Chapter 15
The lab's sensor door slid silently open, releasing a puff of clean air mixed with a special coolant and ozone. Unlike the slightly worn corridor outside, the lab interior was brightly lit, with a constant temperature and humidity. Precision instruments emitted a low hum, and several researchers in white coats stared intently at the data streams on their screens.
Zhou Ping'an led Liu Yifan straight to a separate work area at the back. A slightly overweight man wearing black-framed glasses and a white lab coat with sleeves rolled up to his elbows stood with his back to them, bent over and adjusting a complex piece of equipment.
"Zhao Feng." Zhou Ping'an called out, his voice sounding particularly clear in the quiet laboratory.
The man straightened up at the sound and turned around. A hint of impatience at being interrupted at work was on his face, but when he saw Zhou Ping'an, he immediately smiled. "Oh, Boss Zhou, you've come to supervise us personally?" His gaze naturally slid to Liu Yifan, who was standing behind Zhou Ping'an. His smile froze in an instant, then turned into undisguised astonishment, his mouth slightly open.
His gaze lingered on Liu Yifan's masked face for a full two seconds before snapping to Zhou Ping'an, his eyes filled with disbelief and a kind of realization: "You finally..." He almost subconsciously raised his hand, pointed at Liu Yifan, then at Zhou Ping'an, and uttered a short, breathless sound: "...She...she is...?"
Zhou Ping'an's expression remained unchanged. He simply introduced Liu Yifan calmly, "Ms. Liu Yifan, please come and visit the laboratory." He then addressed Liu Yifan, "Zhao Feng, the director of the laboratory center, is my college classmate."
Liu Yifan immediately and politely took off his mask, revealing a proper yet slightly distant smile: "Director Zhao, hello, sorry to bother you."
Seeing her full appearance, Zhao Feng's eyes lit up with a stronger sense of certainty. His astonishment quickly transformed into an extremely enthusiastic, even teasing, smile. He clapped Zhou Ping'an's arm vigorously, his voice rising an octave: "Good boy! Zhou Ping'an! You're really good! You look even better in person than on the poster! No wonder..."
He didn't finish his words, but the three people present knew what was omitted after "No wonder" - no wonder you liked it so much back then.
Liu Yifan's smile remained unchanged, but her heart suddenly tightened. 'Poster'? The word clicked like a key, unlocking dusty fantasies. A university dorm wall...with a poster of her? She immediately glanced at Zhou Ping'an, searching for even the slightest hint of embarrassment or hesitation on his face.
Zhou Pingan simply glanced at Zhao Feng calmly, his tone carrying a hint of warning calmness: "Get to work. Stop talking nonsense."
Zhao Feng was clearly not afraid of him. He chuckled and turned to Liu Yifan, saying warmly, "Ms. Liu, welcome! Don't mind, our rough place can't compare to your studio. But," he said proudly, gesturing at the surrounding equipment, "the stuff we have here is all real stuff! Ping An has invested all his wealth and energy in this place!"
Liu Yifan keenly caught Zhao Feng's familiar, relaxed demeanor toward Zhou Ping'an, as well as the message his words conveyed. She chimed in, her tone tinged with just the right amount of curiosity: "Director Zhao and CEO Zhou were university classmates? I envy their friendship."
"More than just a classmate! The guy who slept on the bunk above me!" Zhao Feng started talking. "Back then, he was different from the others. He'd spend all day in the lab, and when he came back, he'd just stare at the wall..." At this point, he seemed to realize something, smiled awkwardly, paused, and mumbled, "...Uh, studying blueprints. Yes, blueprints!"
Zhou Pingan interrupted him and brought the topic back to technology: "Miss Liu is interested in the basic principles of high-energy-density batteries. Can you briefly explain to her the intuitive demonstration of molecular anchoring technology?"
Zhao Feng immediately entered a professional state: "No problem!" He led the two to a transparent sealed cabin connected to multiple cables. Inside was fixed a thin piece of material that shone with a special metallic luster.
"Ms. Liu, watch carefully," Zhao Feng said, operating the control panel with the excitement of a demonstration. "We're now applying a limiting current to this piece of material."
