’d have to win how many lotteries to bring home—how could he compare to that spoiled, rich-second-generation feral pup?