Keep staring at me, and I'll gouge your eyes out

Waves of course knew who Jiang Lan meant by "him."

Jiang Lan watched the words "The other person is typing..." appear intermittently above the chat window. Only after a long while did he receive a reply:

[Do you still like him?]

Jiang Lan rested his fingertip on the words "like him" and gently stroked them back and forth.

He gave a scoff and replied:

[Like him?]

What lay between him and Wen Zhiyan could hardly be explained by something as simple as liking someone.

Jiang Lan licked his canine tooth with the tip of his tongue and typed on the screen:

[No, I still love him.]

Whether Waves had fallen asleep or had nothing to say to Jiang Lan's deep devotion, he did not reply for a long time.

Jiang Lan put his phone back on silent. Just as he was about to sleep, he remembered that he had not completed today's voting task.

He took out the phone provided by the production team again and hesitated.

Casting a random vote was clearly not a good idea.

If someone else suddenly decided to expose their own vote again, it would put him and Wen Zhiyan in a very awkward position.

After some thought, Jiang Lan voted for Ye Qiunian, then tossed the phone aside and fell asleep.

That night, for the first time in a long while, Jiang Lan dreamed of when he and Wen Zhiyan first met.

As one of the country's leading comprehensive universities, S University was best known not for some popular major everyone flocked to, but for its fashion and jewelry design program, which demanded exceptional talent.

Since its founding, it had produced quite a few designers who had made their mark in the industry.

Jiang Lan's father had died young. Jiang Lan's mother was an extremely gentle, vulnerable omega. After losing a spouse, a permanently marked omega would go through a long and painful withdrawal period, even with surgery to remove the mark.

Jiang Lan had been young then. He ached for his mother, but he also could not help fearing that one day she would be unable to bear it and abandon him.

So he behaved as well as he could, never caused trouble, and always ranked among the top students.

Back then, the thing he said most often to his mother was, "Mom, I'll work hard. Just wait for me."

Despite that, his mother remarried when Jiang Lan was fifteen.

Jiang Lan's stepfather was an utterly ordinary beta, divorced and childless. His only good point was that he treated Jiang Lan's mother fairly well.

At first, Jiang Lan had not understood why his mother had chosen to spend the rest of her life with a beta. But as he watched her gradually emerge from withdrawal, he finally understood that she could never endure the pain of losing her alpha again.

Jiang Lan was sensible. He understood his mother's difficulties, and he knew that everyone should have a life of their own. Although she was his only family, he had no right to stop her from pursuing her own happiness and building a new family with a stranger.

During that first year, his stepfather extended his affection for Jiang Lan's mother to Jiang Lan, paying his tuition and living expenses and treating him reasonably well. But the good times did not last. His mother became pregnant again.

She gave Jiang Lan an omega younger sister.

From then on, Jiang Lan became a complete outsider. Under the influence of various factors, his mother would think of his father, who had died young, whenever she saw him, and she began subconsciously avoiding him.

Not wanting to make things difficult for his mother, Jiang Lan chose to board at school in his final year of high school. He gave up a guaranteed place at a local university and, driven by youthful fervor, earned admission to S University.

He was not a loner. As soon as he enrolled, he ran for class president, became the freshman representative speaker, and joined the student council. With his outstanding looks and excellent grades, he soon became one of the most prominent students in his year.

For a long time afterward, he could still recall the scene of meeting Wen Zhiyan on that unremarkable afternoon, during another year's freshman intake.

He stood at the dormitory entrance, looking at the tall, slender young man standing in the sun, one hand on his suitcase, a thin sheen of sweat on his forehead.

Previously occupied with his studies, Jiang Lan had never met an omega who interested him.

And, of course, he had never met an "omega" as beautiful as Wen Zhiyan.

So he stared at Wen Zhiyan for a while before saying, "This is the alpha dormitory. The omega dormitory is over there. You've come to the wrong place."

His secondary differentiation, which had still failed to arrive, had left Wen Zhiyan unusually irritable all summer.

Between the ages of sixteen and eighteen, he had been to the hospital no fewer than ten times. His mother practically bundled him into the hospital every two months for a differentiation test.

Yet more than half the test results had identified him as an omega.

The three Wen brothers had each been born to a different mother. Old Mr. Wen's first wife had borne the family an omega son before passing away.

Later, Old Mr. Wen married his second wife, Wen Zhiyan's birth mother. During Wen Zhiyan's early childhood, the Wen household had been peaceful, harmonious, and warm.

Until the year he turned seven, when the woman Old Mr. Wen had adored in his youth arrived at their door with an alpha a year older than Wen Zhiyan. She openly moved into the Wen home and became Old Mr. Wen's acknowledged mistress.

After several paternity tests, that alpha was finally confirmed to be a child of the Wen family. Old Mr. Wen's affections shifted completely. He even hired someone to perform several fortune readings and gave the alpha who had appeared out of nowhere a new name: Wen Yunqi.

Lofty ambitions reaching the clouds, prayers for peace and safety.

The affection behind it needed no explanation.

Wen Zhiyan's mother was proud and strong-willed. She had considered leaving the Wen family and living on her own, but she could not accept letting its vast fortune fall into someone else's hands. Thus, Wen Yunqi's arrival became the beginning of Wen Zhiyan's long nightmare.

It reduced Wen Zhiyan entirely to a blade his mother wielded to secure her position and fight for power.

Being exploited by his own parents and caught in schemes between brothers made it difficult for Wen Zhiyan to accept kindness from others, especially alphas.

Wen Zhiyan felt that not a single alpha in the world was any good.

He had noticed Jiang Lan's undisguised, blatant gaze as soon as Jiang Lan appeared.

So he looked at the tall, handsome alpha smiling a short distance away and said cuttingly:

"Keep staring at me, and I'll gouge your eyes out."

Jiang Lan froze for a moment, then laughed. "Quite a temper you've got."

He walked up to Wen Zhiyan and reached for his suitcase. "You can gouge them out after I take you to your dorm. There'll still be time."

Wen Zhiyan had no intention of giving any alpha a chance to fawn over him. He snatched his suitcase back. "I have hands."

Jiang Lan shared a virtue with most other alphas: a thick skin.

One look at Wen Zhiyan was enough to tell that he was a pampered young master from a wealthy family. It was perfectly normal for such a beautiful omega to have little patience with an alpha who kept staring at him.

Jiang Lan saw no reason to take offense. Besides, he merely regarded Wen Zhiyan as an ordinary, good-looking younger schoolmate. Even if he helped carry his luggage to his dorm today, there was no telling whether their paths would cross again over the next few years.

But seeing Wen Zhiyan's sweat-covered forehead, he still kindly took a packet of tissues from his pocket and held it out to him.

"The UV rays are pretty strong in Haicheng. Other omegas carry umbrellas when they go out. Aren't you worried about getting sunburned?"

Wen Zhiyan looked at the neat, clean, unopened packet of tissues without taking it for a long moment. He said, "I don't need it."