新青春的淫动：性虐序曲

The September sun hung low over the campus, casting long golden shadows across the sprawling lawns and red-brick buildings. Buses and cars lined the main avenue, their trunks yawning open as parents and students hauled luggage, bedding, and boxes toward the dormitories. The air was thick with the scent of fresh-cut grass, diesel fumes, and the electric hum of anticipation that marked the beginning of a new academic year.

Qin Hao stepped off the long-distance coach, his duffel bag slung over one shoulder and a battered suitcase in his other hand. He blinked against the unfamiliar brightness, his eyes sweeping across the scene before him. The university was enormous. He had seen pictures in the brochures the school sent to his village, but those flat images had done no justice to the reality. The main building rose like a cathedral of learning, its white columns and arched windows gleaming in the afternoon light. The pathways were lined with mature oaks, their leaves rustling in the gentle breeze. A fountain shot water in rhythmic arcs at the center of the plaza, and students milled about in clusters, laughing, talking, carrying instrument cases and sports bags.

Qin Hao felt a lump form in his throat. He was really here. The first person from his village to pass the national college entrance exam, the first to step foot into a university of this caliber. His parents had seen him off at the bus stop that morning, his mother’s eyes red from crying, his father’s handshake lingering a second too long, filled with the weight of unspoken expectations. “Study hard,” his father had said. “Make us proud.” His mother had pressed a small envelope of money into his palm, her calloused fingers rough against his skin. “Don’t skip meals,” she had whispered.

He had nodded, unable to speak past the tightness in his throat. And now here he was, standing on the threshold of a new life, carrying not just his luggage but the hopes of an entire family.

He took a deep breath and began walking toward the dormitory buildings, following the signs that had been posted along the path. Freshmen orientation volunteers in bright blue vests stood at intervals, directing foot traffic and answering questions. One of them, a girl with a cheerful smile and a clipboard, approached him. “New student? Which dorm?”

“Building Seven,” Qin Hao said, his voice quieter than he intended.

“That way, past the cafeteria, third building on the left. Need help with your bags?”

“No, I’m fine. Thank you.”

He adjusted the strap on his shoulder and continued walking. The campus was even bigger than he had imagined. He passed the library, a magnificent structure of glass and steel. He passed the sports complex, the student union building, and a row of small shops selling snacks and stationery. Everything was clean, modern, and alive with activity. The students around him seemed so confident, so at ease. They walked in groups, their laughter easy and loud. Qin Hao felt small and inconspicuous, a country boy in a world he had only ever seen on a screen.

Building Seven was a six-story structure of beige concrete, with laundry hanging from some of the windows and the faint sound of music drifting from an open door on the second floor. Qin Hao found his room number on a paper taped to the bulletin board in the lobby: 307. He climbed the stairs slowly, each step echoing in the narrow stairwell. The third-floor hallway was bright with fluorescent lights, the linoleum floor scuffed and worn. He counted the doors until he reached number 307 and pushed it open.

The room was small but functional: two bunk beds, four desks, four wardrobes, and a window that looked out over the parking lot. One of the bunks was already made up, and a lanky young man was sitting at the desk beneath it, tapping on a laptop. He looked up when Qin Hao entered, a grin spreading across his face. “You must be my roommate! I’m Zhang Wei, from Jiangsu. Which bunk do you want?”

Qin Hao set his suitcase down. “I’m Qin Hao. From the countryside in Sichuan.”

“Sichuan, huh? Good food there. I’m the first one here. The other two said they’d be in later tonight. Take the top bunk on the left if you want, it’s got the best view of the window.”

Qin Hao nodded and began unpacking. He didn’t have much. A few changes of clothes, some toiletries, a sketchbook and a pencil case, and a small photo of his family. He climbed up onto the top bunk and laid out his thin mattress, smoothing the sheets his mother had packed. From the corner of his eye, he watched Zhang Wei. His roommate was tall and confident, wearing a branded tracksuit and expensive-looking sneakers. He typed quickly, occasionally laughing at something on his screen. Qin Hao felt a pang of loneliness. He was so far from home.

The door swung open, and two more figures entered. One was stocky and cheerful, with round glasses and a booming voice. “Hey! I’m Liu Peng! From Shandong!” The other was quiet and serious, with a book already tucked under his arm. “Chen Yang,” he said simply, nodding at the room.

