Chapter 25

Xi Siyan looked at Jing Miao’s sleeping face.
His eyelashes were long and dense; his brows were slender yet thick. Paired with those round, manga-like eyes, his features carried a kind of classical elegance.
Time had passed—Jing Miao was already twenty-two.
Yet in class, students always assumed he was seventeen or eighteen. Between the youthfulness he gave off and the intelligence that outstripped his peers, they increasingly believed he was some prodigy who had entered university at fourteen or fifteen. They all treated him like a little brother.
Sometimes Xi Siyan overheard them gossiping about the two of them, calling him “an old cow eating tender grass,” ten years older—after all, Xi Siyan’s age was always printed on his work badge.
Xi Siyan could only feel helpless.
He couldn’t jump in and explain, *My kid is twenty-two. He’s an adult.*
Jing Miao’s age was a secret no one knew. So Xi Siyan could only wear those absurd labels—“old cow,” “kidnapping a minor”—like a coat he couldn’t take off.
“I saw your name on it, Miaomiao.”
His eyes reddened; he was almost crying. Ever since being with Jing Miao, he didn’t know how many times he’d cried—an almost-thirty man, and it felt shameful to even admit.
“You came so many times. You pulled so many all-nighters. From summer to winter… you earned 4,800 yuan in the School of Materials.”
“There are so many other part-time jobs. Why did you come here?”
Some pains didn’t lessen with time.
In Xi Siyan’s love, guilt and heartache were always mixed in—heavy enough to crush him.
“If I’d known you earlier… If I’d known you earlier…”
His tears fell, landing on Jing Miao’s collar and disappearing into the fabric.
He couldn’t describe what it felt like to see the name “Jing Miao” in that Excel file that was about to be wiped and destroyed.
It hurt so much he could have died.
He shut the computer, grabbed his coat and phone, and walked out—only to be cooled back into reason by the wind at the institute gate.
Jing Miao couldn’t bear to see him suffer even a little.
The first time they showered together, Jing Miao saw the scar on Xi Siyan’s right leg and panicked, asking how he could have such a terrifying scar.
Jing Miao didn’t know what Xi Siyan had endured that day when Jing Miao was being hurt.
He only saw the scar—and for several nights afterward he couldn’t sleep well, dreaming someone was stabbing Xi Siyan with a knife, waking in terror again and again.
Every time he woke, he clung to Xi Siyan and cried, reaching for the scar, unable to be soothed. Even after finally falling asleep, he would still murmur, *It hurts. It hurts so much.*
If Xi Siyan went back with a face full of grief now, Jing Miao would worry for a long time and sleep badly.
So Xi Siyan returned to the institute with red eyes, irritated enough to thump his own head.
Jing Miao hurt for Xi Siyan. Xi Siyan’s hurt would never be less than Jing Miao’s.
Only because Jing Miao was sleeping—quiet, obedient—did Xi Siyan dare pour out even a little of his pain.
“If I could do it over… don’t hide and write diaries. Don’t be stupid and make plans. Just come find me, okay?”
He spoke through tears, stroking Jing Miao’s face again and again.
“You could even threaten me with a knife—tell me if I won’t be with you, you’ll stab me. Would that be okay?”
That lab was freezing in winter and scorching in summer. Pulling all-nighters there—at seventeen or eighteen, when he should have been sleeping and growing—Jing Miao had silently stayed through forty overnight shifts.
Maybe just to be closer to him.
“No more. If I could do it over, I would’ve gone to the orphanage to take you home. I would’ve taken that old director too. I wouldn’t let you suffer even a little.”
Or perhaps—don’t come to Huada. Don’t meet him. Don’t love him. Don’t push him away in that accident.
But he couldn’t.
Jing Miao—if Xi Siyan imagined even the possibility of missing him, he didn’t want to live.
Xi Siyan lowered his head and kissed Jing Miao’s forehead, then lifted Jing Miao’s hand and kissed the back of it.
“Gege’s going to work. You sleep well.”
Xi Siyan tidied himself and returned to the section before eight.
The story of “a Rolls-Royce delivering takeout” spread through the institute instantly.
Even though it was winter break, the School of Materials was a top discipline where experiments ran day and night. Plenty of students stayed on campus. People passed the story around in group chats; give it a few days, and the whole of Huada would know.
That night, the two students who stayed with him for the experimental results teamed up with Zhong Yuan and Song Fuxue to tease him mercilessly.
“Teacher Xi, what is this decadent extravagance?” one student joked.
“Tsk tsk, little Xi, that’s a waste,” Song Fuxue said with deliberate sarcasm. “Your young-master temper doesn’t even seem that heavy.”
“Your comforting skills really have no technical content,” Zhong Yuan added dryly. “At least do 999 roses. A Rolls-Royce delivering takeout—only you could think of that.”
Xi Siyan explained helplessly, “Miaomiao’s been spoiled by me. He’s extremely picky. He only eats what I cook, or this place. During peak hours, a normal delivery driver would take too long and he’d get hungry and cry. I had to use some… special methods.”
Song Fuxue groaned. “Damn, you just rubbed sweetness all over the face of a single old woman like me.”
Xi Siyan shrugged. “Professor Song, you were the one who brought it up.”
Song Fuxue: “...Fine. I asked for it. I love hearing this romantic suffering. Keep showing off—I won’t complain it’s too sweet!”
One of his students giggled. “Teacher, Professor Song has already met our shimu. We still haven’t.”
Zhong Yuan was scandalized. “What?! You haven’t met Huada Materials Institute’s unofficial ‘Institute Flower’?”
Without hesitation, he grabbed Xi Siyan’s phone and lit up the screen.
The lock screen was Jing Miao.
It was a photo from spring at the Xi residence: Jing Miao holding the now-grown Xiaoxiao, smiling with crescent eyes—taken by Xi Siyan.
“See?” Zhong Yuan asked.
The two students saw it and fell silent.
One, pure admiration: “It’s the raw camera? Oh my god—he’s prettier than those idols and little celebrities!”
The other, clenched teeth: “Teacher Xi, you’re not human. You snatched him away so young!”
Xi Siyan: “...”
Zhong Yuan and Song Fuxue: “Hahahahahahahaha!”
“Honestly, this old-fashioned roast never stops being funny,” Zhong Yuan laughed until he shook. “If you saw him in person, you’d call this guy worse than a beast.”
Song Fuxue laughed too. “No, no, Zhong Yuan, I disagree. After I saw him in person, all I could think was: Xi Siyan, you deserve to have a wife.”
The two students grew even more curious. Xi Siyan stopped indulging them and got back to work.