Chapter Text

Years ago...

The library of the University of Jianghu’s medical school smelled of aged paper, printer ink, and the heavy silence of final exams. The building, a massive concrete block from the 1980s, stood at the western end of the campus, surrounded by old oriental plane trees whose leaves, in that rainy October, formed a golden, slippery carpet on the tiled paths.

It was almost nine o’clock at night, and the light but persistent rain drummed against the third-floor windows. The sound was hypnotic, a white curtain isolating the interior from the outside world. Shen Wenlang was sitting at his usual spot: the last table by the window, the one facing the back street, where the traffic was barely a distant murmur, and the lights of nearby buildings flickered like blurry stars through the water.

In front of him, a pharmacology textbook opened to the middle, its pages filled with molecular diagrams and drug interaction charts. To his right, a spiral-bound notebook filled with dense notes, his handwriting elegant but slanted forward in haste. To his left, a paper cup of coffee from the first-floor vending machine, now cold and bitter, forgotten for over an hour.

His cell phone, a model that was then a novelty, with a touchscreen and black casing, lay face down next to the notebook. He had been checking the screen every twenty minutes, an anxiety he disguised to himself as “checking the time,” but which was really just waiting. A message. A call. Something from Gao Tu. It had been three days since their last decent conversation. Three days since Gao Tu, with that way of his of smiling without showing his teeth, with that barely perceptible tilt of his head that made his hair longer then, almost reaching the nape of his neck—sway like a dark curtain, had told him he had to study for a topographic anatomy midterm.

“It’s the hardest exam of the semester,” Gao Tu had said, wrinkling his nose in that way Shen Wenlang found ridiculously adorable. “I’ll look for you later.”

Later. That word was an open-ended promise, a blank check that Gao Tu wrote with his characteristic ease.

Shen Wenlang turned a page of the textbook without reading a single line. His mind wasn’t on beta-adrenergic receptors or the pharmacokinetics of benzodiazepines. It was somewhere else. It was in the study room of the basic sciences building, where Gao Tu used to set up shop with his thermos of green tea and his notes covered in colorful Post-its. It was in the campus cafeteria, at the table in the back, where they shared fried potatoes and endless discussions about clinical cases. It was on that stone bench behind the auditorium, where one spring afternoon, out of the blue, Gao Tu had rested his head on his shoulder and fallen asleep for twenty minutes.

Twenty minutes. Shen Wenlang remembered them with an almost sickening clarity: the weight of that head, the warmth of that body, the scent of Gao Tu—that fresh, clean sage, like a herb garden after the rain—seeping through his shirt and imprinting itself on his skin. That scent had been a problem from the start. Not because it was unpleasant—quite the opposite, it was hypnotic—but because Shen Wenlang, in his arrogance as an S-Class Alpha, had refused to ask. He had assumed that all signs pointed to a Beta: the absence of a collar patch (Gao Tu wore an almost invisible one, so discreet it went unnoticed), his reserved yet firm demeanor, the way he moved through the world without the apparent burden of ABO expectations.

Shen Wenlang had assumed it. And he had let something begin to grow between them on that ground of assumptions, building a sandcastle on a foundation he didn’t know.

Now, in the empty library, with the rain pounding against the glass and cold coffee in his hand, he wondered if he’d been stupid. If he should have asked directly. “Hey, Gao Tu, what’s your secondary gender?” But the question sounded clumsy even in his own head. It sounded like a reduction, a label, a classification. And he didn’t want to classify Gao Tu. He wanted to keep discovering him, fold by fold, like someone unfolding an old map and finding routes they didn’t know existed.

The creak of a door at the far end of the room snapped him out of his thoughts. He looked up, but it was just a freshman gathering his things, with the defeated expression of someone who had tried to study without success. Shen Wenlang looked back down at his notes, forcing himself to read the name of a beta-2 agonist that started with S, when the boy’s footsteps approached his table.

“Excuse me,” the student said, a high-pitched voice that cut through the silence like a splinter. “You’re Shen Wenlang, right?”

