Yun Chuji fled.
In a place where Tang Jianxi couldn’t see her, Yun Chuji, blushing, glanced down at herself, then whipped her head away as if startled.
She rushed into the bathroom and, without any prompting, took a very cold shower.
But after the shower, a problem arose.
She hadn’t brought any clothes.
To be honest, although she came from an era where water was mostly fetched by hand, Yun Chuji was fortunate to have been born into a well-off family, so she never had to do it herself. As a result, she had developed the delicate habit of prizing cleanliness. The thought of putting on the clothes she had just taken off was, for the moment, unacceptable.
At this moment, she found herself missing the high-tech equipment at Tang Jianxi’s home, which could produce a fresh, clean, and fragrant set of clothes in just five minutes. The appliances in her own home required an hour.
Yun Chuji stood naked in the bathroom for five minutes, then finally steeled herself and wrapped a towel tightly around her body.
Even though her shoulders, arms, and the lower half of her calves were unavoidably exposed, she believed that as long as she was fast enough in retrieving her clothes from the bedroom, Miss Tang wouldn’t see her in such an improper state.
Yes, even now, our naive and innocent Miss Yun Chuji’s focus was still on the impropriety of the situation. Her lessons on female virtue had taught her that a woman should be properly dressed and carry herself with composure, which she was clearly failing to do.
But she had accepted these precepts so naturally, viewing them as a matter of course, that she had never considered the purpose behind them. She had never thought about the intentions underlying the efforts to mold women into silent, unobtrusive tools—namely, to eliminate female desire and the desire others might feel for women to the greatest extent possible.
Yun Chuji was a good student and had always excelled at the requirement to be pure of heart and free of desire. However, whether others could remain pure of heart and free of desire toward her was clearly another matter entirely—
Yun Chuji was not able to quickly grab her clothes and leave as she had hoped. On the contrary, she froze.
She had never imagined that a gaze could have weight.
Tang Jianxi, once again wrapped in layers of clothing, stared blankly at the disheveled Yun Chuji. And Yun Chuji just stood there, letting her look, as if trapped, unable to move a single step.
This has to be seduction, right?
The thought drifted through Tang Jianxi’s hazy mind, but she quickly refuted it herself.
As the renowned second daughter of the Tang family, Tang Jianxi had seen many acts of seduction far more worthy of the name. In Yun Chuji’s current state, nothing that shouldn’t be showing was showing. In this day and age, there were plenty of people on the street who dressed far more revealingly.
Something’s wrong. I’m the one who’s wrong.
Tang Jianxi’s self-awareness arrived belatedly.
Ever since those two chaotic days, Tang Jianxi had not seen any of Yun Chuji’s skin beyond her face, neck, and hands; her clothes seemed to grow on her. And as for those two chaotic days, from the moment Tang Jianxi left the hotel, she had buried them deep in her memory. Yet now, catching another glimpse of a corner of that complete picture, the entire scene she had once witnessed resurfaced involuntarily.
She could imagine what the body hidden beneath the white towel looked like. She had seen it, touched it deeply, and left many marks upon it.
The air grew colder, an illusion created by Tang Jianxi’s iceberg-scented pheromones.
In reality, the bodies of the two people in the room were heating up in unison.
Their eyes finally met.
Yun Chuji swallowed inexplicably, her voice strained. “I came to get my clothes.”
“Oh.” Tang Jianxi’s eyes didn’t move. Her gaze roamed over her from head to toe. Under such scrutiny, Yun Chuji felt the strength drain from her limbs. Her S-rank physique felt as if it were made of paper-mâché; doused with water, it softened and melted away.
The scent of pheromones grew heavier.
Yun Chuji clearly sensed that something was wrong, because her body was beginning to have another embarrassing reaction, which made her movements even more constrained.
She walked to the closet, and Tang Jianxi’s gaze followed her.
With trembling hands, Yun Chuji picked up a set of pajamas and underwear.
Tang Jianxi saw them.
An audacious thought arose involuntarily: So she’s only wearing that single piece of cloth. If I just lift it…
Yun Chuji walked away stiffly. The moment she stepped out of the room, she sagged against the wall as if a great weight had been lifted, gasping for breath.
I thought… I thought Miss Tang would stop me.
But why would she stop her?
Yun Chuji had a vague suspicion but was unwilling to dwell on it—that would be improper.
Just as she was clutching her clothes and trying to compose herself, Tang Jianxi emerged from the room, now dressed. Her eyes still held the same look, a heat that seemed to want to strip Yun Chuji bare.
She drew closer.
In that instant, Yun Chuji truly believed she was about to be stripped bare.
But Tang Jianxi only nestled into her arms, pressing her face against her bare shoulder and nuzzling it.
Then, in a rare, soft tone, she said, “I want to smell your pheromones.”
Yun Chuji breathed a sigh of relief. Lacking the awareness of someone from the ABO era, she didn’t realize that in this age, this was, in a sense, its own form of stripping someone bare.