The data on the screen began to surge, and the materials within the sealed cabin glowed faintly. Liu Yifan watched with bated breath. She didn't understand much about the technology, but she could sense the rigorous and powerful force.
Suddenly, Zhou Ping'an interrupted. He explained directly to Liu Yifan, not Zhao Feng, in a calm tone, as if describing a natural phenomenon: "Traditional materials will collapse at this point, but our anchoring technology can lock it in place for a second before the critical point."
His gaze was fixed on the material, as if it were the center of the world. At that moment, Liu Yifan, for some unknown reason, whispered a question that posed a completely different question: "Did Mr. Zhou often stay up late doing experiments like this when he was in college?"
Zhou Ping'an's gaze remained on the experimental cabin, and he answered casually, "Yeah. Often."
Zhao Feng couldn't help but add, reminiscing, "That's right! He'd work all night and only return to the dormitory at dawn. We all joked back then that the lab was his wife..."
Liu Yifan's heart skipped a beat. She could almost see the scene: early in the morning, the young Zhou Ping'an, exhausted but perhaps excited, returning to his dorm, taking off his lab coat, and then... looking up at her poster on the wall. The lab was his "wife," so what was her poster about? A distant, perfect dream? A kind of spiritual comfort and reward?
She glanced at Zhou Ping'an's profile again. He remained focused on the technical demonstration, remaining noncommittal about Zhao Feng's words. Liu Yifan's fingertips felt slightly cold. The fragment Zhao Feng had casually revealed completely confirmed Zhou Ping'an's words from outside: "I'm fulfilling the dream of my younger self."
She has long been cast in a fixed role in his life—a perfect symbol to be gazed upon, to fill the exhaustion and emptiness of reality. Now, he is attempting to transform this symbol, in the most extreme way possible, from a two-dimensional poster into a three-dimensional, timeless work of art.
Zhao Feng's warmth and Zhou Ping'an's calmness formed a strange contrast. Standing in this futuristic laboratory, Liu Yifan felt as if she had been transported back to an ordinary university dormitory over a decade ago. She saw the silent genius and the image on his wall, the one she had stared at countless times but was completely oblivious to.
She still wore the polite, curious smile of a visitor, but the ice of professionalism deep within her heart had cracked a tiny crack at this sudden, detailed evidence of her past. A cold, stinging pain, but also an almost cruel, understanding of her role, seeped out.
The tour concluded with Zhao Feng's enthusiastic explanations and Zhou Ping'an's occasional, precise supplements. As they left the lab, Zhao Feng warmly greeted them, "Miss Liu, next time you come to Rongcheng, ask Ping'an to take you home for dinner! Your sister-in-law is a great cook!"
Liu Yifan agreed with a smile. When the sensor door closed again, isolating the noise from the laboratory and leaving only the two of them in the corridor, the air instantly returned to a subtle silence.
Liu Yifan didn't speak immediately; she needed to digest the information. Zhou Pingan also walked in silence, as if everything that had just happened was just an ordinary work exchange.
After walking a few steps, Liu Yifan casually said in a tone that was mixed with emotion and inquiry, "Director Zhao is very warm... You two have a really good relationship."
Zhou Ping'an said "hmm" as a response.
Liu Yifan paused for a moment, then finally brought the conversation to the crucial point, speaking in a relaxed tone, almost jokingly. "He seemed to... almost let slip something about a university dormitory... poster?"
She tilted her head, observing Zhou Ping'an's reaction, her eyes carrying just the right amount of shyness and curiosity of someone being admired: "Did you really put on a lot?"
Zhou Ping'an barely paused as he glanced sideways at her, his eyes calm and composed, neither the embarrassment of having his past exposed nor the embarrassment of having successfully chased a celebrity. His answer was direct and almost cruel, as if he were stating the parameters of an experiment:
"Yeah. It covers the entire wall."
He paused, as if recalling memory data, and then added a more detailed detail, his tone still flat:
"Probably, starting from sophomore year until graduation."
After saying that, he turned around and continued walking forward, as if this was just an insignificant episode.