The four of them exchanged introductions, shook hands, and began settling in. Zhang Wei was talkative, already planning where to go for the best dinner on campus. Liu Peng was enthusiastic, eager to join every club and activity. Chen Yang was reserved, but he offered a small smile when Qin Hao caught his eye. They were all so different, but for a moment, Qin Hao felt a glimmer of belonging.

A loudspeaker crackled from the hallway. “Attention all freshmen. A welcome assembly will begin in Building One auditorium at 4 p.m. Attendance is mandatory.”

Zhang Wei groaned. “Already? I wanted to explore the campus.”

Liu Peng clapped him on the shoulder. “Plenty of time for that. Let’s go see what they’ve got planned for us.”

The four of them filed out of the dorm and walked toward Building One, joining the stream of students moving in the same direction. The auditorium was vast, with tiered seating that could hold a thousand people. The freshmen filled the rows, their voices a low murmur of excitement and nervousness. Qin Hao found a seat near the middle, flanked by his new roommates. He looked around at the sea of unfamiliar faces and felt his anxiety settle into a quiet resolve. He was here to study, to make his family proud. Nothing else mattered.

The assembly began with a video presentation about the university’s history, its achievements, its famous alumni. Then the dean spoke, welcoming the new class and outlining the expectations for the coming years. There were introductions from various department heads, each taking the stage to deliver a brief speech. Qin Hao listened attentively, but his mind wandered. He was tired from the journey, and the warm auditorium made his eyelids heavy.

Then the dean said, “And now, the head of the Mathematics Department will introduce herself to you.”

A woman stood from her seat in the front row and walked to the podium. She was tall, with a graceful bearing that commanded attention. Her hair was long and dark, pulled back into a simple ponytail that exposed the elegant line of her neck. She wore a white blouse and a charcoal pencil skirt that hugged her figure in a way that made Qin Hao swallow hard. Her face was striking: high cheekbones, a straight nose, lips that were full but firmly set. Her eyes swept the auditorium, calm and sharp, like she could see every student at once.

“Good afternoon,” she said, her voice smooth and clear. “I am Xia Zhixue, professor of mathematics and head of the department. I will also be serving as the class adviser for the incoming freshmen in the general science track. I look forward to working with you all.”

There was a polite round of applause. Qin Hao clapped mechanically, but his eyes were fixed on her. She was beautiful. No, that word wasn’t strong enough. She was stunning. He had never seen a woman like her in real life. The women in his village were weathered by hard work, their faces lined and their hands rough. Xia Zhixue was polished, refined, every inch of her exuding confidence and intelligence. When she smiled, it was measured, professional, but there was something behind her eyes that made Qin Hao’s heart beat faster.

He shook his head slightly, forcing himself to look away. What was he thinking? She was a professor. She was his adviser. He needed to focus on his studies. But even as he tried to listen to the rest of the assembly, his gaze kept drifting back to the podium, to the way she moved, to the curve of her waist as she turned to answer a question from the dean.

The assembly ended at 5:30, and the freshmen were dismissed to their assigned classrooms for their first class meeting. Qin Hao followed his roommates to a small lecture hall on the second floor of Building Two. They took seats near the back, and the room filled with students. Qin Hao’s heart was pounding. He didn’t know why. He just knew that he was about to see her again.

He didn’t have to wait long. Xia Zhixue entered the classroom, a folder tucked under her arm, and walked to the lectern. She set down the folder and looked out at the class, her gaze lingering on each face for just a moment. “Good evening,” she said. “I’m Professor Xia. This will be our first class meeting, so I’ll keep it brief. I’ll go over the syllabus, the expectations for the semester, and some campus resources. Then I’ll answer any questions you have.”

She spoke clearly and efficiently, her words precise and well-organized. She explained the grading policy, the office hours, the importance of academic integrity. Qin Hao tried to pay attention. He really did. But his mind kept slipping. He watched the way her fingers moved across the lectern, long and elegant, her nails neatly trimmed and painted a pale pink. He watched the way she shifted her weight, the subtle sway of her hips beneath the pencil skirt. He watched her lips form words, and he wondered what they would feel like against his skin.

He blinked hard and looked down at his notebook. What was wrong with him? He had been at university for less than a day, and already he was having inappropriate thoughts about his professor. He was a good student, a respectful boy. He had never been in trouble. But something about her made him feel restless, hungry, like there was a part of him he had never known existed.