Shen Wenlang nodded, without fully lifting his head. He was tired of being recognized. Ever since he’d won the award for best undergraduate research the previous year, his name had been circulating in the hallways with an uncomfortable frequency. People pointed at him, whispered, speculated about his Shen family—that dynasty of businesspeople and politicians whose shadow was as long as it was heavy—about his bright future, about his status as an S-Class Alpha. He was a walking showcase, and sometimes he just wanted to turn off the lights.

“Someone asked me to give you this,” the boy said and placed a yellowed paper envelope on the table, right on top of the diagram of the renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system.* “He said it was urgent.”

Shen Wenlang frowned. The envelope had no return address. Only his name, written in handwriting he didn’t recognize—irregular strokes, rounded letters, almost childlike. He thanked the student with an automatic gesture, and the student walked away, his footsteps fading into the echo of the hallway.

For a moment, Shen Wenlang considered putting the envelope away without opening it. It could be anything: an invitation to some academic event, an administrative notice, perhaps even a love letter from some anonymous classmate who’d decided that the traditional envelope method was more romantic than a text message. But something—a twinge in his chest, a feeling he couldn’t name—prompted him to slide his finger along the edge and open it.

The paper inside was plain, the kind found in college notebooks, torn off with such impatience that the top edge was jagged. The handwriting was the same as on the envelope: round, sloppy, as if written in a hurry or with trembling hands. The message was brief. Provocative.

"Do you know that Gao Tu isn’t a Beta? He’s an Omega. And his scent is going to get you in trouble. Don’t stick your nose where it doesn’t belong."

Shen Wenlang read the sentence once. Twice. Three times.

It wasn’t possible. Gao Tu, with his calm confidence, with the way he held your gaze when he spoke, with that firmness in his judgment that made it seem as though he never doubted himself. Gao Tu, who had never cowered before an Alpha, who had never shown the submission society expected of Omegas. Gao Tu... an Omega?

The words twisted in his mind like worms, searching for a foothold, an explanation. He remembered the patch. That damn beige patch Gao Tu wore on his neck, so discreet that he’d always assumed it was a muscle brace, a bandage for some minor injury. He remembered the way Gao Tu would sometimes bring his hand to his neck, an almost unconscious gesture, like someone adjusting a tie. He had thought it was a nervous tic. Now he understood: it was the gesture of an Omega checking that his barrier was still in place.

And the scent. Sage. That fresh, clean smell made Shen Wenlang feel as if he could breathe for the first time all day. It wasn’t the scent of a Beta. Betas had barely perceptible pheromones; their scent was a low, almost neutral note. Gao Tu was different. It was subtle, yes, but deep. Complex. It was the scent of someone whose biology was designed to attract, to entangle, to soothe and stir in equal measure.

How had he not seen it?

The answer came immediately, and it tasted like bile: because he hadn’t wanted to see it. Because he had built an image of Gao Tu—the brilliant classmate, the loyal friend, the Beta he could talk to as an equal without the complications of Alpha-Omega desire—and he had clung to it with the stubbornness of someone who fears what they might find if they lifted the rug.

The message was still in his hand, the words burning like coals. “Mind your own business.” Who had written it? A jealous classmate? Someone who wanted to protect Gao Tu... or keep him away from him? Or perhaps an adversary from his own family, someone who had discovered his vulnerability and wanted to use it against him? 

His phone vibrated suddenly, making him jump. The screen lit up with a name that made his heart skip a beat: Gao Tu.

He answered on the second ring, but his voice sounded harsher than he intended. “Yes?”

There was a pause on the other end. Then, Gao Tu’s voice, with that deep timbre that always disarmed him: “Are you okay? You sound strange.”

Shen Wenlang pressed the phone against his ear, his fingers white from the pressure. The yellowed paper was still on the table, a poisonous stain on the neatness of his notes. He wanted to ask. He wanted to drop the words like a bomb: Are you an Omega? Why didn’t you tell me? Do you think I care? But the questions got stuck in his throat, turning into thorns.

“I’m at the library,” he finally said, evading the topic. “Studying. You?”

"In the study room of the Central Building. Trying to figure out the innervation of the upper limb, but I think my brain has already melted." Gao Tu's voice had that light, almost joking tone he used when he was tired. Shen Wenlang knew him so well that he could picture his expression: the slight furrow between his eyebrows, the way he bit his lower lip when he was thinking. "Hey, do you want to grab a bite to eat together tomorrow? There’s a new noodle place near campus that someone told me about..."

