Xie Zhecheng looked at Yuan Xu's focused profile and suddenly felt a bit absurd.
They are all like these tamed butterflies, thinking they are in control of their direction, unaware that they have already been led by an invisible hand to fly towards the trajectory she has set.
In the dining room of the Lin family villa, Lin Yanran slammed his knife and fork onto the plate with a loud bang. His mother was startled: "What's wrong? Didn't you like breakfast?"
"That idiot from the Su family was sent to Australia?" Lin Yanran's voice was filled with suppressed anger. Last night, he stood guard outside the lounge until the early hours of the morning before being "invited" home by his bodyguards. "Who did this?"
Lin's father put down his newspaper and his sharp eyes swept over: "The Yu family was behind it. Sheng Han called me in the early hours of the morning, saying that Jiu Yuan was almost ruined by the Su family, and asked if I wanted to 'send a gift' with him."
He put down his coffee cup. "Ranran, remember this lesson. Yu Jiuyuan is not someone you can mess with, and neither is Rong Shenghan."
Lin Yanran clenched her fists, her nails digging into her palms.
He recalled the scene he saw through the crack in the door last night: Yu Jiuyuan curled up in Rong Shenghan's arms like a tamed cat, while he himself could only stand outside like a stray dog.
[Lin Yanran: Favorability 3 (unchanged), Emotional fluctuations - Negative 24 / Neutral 10 / Positive 0 (Negative -3, Positive +1)]
For the first time, his negative emotions subsided significantly, while positive emotions, like a pebble thrown into a frozen lake, created tiny ripples. He suddenly grabbed his coat from the back of his chair: "I'm going to school."
"What are you going to do?" Lin's mother pressed.
"Student council...I still have things to do." Lin Yanran's voice was muffled, and a gust of cold wind blew in when she opened the door. "I won't be back for dinner tonight."
He didn't know why he went to the school; perhaps he just wanted to see her. To see Yu Jiuyuan, who was always so composed and in control in front of him, yet so vulnerable and heartbreaking last night—was she alright now?
At 10 a.m., the door to the student union office was pushed open.
Yu Jiuyuan was wearing Rong Shenghan's shirt, with her own beige coat over it. When she walked in, Xie Zhecheng and Yuan Xu both looked up at the same time.
"Ah Yuan!" Yuan Xu rushed over immediately, her eyes almost overflowing with worry. "Are you alright? You still look very pale..."
"It's nothing." Yu Jiuyuan's voice was still a little hoarse. She walked to her desk, picked up the documents on it, and said, "Thank you for your hard work in wrapping up the welcome banquet."
Xie Zhecheng's gaze fell on her collarbone, which was covered by the collar of her coat, but red marks could be vaguely seen under the fabric. His Adam's apple bobbed, and when he looked away, he met Rong Shenghan's gaze.
Rong Shenghan was standing at the door at some point, holding two cups of hot cocoa. He handed one to Yu Jiuyuan and placed the other on Xie Zhecheng's desk, his movements as natural as if he were doing something perfectly ordinary: "The doctor said it's good to drink more hot cocoa."
Yu Jiuyuan paused for a moment as she took the hot cocoa. Her fingertips touched the temperature of the cup wall: 65 degrees Celsius. It was her favorite temperature, and also the standard temperature of the incubator that Yuan Xu used for her experiments.
[System notification: The target's emotions are stable; the abnormal status has been resolved.]
A cold, mechanical voice echoed in her mind. Yu Jiuyuan took a sip of hot cocoa, and as the sweetness spread across her tongue, she looked up at the three people in the office—
Xie Zhecheng looked down at the documents, but his ears were turning red.
Yuan Xu held the incubator, his gaze occasionally stealing glances at her.
Rong Shenghan leaned against the door frame, his gaze fixed on her, filled with undisguised possessiveness.
The snow outside the window began to melt, flowing down the glass like someone silently weeping.
Looking at their varied expressions, Yu Jiuyuan suddenly smiled. Her smile was as gentle as the morning light, yet it carried an unmistakable air of control.
Last night's loss of control was just an accident, but it was like a precise touchstone, allowing her to see the truest desires in everyone's heart.
Xie Zhecheng's forbearance, Rong Shenghan's possessiveness, Yuan Xu's purity, Lin Yanran's unacknowledged concern... all these are like chess pieces on a chessboard, presenting the clearest layout in her hands.
She put down her hot cocoa, opened the student council logbook on the table, and wrote a line of neat handwriting under today's date:
"The welcoming banquet is over, and all is well."
The sound of the pen tip gliding across the paper was very soft, yet it seemed to herald a new beginning.
Last night's uncontrolled snowfall added a most precious page to the taming manual.
Those domesticated "pets" clearly had no idea that this seemingly out-of-control accident had been part of her calculations from the very beginning.
The sunlight after the snow shone through the stained glass, casting dappled patterns of light on the journal, like a handful of tamed stars scattered across it.
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