As the off-road vehicle drove away from the heart of Changbai Mountain, Yu Jiuyuan was tidying up her stray hairs in front of the rearview mirror.

The mirror reflected the scene in the back row. Yuan Xu held the incubator on her lap, her fingertips gently touching the few snow lotus seedlings through the glass. Her profile looked particularly gentle in the bumpy light.

Rong Shenghan leaned against the car window, feigning sleep. His eyelashes cast a small shadow under his eyes. Despite his seemingly relaxed posture, his knuckles tapped his knees intermittently, as if he were calculating something.

Lin Yanran, sitting in the last row, hadn't uttered a single word since boarding the bus. He simply pulled his hat brim down extremely low, his exposed jawline taut, and the oppressive atmosphere emanating from him was almost tangible.

She withdrew her gaze, twirled the tassels on her scarf with her fingertips, and then looked at Xie Zhecheng in the passenger seat.

His open notebook was filled with observational data, from the trajectory deviation of the Orionid meteor shower to the band analysis of the Milky Way's spectrum, each entry as neat as printed text.

The morning light slanted in through the windshield, casting interplay of light and shadow on his slender fingers, and even the way he held the pen exuded an almost austere uprightness.

"President Xie," Yu Jiuyuan suddenly spoke, her voice exceptionally clear in the quiet carriage, "when do you plan to submit the final report of this observation to the Academic Affairs Office?"

Xie Zhecheng paused, his pen poised, and looked up, his glasses reflecting a cold light: "Within a week. You need to attach spectral analysis charts of the three newly discovered variable stars, and the data verification needs to be repeated three times."

“Strict.” Yu Jiuyuan smiled, her eyes crinkling, and typed “Astronomy Club Report” into her phone’s memo app.

"The student union can coordinate the academic department's review time in advance. If needed, I will ask the secretariat to reserve a meeting room."

He nodded silently, and when he lowered his head again, Yu Jiuyuan noticed that Xie Zhecheng's positive emotional fluctuation on the system panel was still at 100, but the 10 points of favorability were like a number welded to the spot, not moving an inch.

A barely perceptible smile flickered in her eyes. A perfectionist's approval is always based on results. For him, something as vague as emotions might not be as valuable as a set of precise star trajectory data.

Yuan Xu's soft voice came from the back row. When Yu Jiuyuan turned around, she saw him hurriedly catching the overturned incubator, and several snow lotus seedlings trembled slightly in the cotton.

Before she could speak, Rong Shenghan leaned forward and steadied the bottom of the box: "The mountain road is bumpy, let me help you hold it?"

Yuan Xu immediately pulled the incubator closer to her chest, as if protecting some rare treasure: "No need, I can do it myself. The roots of these seedlings are very fragile; they almost bumped into the walls of the incubator just now..."

He suddenly stopped, looked at Yu Jiuyuan, and asked with a hint of embarrassment, "Sorry, did I disturb you?"

"No." Yu Jiuyuan shook her head, took a soft cloth pad from her backpack and handed it over. "Put it at the bottom of the suitcase to reduce bumps. By the way, what instrument do you plan to use to test the fluorescent reaction when we get back?"

When her professional field was mentioned, Yuan Xu's eyes lit up instantly: "The fluorescence microscope in the biology lab should be sufficient, but I'd like to try the confocal system that the school recently introduced. It has a resolution down to the nanometer level, but it seems that the physics department has already reserved that instrument, so I might have to wait until next week..."

He talked on and on about the experimental plan, his speech getting faster and faster, gesturing with his fingers on the incubator as if he were already in the laboratory.

Yu Jiuyuan listened quietly, occasionally nodding in agreement. On the system panel, Yuan Xu's positive emotional fluctuation quietly rose to 97, while her favorability remained steadily at 85.

She knew in her heart that for this boy who was obsessed with biology, a sense of identification was far more effective in bridging the gap than deliberate care.

"I'll have the secretariat coordinate with the physics department this afternoon."

Rong Shenghan suddenly spoke, his tone just the right amount of gentleness, "Just say that the student council needs to borrow the confocal system for biological sample analysis, and they should be willing to do so."

Yuan Xu looked up abruptly, her eyes flashing with surprise: "Really? Is it possible?"

“Of course.” Rong Shenghan smiled, turning his gaze to Yu Jiuyuan. “After all, the president’s opinion is the student council’s opinion, isn’t it?”

Yu Jiuyuan smiled faintly but didn't reply. This new vice president was always like this, seemingly unintentionally giving credit to her, yet subtly showcasing her own abilities.

She glanced at the system panel. Rong Shenghan's favorability rating was 64, and his positive emotions were 91. The data was as stable as the smile on his face at that moment, making it impossible to guess the depth of his feelings.

A soft hiss suddenly came from the back of the carriage, breaking the peace in the front.

Lin Yanran had woken up sometime earlier and was leaning back in his chair playing on his phone. The screen brightness was set extremely high, reflecting the undisguised sarcasm on his face: "A bunch of bookworms, treating a broken microscope like a treasure, how boring."

Yuan Xu's face turned pale instantly. Her lips moved, but she didn't dare to refute.

He has never been good at arguing with people, especially when it comes to someone like Lin Yanran, who has a prickly personality.

Yu Jiuyuan's gaze turned colder, but she did not directly rebuke her.

He simply said, "If you're bored, Officer Lin, you can look out the window. We're almost past the coniferous forests of Changbai Mountain. Ahead is the birch forest. These trees can survive at minus forty degrees Celsius, and the concentration of antifreeze proteins in their bark is five times that of ordinary trees. Yuanxu, is the snow lotus mutation you mentioned earlier also related to antifreeze genes?"

Yuan Xu's attention was immediately diverted, and she continued, "Yes! The expression regulation of antifreeze proteins is key, but the gene sequences of different species vary greatly. The antifreeze mechanism of the birch tree should be different from that of the snow lotus. I can compare their genomes when I get back..."

The two of them sang in unison, completely ignoring Lin Yanran.

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