The invitation hit Shen Wenlang like a bucket of water that was both icy and lukewarm at the same time. Warm from the flicker of hope that still refused to die. Cold from the certainty that was now gnawing at him.

"I can't tomorrow," he lied. The lie came out with terrifying ease. "I have... I have some errands to run."

"Errands?" Gao Tu’s question was gentle, but Shen Wenlang sensed the flash of surprise, perhaps disappointment. He never made excuses. He was the type of person who would rearrange his schedule before canceling plans.

“Yes. Family stuff.” The excuse was so generic it almost hurt to say it. But it was easier than the truth. The truth was a labyrinth in which he had just lost his way.

The silence stretched out over the line. Shen Wenlang listened to Gao Tu’s breathing, that slow rhythm that felt so familiar to him. And then, Gao Tu said something that broke something inside him, something he didn’t know could break.

“All right. Another day, then.” And his voice sounded normal. Neutral. As if nothing had happened.

But Shen Wenlang knew Gao Tu. He knew the way his voice became a little flatter when something hurt him, when something didn’t feel right. As if he had learned, at some point in his life, that showing pain was a luxury he couldn’t afford.

“Another day,” Shen Wenlang repeated, the two words tasting like slag.

They hung up. And Shen Wenlang stared at the phone’s blank screen, the reflection of his own pale face, his eyes too bright, his jaw clenched, staring back at him from the black glass. He tucked the note into his jacket pocket, as if hiding incriminating evidence. He closed the pharmacology textbook, gathered his things, and left the library without looking back.

The rain kept falling, harder now, turning the paths into little streams. He walked aimlessly for a while, the raindrops soaking his hair, his shirt sticking to his back. The cold stung his skin, but he didn’t seek shelter. He needed the air. He needed something to wake him from that lucid nightmare. Because the note didn’t just reveal Gao Tu’s second gender. It revealed something far more disturbing: the existence of a watcher. Someone who was watching them. Someone who knew what Shen Wenlang hadn’t yet confirmed, and who had decided to use that knowledge as a weapon.

Who the hell were you? he thought, clenching his fists inside his pockets. And what were you trying to achieve with this?

His phone vibrated again. This time it wasn’t a call, but a text message. He pulled it out with fingers stiff from the cold and damp.

Tututu: 

Hey, about tomorrow. If you can’t make it, it’s okay. Seriously. But... are you sure you’re okay? You’ve been acting weird lately.

The message was so him. So considerate. So attentive to other people’s moods, even when his own were a mess. Shen Wenlang read the words several times, feeling his stomach tighten.

He wanted to reply. He wanted to write: No, I’m not okay. I just found out you’ve been hiding something huge. I just found out that maybe I don’t know you as well as I thought. But his thumb, driven by a self-preservation instinct he didn’t know he possessed, typed something else.

Shen Wenlang: 

I’m fine. I’m just tired. Let’s talk later.

He sent the message and put his phone away before he could change his mind.

That night, when he finally got back to his apartment, he sat on the edge of the bed and held the note in his hands, reading it over and over until the words began to blur.

"Do you know that Gao Tu isn’t a Beta? He’s an Omega. And his scent is going to get you in trouble. Don’t stick your nose where it doesn’t belong."

His mind, trained for analysis and diagnosis, began to dissect the note as if it were a symptom. The round, shaky handwriting suggested someone young, or someone who wanted to appear that way. The lack of a return address and the delivery via a third party indicated that the sender didn’t want to be identified. The tone, a mix of warning and threat, pointed to personal motivations: jealousy, fear, perhaps an attempt at manipulation.

But none of those conclusions brought him any closer to the truth. The note could be a lie. It could be a cruel prank by a classmate who had discovered his interest in Gao Tu and wanted to sabotage him. Until he confirmed it for himself, he had no reason to believe it.

Except that, deep down, he already believed it.

Because it fit. The patch. The discretion. The way Gao Tu never spoke of his gender, deflecting conversations with a skill Shen Wenlang now recognized as practiced. The way certain Alphas in the class—those idiots who measured their manhood in pheromones—treated him with a disdain that Gao Tu endured with a patience Shen Wenlang found admirable... and which he now understood as survival.