The orchid and iceberg pheromones intertwined and mingled, a scene that would make anyone from the ABO era blush. But not Yun Chuji. She bent over slightly to hide her reaction so it wouldn’t disturb Tang Jianxi, all while enduring the feeling of Tang Jianxi rubbing against her collarbone.
To her, that was far more blush-inducing than the pheromones.
In the end, it was a call on Tang Jianxi’s phone that broke the spell. She had put aside her work to come here for a moment of indulgence; it was only fitting that work would be the thing to interrupt it.
Tang Jianxi’s hazy expression cleared in an instant. Sensing her own state and Yun Chuji’s, for a moment, she didn’t know whether to curse her omega instincts or her own pathetic lack of self-control.
She quickly pulled away from Yun Chuji’s embrace. The person before her was flushed red from head to toe from her torment, yet she remained motionless, as if her limbs were bound.
Not like an alpha at all.
—Thank goodness she wasn’t like an alpha.
Tang Jianxi spoke a few hurried words to the person on the phone, then looked up at this person who was still craning her neck, letting her do as she pleased. The impulse was still stirring within her.
But she knew this wasn’t the time.
From any perspective, it just wasn’t the right time.
Pinching the palm of her hand to drive the stirring desires from her mind, Tang Jianxi desperately told herself—
She’s actually only sixteen!
You have work to do!
She’s just dependent on you!
Alright, that last sentence successfully calmed Tang Jianxi down. She stood at a proper distance of twenty centimeters from Yun Chuji and said, her expression normal, “Do you have any unused underwear and pajamas? I need to take a shower.”
Hearing this, Yun Chuji quickly handed her the items in her hands. “These, these are unused.”
She had recently replaced all her undergarments and everyday clothes. Although the body was the same, she always felt uncomfortable using the original owner’s things. This was probably another offshoot of her love for cleanliness.
Facing Tang Jianxi’s obviously puzzled gaze, Yun Chuji explained, “I was… in too much of a hurry just now. I grabbed the wrong ones.”
“Ah, I see.” Tang Jianxi nodded, said nothing more, and turned to enter the bathroom.
Left behind, Yun Chuji took a long while to recover.
Finally, she resignedly went back into the room, grabbed the pajamas she usually wore, and took another cold shower.
When Yun Chuji came out, Tang Jianxi was still in the bathroom. The sound of rushing water filled the air. Not daring to listen too closely, Yun Chuji escaped to the living room and started to read.
For the past three days, she had focused almost all her energy on her training, and her planned reading schedule had been significantly delayed.
In reality, the so-called S-rank alpha training was about training an S-rank alpha’s tolerance to other alpha pheromones, to prevent them from losing control and causing incidents like the one Yun Chuji had at the boxing gym.
However, there was something she didn’t quite understand.
According to her meager knowledge of ABO dynamics, it wasn’t just the provocation of alpha pheromones that could make an alpha lose control; the enticement of omega pheromones could as well. So why wasn’t there training for the latter?
When she asked, her instructor had laughed heartily. He’d tried to pat her shoulder, but Yun Chuji dodged him. The instructor didn’t mind, merely raising an eyebrow before saying, “What does that matter? It’s not like you’re the one losing out, anyway.”
“Besides, even if you wanted to lose out, you couldn’t. I heard that S-rank omega training is all about learning to control your pheromones so they don’t leak out. That’s why, you see, those S-rank omegas are all so good at hiding it. If they don’t say it themselves, you can basically never tell.”
Yun Chuji’s question was answered, but not entirely.
She always felt that wasn’t a sufficiently correct answer.
And whenever she felt puzzled, books could always bring her peace.
When Tang Jianxi had finished getting ready, she didn’t see Yun Chuji in the bedroom.
She didn’t get scared and run off, did she?
Miss Tang thought, feeling quite guilty.
Fortunately, as soon as she stepped out of the room, she saw that familiar silhouette. In a daze, Tang Jianxi felt as if she had returned to the days when she lived with Yun Chuji, when she would come home from work every day to this same silhouette.
If she noticed she was back, she would—
Hearing the sound, Yun Chuji pulled her mind from the text and looked up with a faint smile, as if what had just happened had little effect on her.
“Miss Tang, would you like something to eat?”
Ah, yes, just like that.
And then she would reply, “Sure, what is there to eat?”
That sentence shattered the warm atmosphere.
Yun Chuji realized with great embarrassment.
There really was nothing to eat in her apartment.
She had been subsisting on nutrient solution for the past few days. Her mother had left some food, and with this era’s excellent preservation technology, it should still be good. But with her cooking skills, the result would probably be worse than the nutrient solution.
So Yun Chuji mumbled, “There’s… nothing to eat.”
Tang Jianxi chuckled and ordered takeout.
However, now that the source herself was back, she no longer needed to resort to second-best options like clothes and blankets for the comfort of pheromones. So, Tang Jianxi naturally moved her workspace to the living room.
One person reading, the other engrossed in replying to messages and comparing documents—the two of them made for a charmingly contrasting picture.
It would have been even better if the one reading wasn’t so tense.
Tang Jianxi turned her head to the side, hiding the curve of her lips.
She thought to herself, It seems this little antique wasn’t completely unaffected after all.
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