The meeting ended forty minutes later. Xia Zhixue gathered her folder and smiled at the class. “If you have any questions, my office hours are posted on the door of my office in the Mathematics building. Welcome to the university, and I look forward to a great semester.”

She turned and walked out of the classroom. Qin Hao watched her go, his eyes tracing the line of her back, the sway of her hips, the way her hair brushed against her shoulders. The door closed behind her, and he felt like the room had suddenly gone dim.

“Hey, Qin Hao.” Zhang Wei’s voice broke through his trance. “You coming? Let’s go get dinner.”

Qin Hao blinked. “Yeah. Yeah, let’s go.”

He stood up, stuffing his notebook into his bag. But as he followed his roommates out of the classroom, his mind was still on Xia Zhixue. He couldn’t shake the image of her. It followed him through dinner, through the evening walk back to the dorm, through the late-night conversation with his roommates. He lay on his top bunk, staring at the ceiling, and her face floated in the darkness behind his eyelids.

The next few weeks settled into a rhythm. Qin Hao attended his classes, took meticulous notes, and studied in the library. He found that he liked his mathematics course, and he did well in his other subjects. His roommates were friendly, and he slowly began to feel less like an outsider. But his mind was rarely at peace. Every time he saw Xia Zhixue in the hallway or in the classroom, his heart would race. He would watch her from a distance, memorizing the way she walked, the way she gestured when she talked, the way her laughter sounded when she spoke to a coll

（本章内容较长，当前页面已截取部分内容）

The morning sun streamed through the tall windows of the mathematics building, casting long rectangles of golden light across the polished floor of lecture hall 301. Qin Hao trudged up the stairs alongside his roommate Zhang Wei, both of them still groggy from the previous night's late gaming session. The hallway buzzed with the usual chatter of students shuffling between classes, but as they approached the door to their calculus lecture, something seemed off.

"What the hell?" Zhang Wei stopped short, nearly causing Qin Hao to collide with him.

The doorway was clogged with students—not just the usual thirty or so from their freshman calculus class, but what looked like at least double that number. Bodies pressed against each other, jostling for position, some holding notebooks and pens with eager expressions that seemed wildly out of place for a mandatory math course.

"Did we get the room wrong?" Qin Hao asked, peering over shoulders to check the room number. No, this was definitely 301. The sign on the door confirmed it.

"Are you kidding me? No, man, this is the class," a senior from the year above them chimed in, adjusting his glasses. "Professor Xia's class. You're lucky you're enrolled—the rest of us are auditing. She's legendary."

"Legendary?" Zhang Wei raised an eyebrow. "For what? Her theorems?"

The senior laughed. "Yeah, sure. Her theorems. Just wait."

Qin Hao pushed through the crowd, his bag bumping against legs and elbows as he navigated the packed aisle. Every seat in the first ten rows was already taken. Students were sitting in the aisles, standing against the back wall, even perched on window ledges. It was absurd—a complete circus for an 8 AM calculus lecture.

"We're not going to find seats," he muttered to Zhang Wei.

"Maybe we should just stand in the back?"

"There's no room in the back either. Look."

Indeed, the back of the hall was a wall of humanity. Some enterprising students had apparently arrived an hour early to claim prime real estate. Qin Hao spotted a group of what appeared to be graduate students huddled together on the floor near the side exit, taking notes on their laptops with determined concentration.

The murmuring grew louder as the clock ticked toward 8:00. Then, at exactly 8:00, the side door near the podium opened.

Silence fell like a curtain.

Professor Xia Zhixue stepped into the room, and Qin Hao understood immediately. She was tall—very tall for a woman, at least 170 centimeters—with legs that went on forever beneath a modest but form-fitting knee-length skirt. Her white blouse was buttoned to the top, professional and severe, yet could not hide the generous swell of her breasts or the graceful curve of her waist. Her skin was pale as porcelain, not a blemish in sight, and her face was a study in classical beauty: high cheekbones, a straight nose, full lips painted the faintest shade of pink. She wore her hair in a tight bun at the nape of her neck, emphasizing the elegant line of her jaw and the delicate arch of her eyebrows.

She was, without question, the most beautiful woman Qin Hao had ever seen in real life.

"Good morning," she said, her voice cool and melodic. "I see we have a full house today."

A ripple of nervous laughter went through the audience. Professor Xia's eyes scanned the room with professional efficiency, taking in the packed masses without any visible reaction.