Gao Tu was an Omega in a world of Alphas. And he’d been hiding it.

The question was: why hadn’t he told him?

Did he not trust him? Did he think that, as an Alpha, he would react badly, walk away, become one of those jerks who saw Omegas as prey? The thought turned his stomach. He wasn’t like that. He had never been like that. And yet, Gao Tu had hidden the truth from him. He had deliberately decided to keep him in the dark.

Or maybe, he told himself with a bitterness that burned his tongue, maybe Gao Tu would have told him eventually. Maybe he was waiting for the right moment, building the necessary trust. Maybe his silence wasn’t mistrust, but fear. The fear of an Omega who knew what happened when Alphas discovered his nature.

But Shen Wenlang didn’t want to be “an Alpha.” He wanted to be the Alpha for Gao Tu. The only one. And now he didn’t know how to fit that revelation into the delicate balance of what they were building.

The following days were an exercise in measured distancing.

Shen Wenlang found excuses to avoid running into Gao Tu at their usual times. He stopped going to the coffee shop where they used to meet. He stopped replying to messages with the immediacy of before, spacing out his replies, making them shorter, more neutral.

Gao Tu, for his part, didn’t press him. That was the worst part. He didn’t ask why Shen Wenlang had become evasive. He didn’t demand explanations. He simply... adjusted. As if he were used to people pulling away. As if he had anticipated that moment from the start and was just waiting for it to arrive.

That silent resignation was a stab deeper than any demand.

One Wednesday afternoon, Shen Wenlang ran into Hua Yong in the hallway of the basic sciences department. Hua Yong, who was then just “Sheng Shaoyou’s friend”—an enigma with an impassive expression who seemed to see more than he should. He looked at him with those dark eyes that seemed to pierce right through him.

“You’re a mess,” Hua Yong said, without preamble. That was his way: direct, with no concessions to social niceties.

Shen Wenlang was about to deny it, to take refuge in the automatic “I’m fine.” But something in Hua Yong’s gaze—that deep calm, that absence of judgment—stopped him.

“Have you ever hidden something important from someone you care about?” he asked instead of answering.

Hua Yong leaned against the wall, crossing his arms. “All the time,” he said. “Until Sheng Shaoyou showed up and forced me to stop.”

“And how did you know it was time to stop hiding it?”

Hua Yong smiled, a small, almost imperceptible smile that transformed his usually serious face. “When I realized that hiding it was costing me more than telling him. And when I realized he wasn’t going to judge me.”

Shen Wenlang clenched his jaw. “What if he does judge you?”

"Then he wasn't the right person." Hua Yong straightened up, adjusting his backpack on his shoulder. "But something tells me your problem isn't that he'll judge you. It's that you don't know how you'll react when he tells you the truth."

He walked away down the hallway, leaving Shen Wenlang frozen in place amid the murmur of students coming and going.

"You don’t know how you’re going to react."

The phrase echoed in his head for days.

Because it was true. He didn’t know. He was trapped in a loop of speculation, constructing scenarios in his mind that ranged from unconditional acceptance to the most painful rejection. And in every one of those scenarios, Gao Tu came out on the losing end somehow.

What if he told him the truth, and Shen Wenlang accepted it? Then they would have to navigate a world not designed for Alpha-Omega couples, where the Alpha didn’t exert dominance. They’d have to face the stares, the comments, the social pressure. Was he ready for that? Was he ready to be the Alpha of an Omega in an environment that expected him to control him, to possess him, when all he wanted was to be by his side as equals?

And what would happen if he told him the truth and Shen Wenlang didn’t accept it? What if he turned out to be the jerk that other Alphas were, and his primal instinct roared possessively, dominantly, demanding?

He didn’t know. He didn’t know anything. And not knowing was consuming him.

.

It was Sheng Shaoyou who finally confronted him, a week after that conversation with Hua Yong.

He found him on the fourth-floor terrace, a secluded spot where Shen Wenlang had begun to retreat to smoke in solitude—a habit he’d picked up again in recent weeks, and one he hated deeply. The sky was gray, threatening rain, and the wind stirred the cigarette butts piled on the ground.

