Dusk fell heavily, swallowing up the last bit of daylight at Guanghua University.
The wind was like countless cold knives, whistling and weaving through the bare branches, making a shrill whimper.
The exclusive space on the top floor of the Physics Department's experimental building is isolated from the harshness of the outside world.
The constant temperature system maintains precise comfort, and the soft ceiling lights cast even light, illuminating the spotless laminate flooring and the precision instruments with a cold metallic luster.
Mu Xinrong sat cross-legged on a large ergonomic chair next to the laboratory table, with the sleeves of his soft beige sweater rolled up to his elbows, revealing a section of his smoothly contoured forearms.
In front of him was a thick book, "Introduction to Quantum Field Theory", with pages covered with complicated formulas and obscure symbols, like a deep and mysterious thorny jungle.
He held his chin with one hand and unconsciously twirled the pen with the other, his fingertips occasionally touching some puzzling derivation step.
The tip of the pen left a few tiny dots of ink on the edge of the paper, like drops of solidified confusion.
In the silent laboratory, there were only the low sound of the central air conditioner and the occasional rustling of pages as he turned the pages of a book.
Outside the window, the whistling of wind and frost seemed to be even more violent, carrying with it a faint sense of oppression ready to burst forth.
Mu Xinrong's gaze drifted from the pages of the book, gracing the deep darkness outside the huge French windows. A few distant streetlights flickered in the wind, like candles that could be blown out at any moment.
He put down his pen, stood up and walked to the window. The cold glass immediately transmitted the biting chill to his palms.
He exhaled lightly, and the white mist instantly condensed into a small, blurry haze on the glass.
"It's going to snow..." He whispered to himself, and his fingertips unconsciously drew a crooked little heart on the hazy sky.
After finishing the painting, he smiled a little embarrassedly and quickly wiped it off with his fingertips, leaving only water marks.
In a corner of my heart, a little loss is like a stone thrown into the lake, causing ripples.
After Chao Youye finished an extremely important cross-border video conference yesterday, he hurriedly left a message saying "temporary schedule, need to be away for two days", and boarded a flight to the other side of the earth with his assistant overnight.
Mu Xinrong knew how busy he was, knew how the huge operating system of the Chao Technology Empire ruthlessly devoured the time of the helmsman, and knew that the meeting involved the direction of the group's strategy for the next few years.
Intellectually, he completely understood it, but emotionally... Mu Xinrong gently pressed his forehead against the cold glass, feeling the biting chill seeping into his skin bit by bit, trying to suppress the subtle but lingering emptiness in his heart.
In this heavy snow, would that person who always stretched himself like a fully drawn bow and didn't know how to take good care of himself, in a hotel in a foreign country, also remember to put on more clothes to keep warm? Would he... also miss him a little bit?
When this thought came to my mind, my heart felt like it was being gently scratched by a feather, making it feel sore and soft.
He shook his head, forcing himself to leave the addictive cold by the window and his thoughts, sat back in his engineering chair, picked up his pen, took a deep breath at the large book, and tried to cram those daunting Dirac equations and Feynman diagrams back into his head.
Focus, focus a little, Mu Xinrong!
After an unknown amount of time, Mu Xinrong's gaze stumbled across the tall floor-to-ceiling bookcase at the end of the lab bench. His eyes fell on a dark blue hardcover book on the top shelf: "Advanced Quantum Mechanics: Path Integral Methods."
He remembered that Chao Youye seemed to have mentioned a few days ago that a certain chapter in this book was very helpful in understanding a complex quantum state problem they were simulating.
He put down his pen, stood up, and walked over to the bookcase. The dark blue spines of the books were inconspicuous among the rows of academic works, quietly staying on the top shelf, far beyond his reach.
Mu Xinrong stood on tiptoe and stretched his arms as far as he could, but his fingertips were still quite a distance away from the bottom edge of the book.
He tried jumping up again, leaning forward slightly. The hem of his loose sweater slid up a little with the movement, revealing a thin and flexible waistline.
The fingertips could only scratch the air in vain, far away from the target.
"Tsk, it's so high..." He grumbled softly, a touch of childish annoyance. He scanned the lab, searching for something to rest his feet on. His gaze passed over the expensive, delicate instruments, but he gave up.
He stood again, took a deep breath, and stood on tiptoe again. His body was as tense as a fully drawn bow. He stretched his right arm upward to its limit, his fingertips straight, almost touching the edge of the cold spine of the book.
Just then—
“Click.”
An extremely slight sound of an electronic lock opening, almost drowned out by the sound of the wind outside the window, came from the direction of the heavy alloy door of the laboratory.
Mu Xinrong's entire attention was focused on the unreachable book "Advanced Quantum Mechanics". His fingertips were hovering a few centimeters below the spine of the book. His body was trembling slightly due to the force, and he didn't notice the subtle sound at all.
The door was silently pushed inward a crack.
A stream of air carrying a biting chill instantly rushed into the warm and constant laboratory space, like an icy snake, winding along the skin.
There was also an extremely unique scent mixed in the air flow - a smell that belonged to the open air, to newly born ice and snow, and was so clear that it was almost biting.
A tall figure appeared in the corridor light coming through the crack in the door.
It is Chaoyouye.
He had clearly rushed in from the snowstorm, barely even having time to shake off the dust. The shoulders and collar of his long, dark cashmere coat, even his slightly curly, jet-black hair, were all covered in fine, shimmering white particles.
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