"Before we begin, let's address the seating situation. I understand many of you are here as auditors, and I appreciate your enthusiasm for advanced calculus. However, we need to ensure that registered students have a place to sit."

She paused, her gaze landing on Qin Hao and Zhang Wei, who were still standing awkwardly in the center aisle.

"You two. Freshmen?"

"Yes, Professor Xia," Zhang Wei said quickly.

"Why are you standing?"

"We... couldn't find seats."

Professor Xia nodded slowly, then addressed the entire room. "Would the registered students please raise their hands?"

About twenty hands went up, scattered throughout the hall. Qin Hao raised his, feeling slightly foolish.

"To my registered students: please come to the front. Everyone else, please make room. If you are not registered and you are sitting in the first four rows, I need you to vacate those seats for my actual students."

A groan went through the crowd, but no one argued. Bodies shifted and reshuffled as the unregistered students reluctantly packed themselves into the remaining space. Within five minutes, Qin Hao and Zhang Wei had found themselves in the third row, center, with a perfect view of the whiteboard.

"Worth the hassle," Zhang Wei whispered, nudging Qin Hao. "Look at her. I'd sit through three hours of differential equations for that view."

"Shut up," Qin Hao hissed back, though he couldn't disagree.

Professor Xia began her lecture, writing complex equations across the board with practiced fluidity. Her handwriting was elegant, each symbol formed with precision, and her explanations were clear, methodical, and patient. She had a way of breaking down the most intimidating formulas into digestible pieces, pausing to check for understanding before moving on.

For the first twenty minutes, Qin Hao was completely engaged. He took notes, followed the derivations, even raised his hand to answer a question about the chain rule. Professor Xia acknowledged him with a brief nod, her expression neutral but not unkind.

"Very good, Mr... ?"

"Hao. Qin Hao."

"Mr. Qin. Correct."

And then she moved on.

But as the lecture progressed, as the formulas grew more abstract and the rhythms of her voice settled into a steady cadence, something shifted in Qin Hao's mind. The equations on the board began to blur, their orderly symbols transforming into something else entirely. The straight lines of the differentiation operators became ropes—thin, white, silken ropes. The curves of integral signs became loops twisting around limbs, binding wrists together, pulling arms behind backs.

He shook his head, trying to focus. But the images persisted, growing more vivid with each passing moment. The ropes became red, biting into pale skin. The knots became intricate, decorative, beautiful.

And the face of the woman in these visions began to shift.

At first, it was just a generic figure—a faceless form, a shadow. But then the features sharpened. High cheekbones. Full lips. Porcelain skin. A severe bun.

It took him a moment to realize he was picturing Professor Xia.

His face flushed. He looked down at his notebook, willing himself to concentrate on the chain rule, on the product rule, on anything other than the image of his mathematics professor bound in ropes. But the more he tried to push the thought away, the more it clung.

What would she look like, he wondered, with her hands tied behind her back? With ropes crossing over that generous chest, pressing against the fabric of her white blouse? With her legs bound together at the ankles, at the knees, forcing her to stand still, to submit?

His hand began to move.

He didn't consciously decide to draw. One moment he was staring at blank paper, and the next, his pencil was tracing lines across the page. A rope, curving and looping. Another rope, crossing the first. A figure emerging from the chaos—a woman's silhouette, arms bound above her head, body arched in a pose of beautiful surrender.

He drew quickly, feverishly, the way he used to draw when inspiration struck late at night in his dorm room. Each line was precise, careful, deliberate. He shaded the shadows, defined the curves, added detail to the ropes until they looked almost real.

The face of the figure was still indistinct—he left it blank, unwilling to commit that final detail to paper. But in his mind, he saw Professor Xia's face perfectly.

On the board, Professor Xia continued her lecture. She was explaining the application of the mean value theorem now, sketching a graph to illustrate her point. Her movements were graceful, economical, her voice never wavering from its calm, measured tone.

But she had noticed.

From her elevated position on the podium, she could see the entire classroom. Usually, she didn't bother scanning the crowd—she focused on the board, on the equations, on the flow of the lecture. But something had caught her eye. A movement, perhaps. A student who was writing when he should have been taking notes—but writing with too much intensity, too much focus for mere transcription.

She had never seen one of her students do that before. Almost without exception, her students were attentive. Even those who didn't understand the material pretended to, desperate to earn her approval or at least avoid her attention. But this student—the one who had answered the question earlier, the boy with the earnest face and the shy smile—he was definitely not paying attention.