“You’ve been avoiding Gao Tu,” Sheng Shaoyou said bluntly. He leaned on the railing beside him without asking permission, as if the space belonged to him just as much as it did to Shen Wenlang.

Shen Wenlang exhaled a puff of smoke, watching it disperse into the humid air. “Don’t get involved.”

“I’m getting involved because Gao Tu is my friend,” Sheng Shaoyou replied, with his characteristic calm. “And because you’re my friend. And I’m watching the two of you self-destruct over something you haven’t even talked about.”

“What do you know about what we’ve talked about?”

“I know you’ve been making excuses for a week to avoid seeing him. I know he’s worried, even if he doesn’t show it. And I know,” Sheng Shaoyou paused, turning to look him straight in the eye, “that someone left you a note about their relationship.”

Shen Wenlang turned his head so fast he felt his neck crack. “How the hell…?”

“Hua Yong found out. He finds out everything.” Sheng Shaoyou shrugged, as if it were the most normal thing in the world. “He asked me to talk to you. He says you’re acting like an idiot, and that if you keep this up, you’re going to lose the only person who’s ever looked at you without seeing your family, your money, or your status.”

The words hit him like a punch to the solar plexus. Shen Wenlang squeezed the cigarette between his fingers, feeling the heat against his skin.

“And what am I supposed to do?” he asked, his voice sounding more fragile than he intended. “Go up to him and say, ‘Hey, Gao Tu, I found out from an anonymous note that you’re an Omega, and instead of asking you directly, I’ve been acting like an idiot for a week’?”

“That would be a start,” said Sheng Shaoyou. “But I suggest you do it without the ‘idiot’ part.”

“Shaoyou, this isn’t a joke.”

“Who’s joking?” Sheng Shaoyou sat up straight, resting his hands on the railing. “Look, Wenlang, I understand that this has affected you. I understand that you feel he’s been hiding something important from you. But put yourself in his shoes. He’s an Omega in a medical school where Alphas are in the majority and prejudice is the order of the day. Do you really think he hasn’t had reasons to be discreet?”

Shen Wenlang didn’t answer him because the answer was obvious.

“Besides,” Sheng Shaoyou continued, “what’s really bothering you? That he’s an Omega? Or that he didn’t tell you sooner?”

“That he didn’t tell me,” Shen Wenlang admitted, the words coming out like a sigh. “I thought he trusted me.”

“And do you trust him?”

The question left him speechless for a moment.

“Yes,” he finally said. “I trust him.”

"Then act like it." Sheng Shaoyou stepped away from the railing, ending the conversation. "Talk to him. And quit smoking—this stinks."

He walked away without waiting for a reply, leaving Shen Wenlang alone with the cold wind and a half-smoked cigarette. He stubbed it out against the railing, feeling the metal scrape against his fingertips.

He knew Sheng Shaoyou was right. He knew he had to talk to Gao Tu. But every time he tried, the image of the note flashed through his mind, and the words froze in his mouth.

Time passed. Days turned into weeks. Excuses became a habit, and the habit, distance.

Gao Tu stopped writing first. He stopped looking for him in the hallways. He stopped smiling at him when they passed, replacing that warmth with a polite, professional nod, as if they were two strangers sharing a classroom.

And Shen Wenlang, trapped in his own cowardice, let him go.

There was no decisive moment. There was no argument, no confession, no goodbye. Simply, one day, Gao Tu stopped being “Gao Tu” and became “the classmate I used to talk to.”

And Shen Wenlang kept the note in his desk drawer, the words yellowed by time, like a perpetual reminder of what he had lost by not asking, by not trusting, by letting fear carry him away instead of love.

Years later, when he ran into Gao Tu again at that hospital, and saw him standing tall and defiant in front of Liang’s desk, in his white coat and with his steely gaze, Shen Wenlang knew, the moment their eyes met, that the universe was giving him a second chance.

But that night, in the empty library, with the rain pounding against the glass and an anonymous note burning in his hand, Shen Wenlang still knew nothing of second chances.

He only knew that he had let something precious slip away. And that he wasn’t sure he’d ever find it again.