Liu Yifan followed him, her smile flawless, but her heart felt like it was being plunged into icy water. The absolute calmness in his tone, more than any nostalgic shyness or excited confession, made her feel a deep sense of alienation.
He wasn't ashamed of it, nor did he seem proud of it. It was simply... an objective fact. Just like the data in his lab, it was a historical parameter that made up the database of "Zhou Ping'an."
The only sound in the corridor was the rhythmic sound of their footsteps. Silence lingered for a moment, and then Liu Yifan suddenly stopped and turned to Zhou Ping'an. Her face was devoid of smile, her eyes clear and piercing, with an almost innocent yet penetrating earnestness.
"Zhou Ping'an," she stopped addressing him as "Mr. Zhou," her voice ringing out clearly in the empty corridor. "I have a question I've always wanted to ask you."
Zhou Ping'an stopped, turned around and looked at her with calm eyes, motioning her to continue.
Liu Yifan tilted her head slightly, her eyes like the most precise scalpel, carefully tracing his expression, and asked the question that had been lingering in her mind for a long time:
"Do you like me better when I was 16?"
She paused, as if considering the most accurate words, and then quoted the words he had said half-jokingly at the script meeting, but which pierced her heart like a thorn:
"Do you feel like I'm... 'old' now? In three years, I'll be thirty. Perhaps you should find a younger girl to fulfill your dream of 'captivating the whole nation'. Wouldn't that be more in line with the original meaning of 'freezing youth'?"
Her tone was calm, even a hint of inquiry, but the question itself was extremely sharp, directly questioning the foundation of his entire project and her own value in his aesthetic system.
Zhou Pingan listened quietly, his face showing no sign of being offended or surprised. He waited for her to finish, his gaze lingering on her face for a few seconds. His gaze was deep, as if it penetrated time, comparing two different images.
Then he spoke, a little slower than usual, with less analytical decisiveness and more subtle deliberation:
"No."
He paused, a brief pause that was rare for him, as if he was retrieving and comparing two completely different feelings.
"You now are more...real." He chose a word, his gaze lingering on her face for a moment, as if to confirm this 'real' quality, "but you at 16 were more...dreamlike."
He seemed to be immersed in this contrast, his eyes wandering for a moment, looking past her in front of him, looking at a scene deep in his memory, softly focused by time. That dreamlike feeling was a distant yet extremely clear dream from his youth.
Then, as if brought back to reality by the "younger girl" hypothesis in Liu Yifan's words, his brows furrowed slightly, as if he had heard an extremely amateurish, even somewhat absurd technical proposal. His tone was filled with a hint of unquestionable determination, and even a very faint sense of offense:
"As for the other young girls?"
He almost immediately interrupted this train of thought, shook his head, and refocused his gaze, becoming clear and sharp, looking straight at Liu Yifan:
"What does that have to do with me?"
This statement was made with such clarity and clarity, even carrying a certain air of self-assurance that it felt like "this question shouldn't even be asked." In his rigorous value system, the symbol "Liu Yifan" was unique and irreplaceable. Any attempt to find a "substitute" or "upgrade" was a complete negation of all his past and present investments and obsessions.
After saying this, he stopped looking at her and turned to continue walking forward. His back seemed even more silent than before, as if the question about "16 years old" had brought up something private that he was reluctant to talk about.
Liu Yifan froze in place, his heart beating out of rhythm in his chest.
He did not give her a rational analysis, but gave her something more fatal - a biased contrast and an unquestionable "uniqueness".
"More real", "more dreamy".
"You now", "You at 16".
"It's about you" and "It's nothing to do with others".
This is no longer an evaluation of an "aesthetic system"; it is a man's most direct emotional confession of two images of the same woman that have deeply imprinted his image at different stages of his life.
This realization, like a scalding electric current, instantly penetrated all of Liu Yifan's rational ice layers used for self-protection, making her feel an almost dizzying shock and... a panic that was firmly locked in and had nowhere to hide.
She originally thought she was dissecting him, but was caught off guard and dragged into a deeper and more uncontrollable vortex by his almost instinctive answer.
She looked at Zhou Ping'an's back as he left silently, took a deep breath, but found the air was scorching hot and her fingertips were cold.
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