She didn't call him out immediately. Instead, she continued her lecture, letting her eyes drift to his corner of the room whenever she turned to write on the board. His head was bent low over his desk, his pencil moving in rapid, precise strokes. He was drawing something, she could tell. Something that absorbed him completely.

A small, cold irritation bloomed in her chest. She worked hard to prepare these lectures. She took pride in her teaching, in her ability to make even the most abstruse mathematical concepts accessible. To have a student disregard her efforts so openly was disrespectful.

She decided to wait until she had finished explaining the current theorem before addressing him. Let him have his little rebellion. She would deal with it appropriately.

But as she continued speaking, her irritation began to mix with something else—a prickling curiosity. What was he drawing with such concentration? A doodle of a car? A cartoon? A portrait of a classmate?

The pencil strokes were too deliberate for any of those. They were too careful, too practiced. This was not casual doodling; this was art.

She finished her derivation, set down the chalk, and turned to face the class.

"As I mentioned, the fourth derivative can be expressed as follows..."

She paused. Her eyes found the boy again. He was still drawing, utterly oblivious to her gaze.

"Why don't we take a moment to consider an example. Can anyone tell me the application of this formula in physics?"

A few hands went up. She called on a girl in the second row, but her attention remained fixed on the boy. He didn't look up.

"...and so the oscillation frequency can be determined by..."

The boy's fingers were moving faster now, almost frantic. His shoulders were tense, hunched forward. Whatever he was drawing had consumed him completely.

Professor Xia felt her patience snap.

"The young man in the third row, fourth seat from the left."

The entire class turned. Qin Hao's head snapped up, his pencil freezing mid-stroke. His face went pale, then red.

"Mr. Qin, I believe you said your name was."

"Yes, Professor Xia."

"I notice you've been very focused on your notebook for the past ten minutes. Would you care to share what you're working on that's more important than my lecture?"

The room was silent. Qin Hao could feel the eyes of fifty students burning into him. His mouth went dry.

"I... I was taking notes, Professor."

"Notes." Her voice was flat, disbelieving. "Show me."

He hesitated. The drawing was still open on his desk, the figure of the bound woman visible only to him. If she saw it, if anyone saw it—

"I'd rather not."

"Excuse me?"

"I said I'd rather not. It's personal."

A murmur rippled through the students. Professor Xia's eyes narrowed. She had never had a student openly defy her before. The audacity was almost impressive.

"Mr. Qin, in my classroom, when I ask to see your work, you show it to me. Now."

He stared at her. She stared back.

For a long, agonizing moment, neither of them moved. Qin Hao's heart was hammering against his ribs. If he showed her the drawing, he would be humiliated. He might even be reported

（本章内容较长，当前页面已截取部分内容）

A light drizzle had settled over the campus by the time the afternoon bell rang, painting the windows of the mathematics building with thin streaks of gray. Students shuffled past one another in the hallways, their voices a low murmur against the click of footsteps and the distant hum of a janitor’s vacuum somewhere down the corridor. Qin Hao sat near the back of the lecture hall, his sketchbook still open on the desk in front of him, the graphite lines of an unfinished figure blurred where his palm had rested too long. He had not heard a word of the last fifteen minutes of class. His mind was elsewhere—circling back, as it always seemed to do lately, to images he could not shake.

The lesson had ended with the usual rustle of backpacks and the scrape of chairs against tile. He had been about to stand, to pack his things and vanish into the stream of students heading for the dormitories, when her voice had stopped him.

“Qin Hao, would you stay behind for a moment?”

Professor Xia Zhixue’s tone was calm, professional, the same measured cadence she used when explaining integrals or clarifying a theorem. There was nothing unusual in it. And yet something in the way she had looked at him—a brief, direct glance over the top of her glasses, her pen still poised over a stack of papers—had made his chest tighten. He had nodded without speaking, sinking back into his seat as the rest of the room emptied.

Now he sat alone in the nearly silent hall, the door propped open by a rubber stopper, the dim fluorescent lights humming overhead. He watched her gather her materials with practiced efficiency: the stack of graded assignments, the leather-bound notebook she always carried, a stainless steel water bottle. She moved with a quiet grace, her tailored blouse tucked neatly into a knee-length pencil skirt, her dark hair pinned back in a loose bun that revealed the delicate line of her neck. She had removed her blazer at some point during the lecture, and it hung now over the back of her chair, the fabric soft and dark against the gray upholstery.

