『Romance Sealed Within Her Brow』
[The friend I met online turned out to be my own professor, and she seems to have a thing for me—what do I do? Asking online, urgent!] Si Jinnian was born into a family where commerce and art intertwine. Her father taught her to read the depths of people's hearts in the rise and fall of toasting glasses at business banquets; her mother taught her to see through the warmth and coldness of human nature in the rigid and supple strokes of brush and line. She graduated from a top-tier university at twenty-two. With several cross-disciplinary innovation projects, she dazzled the industry, secured a firm foothold in the business world, and naturally took up the reins as general manager of the Si Group. In the eyes of the world, she has always carried two utterly different lives. One stands at the university lectern. She is the youngest specially appointed professor in the College of Liberal Arts. Her thin-framed glasses veil her sharpness, and her voice is clear and unhurried. When teaching, she often reads "Green Jade Table" (Qing Yu An), softly drawing out the deep meaning of the lines: "Feelings have always been subtle and hard to voice; even when mountains and seas lie between, hearts still reach each other year after year." Every handwritten note a student hands her, she lowers her head to read carefully, annotating it word by word with the utmost gentleness. The other sits in the group's top-floor meeting room. She changes into a crisp, cold black suit. Her features are light and indifferent, yet her presence dominates the room. Her speech is precise and crisp, and her eyes hold nothing but data and pros and cons. A single sentence—"The overseas acquisition deal exceeds the risk threshold by 17%; terminate it immediately"—can silence a room full of senior directors, and no one dares to dispute a single word. In the classroom, she favors deconstructing everything with gentle poetry, often saying that light and shadow rise and fall like misty spring willows—seemingly hazy and formless, yet in truth leaving traces every year and carrying intent in every place. At the negotiation table, she keeps only to the cold iron laws of business, convinced that for every 0.5% rise in market share, operating costs must be cut by 3%—no exceptions. Yet beyond this cool, composed, dual-perfect identity, she hides a secret tenderness no one knows of. Two years ago, she met someone on an anonymous book forum. From fragmented reflections on books late at night, to cool morning coffee and the heavy sunset glow beyond the teaching building, they chatted about romance and beauty, shared their daily lives, and entrusted each other with their innermost thoughts. They always treasured each other's understanding, yet never asked about each other's real-world identities. Every admirer drawn by her reputation in reality was gently turned away. Those who approached either coveted the Si family's power or were infatuated with the professor's gentle, elegant facade. Every bit of affection was wrapped in utility, calculation, and ulterior motives—hasty and restless. Only the person at the other end of the wire gave her a companionship that was clean and pure, utterly free of worldly purpose. She secretly saved the side-profile photo of the other holding a cat from their moments feed and set it as her phone wallpaper. No one knows of this long-cherished, privately kept preference. Until that day's open lecture. She stood on the podium of the tiered lecture hall, her gaze sweeping over row after row of seats, and at the third row, locked onto that familiar figure in a single glance. That person kept their head lowered, fingers gliding swiftly across the screen, eagerly sending messages to her anonymous account, cheerfully saying they had finally secured a seat in the renowned teacher's class they had longed for, full of anticipation for the classroom encounter. Utterly unaware that the online confidant they confided in daily and thought of constantly was none other than Si Jinnian, standing on the podium at this very moment, quietly watching them. Si Jinnian's fingers tightened slightly around the chalk, her emotions surging beyond calm. Deep in her heart lay an extreme longing—wanting the other to see through the feelings she had hidden for two years. And an extreme cowardice—fearing that the instant her identity was revealed, this clean, pure bond of understanding would suddenly grow distant and never be the same again.