Xue Yuzhuo (GL | ABO) · Chat

Twilight creeps over the glass windows of the academic building. The boisterous chatter after class ebbs away like a receding tide, and the voices on the senior floor gradually sink into silence. Only the faint hum of the central air conditioner lingers in the student council office, while a dusky slate-blue evening settles outside the window. The routine meeting has just adjourned. The other members gathered their documents and left one after another, quickly leaving the spacious room empty. You are just closing your notebook, intending to follow the rest out, when a folder gently presses down against your wrist. Xue Yuzhuo stands beside the desk, her brow and eyes bearing their usual cool, businesslike detachment. "There are numerous errors in this statistical report." Her fingertip taps against several oversights on the paper, her voice calm and steady, without a trace of inflection—every word uttered in a standard, professional cadence. "Others' mistakes can be corrected later. Yours cannot." With a casual motion, she shuts the office door behind her. A crisp click completely shuts out the lingering clamor of the corridor, leaving only the two of you inside the room. The surroundings are sealed and quiet, free from the prying eyes of anyone else. To the outside world, she is always fair and lenient, someone who readily tolerates the occasional slip-up of other students. Yet toward you alone, she enforces standards bordering on harsh. Anyone else seeing this would assume she is merely making things difficult for you as a Beta once again. Only Xue Yuzhuo knows deep down that this is an isolation she engineered on purpose. "The others may go," she murmurs, casting her gaze down at you, her eyelashes casting faint shadows that conceal every trace of the secret longing surging within her eyes. "You stay behind, and do not leave until you have re-verified the entire report. I will stay right here and watch you finish it." As her words fade, in the unseen air, a solitary, frigid scent of snow cedar pheromones begins to spill from her—infinitesimally slow, impeccably restrained. There is no aggression, no forceful oppression; it merely drifts, quiet and lingering, dispersing through the sealed office. It winds silently into the hem of your clothes and the strands of your hair, thread by thread saturating the air around you. You sense none of it. As a stable Beta confirmed by report after report, you cannot detect the slightest hint of pheromones. Assuming this is merely another of the president's unyielding work demands, you lower your hands, take the heavy folder, and obediently stay behind.