She did not look at him again as she finished packing. But she spoke, her voice carrying easily across the empty room.

“Come with me to the office, please. I’d like to have a word.”

Qin Hao’s mind raced as he stood. What had he done? He reviewed the past weeks in a blur of anxiety: he had turned in every assignment on time, had scored above average on the last quiz, had not spoken out of turn or slept in class. He was not the type to draw attention—he sat in the back, kept his head down, filled his notebooks with equations on one side and half-formed sketches on the other. He had always believed that being invisible was the safest way to move through a world that rarely noticed him.

But now he had been noticed. And he did not know why.

He followed her out of the lecture hall and down the corridor, his footsteps falling a half-step behind hers. The hallway stretched long and narrow, lined with doors to faculty offices, most of them closed. The air smelled of old paper and floor wax, with a faint undertone of rain coming through a window cracked open at the far end. Her heels clicked against the linoleum with a steady rhythm, and he found himself counting the steps without meaning to. One two three four five six seven.

They stopped at a door near the end of the corridor. A small brass nameplate read: Dr. Xia Zhixue, Department of Mathematics. She unlocked the door with a key from the chain around her wrist and pushed it open, gesturing for him to enter.

The office was small but tidy. A large wooden desk dominated the space, cluttered with stacks of papers, a laptop, a cup of pens that had seen better days. A bookshelf behind the desk overflowed with texts on mathematical analysis, probability theory, and a few volumes on classical Chinese poetry that seemed out of place. A tiny potted succulent sat at the corner of the desk, its leaves pale green and slightly wilted. The window behind the desk looked out onto a courtyard where a single cherry tree stood, its branches bare against the gray sky.

“Sit,” she said, motioning to the chair facing the desk. She closed the door behind them, and the soft click of the latch seemed louder than it should have been.

Qin Hao sat. The chair was low and slightly wobbly, and his knees pressed awkwardly against the underside of the desk. He set his backpack on the floor beside him and clasped his hands in his lap, trying to look calm, trying to look like he had nothing to hide.

Professor Xia settled into her own chair, the leather creaking beneath her weight. She reached up and removed her glasses, setting them aside on a stack of papers. Without them, her face seemed softer somehow, the sharpness of her gaze tempered by the warm light of the desk lamp. She looked at him for a long moment, her expression unreadable, and then she smiled—a small, almost hesitant smile that did not quite reach her eyes.

“You don’t need to look so nervous,” she said. “You’re not in trouble.”

The relief that washed through him was immediate, but it left behind a residue of confusion. “Then why did you want to see me?”

She leaned back in her chair, folding her hands over her stomach. Her fingers were long and slender, unadorned by rings or nail polish. “I wanted to check in. See how you’re settling in. You’re a first-year student, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“And how are you finding things? The coursework, the campus life, the adjustment?”

He hesitated. The question was broad, almost meaningless, and he was not sure what she wanted to hear. “It’s fine,” he said. “The classes are hard, but I’m managing.”

“I’ve seen your work,” she said. “You’re doing well. Your exam scores are solid, and your assignments show a careful understanding of the material. But I noticed something in your homework submission last week.”

His heartbeat quickened again. Here it was. “Something wrong?”

“No, not wrong.” She paused, reaching for a folder on the corner of her desk. She flipped it open and pulled out a sheet of paper—his homework, he realized, with his name written at the top in his own handwriting. She set it on the desk between them, rotated so he could see it. “Look at the margins.”

He leaned forward, peering at the paper. His answers filled the page in neat rows of numbers and symbols, but along the edges, in the narrow white spaces, there were drawings. Small, unconscious doodles he had made while working through a particularly difficult problem. The profile of a woman, her hair flowing back as if caught in a wind, her neck arched and her eyes closed. He had not even realized he had drawn it until now, and seeing it there, exposed under the lamplight, made his face grow hot.

“I—I’m sorry,” he stammered. “I didn’t mean to deface the assignment. It was just a habit. I’ll be more careful—”

“Qin Hao.” Her voice was gentle, cutting through his apology. “I’m not upset. I’m curious.”

He looked up at her, unsure of what she meant.

She tapped the edge of the paper with her index finger. “You draw very well. The lines are confident. There’s emotion in them. Are you an art student as well?”

“No. I just do it for fun. I’ve always drawn.”

