Her Gaze Turned Dreamy...

"...Fine, then." Lu Guan curled his lip and first opened Dania's profile.

He could feel her overflowing resentment even through the screen. A chill ran down Lu Guan's spine, and the weight on his body suddenly increased by quite a bit, pressing down on him until he could barely breathe.

That wasn't all. Lu Guan noticed that the new version of the system also kept a record of previous changes in affection. Dania's affection had fluctuated the most wildly, bouncing up and down almost every half hour.

*Oh, crap. Has she been secretly watching me this whole time?*

*She might even be hiding in some corner, staring at me right now!*

There was a simple way to test that theory. Keeping a calm expression, Lu Guan picked up a pastry from the box, examined it, and spoke.

"Ah... If only Dania were here. I could let her try something she's never had before. Who knows how happy that might make her?"

*She really is nearby! But where is she hiding?*

As Lu Guan put the pastry back in the box, he glanced out of the corners of his eyes at the suspicious spots nearby, but found nothing out of the ordinary.

*Strange. There are only so many places a person could hide. Where could Dania be? It's not like she's Carlotta, who can vanish just by ducking into a crowd...*

"What are you thinking about~?"

Dania's voice sounded behind Lu Guan, and a small hand in a red glove waved in front of him.

Lu Guan had just started to turn around when Dania flashed over and sat down across from him. Propping her head in her hands, she stared straight at him-or, more accurately, at the box of pastries in front of him.

"What pretty packaging. Is this a gift from another girl?" Dania's tone was as languid as ever, but Lu Guan could sense the jealousy buried deep within it.

"Yes." Lu Guan nodded. "It was sent from Huanglong."

"Hehe... Is that so? Well, that's nice." Dania maintained the same pose, but the small hands she kept rubbing together under the table completely betrayed her unease.

"What? Are you jealous?"

"Oh? What makes you think I'd be jealous of a woman I don't know?" Dania narrowed her eyes. She was finding it hard to keep up the act. This idiot was practically dancing on her land mines.

"I'll take you to meet her someday. Then you'll know her, won't you?" Lu Guan shrugged.

"You're going to take me to meet her?!!"

"Of course. I'll take my Yaya to show my single cousin. My Yaya's so cute, she'll be green with envy!"

"Your cousin?"

"Yeah. What did you think?"

"I thought... Wait, when did I become yours? Lu Guan! You'd better explain yourself!"

"Hehe, I won't!"

"I'll bite you!"

"Go ahead, then... But don't bite me. Bite this."

Lu Guan took out a pastry and held it up to Dania's mouth.

"And now, let's invite Stardust Academy's number one gourmet, Miss Dania, to sample these specialty pastries from Huanglong!"

"Hmph~ How thoughtful of you." Dania lifted her head and daintily accepted the Jinzhou pastry Lu Guan offered her. "It's so pretty. I almost can't bear to eat it."

Lu Guan propped up his head and watched the girl before him with a smile as she looked like she wanted to eat the pastry but didn't want to ruin its shape.

As everyone knew, the most tantalizing and delicious feeling was being intimate when both people knew they liked each other, yet neither made their relationship explicit.

Earlier, Lu Guan had kept saying Dania was his. Had she seriously denied it?

No!

Rather than solemnly pointing out the error in Lu Guan's words, Dania's reaction had been more a girl's bashfulness, mixed with a hint of instinctive inner conflict over feeling unworthy of love.

Looking deeper, her fear of the president had also forced her to deny it in a hurry, but her suppressed feelings and anticipation made her desperately want to savor the ambiguity in Lu Guan's words.

So rather than struggling with the pastry, she was struggling with her former self.

In the end, Dania, who wasn't good at making choices, left the decision to Lu Guan.

"Here~ Open wide!"

Dania moved to sit beside Lu Guan and fed him the pastry in her hand.

"Is it good?" she asked. "It was a gift for you from someone else. How could I not let you have the first bite?"

"Hehe... Half for each of us." Lu Guan bit down on half the pastry, wrapped an arm around Dania, and put the other half in her mouth.

"Mmm...?" Dania clutched the fabric of Lu Guan's clothes behind his back. She put up only a token resistance before closing her eyes and savoring the sweetness of the moment.

One sweet pastry connected two lonely souls. Dania could hardly tell what kind of sweetness had enveloped her heart, which had been on the verge of breaking.

Was it the pastry, sweet with a floral fragrance, or the unreserved feelings of the man before her?

Dania had no attention to spare for anything else. She only wished time would freeze at this moment.

As their lips and teeth met, her gaze gradually turned dreamy...