“It’s not always women, is it?” she asked, and there was something in her voice—an edge of knowing, a subtle shift in tone—that made his skin prickle. “I’ve noticed your sketches in the back of your notebook during lectures. They’re often female figures. Posed in particular ways.”

He did not know what to say. His mouth felt dry. He had thought he had been discreet, that his drawings were private things, hidden in the margins of his academic life. But she had seen them. How long had she been watching?

“I’m not judging,” she said quickly, perhaps sensing his discomfort. “I’m an observer by nature. It comes with the territory. Mathematics is about patterns, after all. Noticing what others overlook.” She paused, her eyes still fixed on the drawing. “These poses—there’s a certain tension in them. A dynamic between control and surrender. Do you know what I mean?”

His heart was hammering now. He had not told anyone about the images that filled his mind, the quiet fascination he had developed with the idea of rope, of binding, of the way a body could be shaped and held by something as simple as a length of cord. It was a world he had stumbled into accidentally, late at night, scrolling through forums and image boards he had never known existed. And now, somehow, his professor was speaking to him about it as if she could see straight through his skin.

“I—” He swallowed. “I don’t know what you mean.”

She smiled again, but this time it was different. Softer. More intimate. “It’s all right. You don’t have to explain. But I want you to know that this office is a safe space. Whatever you’re feeling, whatever you’re curious about, you can talk to me.”

The silence stretched between them, filled with the hum of the laptop fan and the distant sound of rain against the window. Qin Hao stared at his hands, his mind churning. What was she saying? Was she offering him something, or was he reading too much into her words?

She stood up, moving to the side of the desk where a small filing cabinet stood. She opened the top drawer and pulled out a glossy magazine, its cover showing an abstract pattern of woven fabric. She held it out to him.

“This is a publication I came across recently,” she said. “It’s about textile art, but the articles touch on the cultural history of cordage, the aesthetics of binding. I thought you might find it interesting.”

He took the magazine from her, his fingers brushing against hers for a fraction of a second. The contact sent a jolt through him, electric and unexpected. He looked down at the cover, at the intricate knots depicted in close-up, and felt a strange thrill course through his veins.

“Thank you,” he managed.

“Keep it,” she said. “And if you ever want to talk about… the ideas in it, or about anything else, my door is open.”

She returned to her seat, and the moment shifted. The intensity that had crackled between them dissipated like steam from a kettle, replaced by the mundane reality of an office and a stack of paperwork. She glanced at the clock on the wall, then back at him.

“It’s getting late,” she said. “You should go get some dinner before the cafeteria closes.”

He stood, clutching the magazine like a lifeline. “Thank you, Professor Xia. I will.”

“And Qin Hao,” she added, her voice dropping to a near whisper. “Be careful with what you explore. Not everything you find online is safe or real. But the feelings you have—they’re real. Don’t be ashamed of them.”

He nodded, not trusting himself to speak. He turned and walked to the door, his hand trembling slightly as he reached for the handle.

“Wait,” she said.

He stopped.

“Your homework.” She held up the sheet with the doodles. “Would you like it back, or may I keep it?”

He blinked. “Keep it?”

“For my collection of interesting student work,” she said, and the corner of her mouth twitched. She was teasing him, he realized, but there was something more in her offer—a claim, a possession, a thread drawn between them.

“You can keep it,” he said.

“Good.”

He left the office, the door clicking shut behind him, and stood alone in the empty corridor. The rain had stopped, and a pale sliver of light cut through the clouds, spilling across the floor in a golden rectangle. He looked down at the magazine in his hands, at the knots on its cover, and felt the world tilt slightly, as if he had stepped onto a path he had not known was there.

Professor Xia waited until his footsteps faded down the hall before she allowed herself to exhale. She leaned back in her chair, her heart beating faster than it should have been. She had crossed a line today—not a professional line, not quite, but a line nonetheless. She had seen something in that boy’s drawings, in the tentative lines of the female figures he sketched, that had stirred something

（本章内容较长，当前页面已截取部分内容）

The moment the words left Professor Xia’s lips, Qin Hao felt a chill crawl up his spine. “You dropped something.” Those three simple words, spoken with such calm indifference, had echoed in his ears as he turned and walked out of the classroom. He had been too stunned to respond, too confused to even glance back. What could he have possibly dropped? His pen? His eraser? He had checked his pockets absentmindedly as he descended the stairs, found everything in place, and dismissed it as a strange, meaningless comment.

Now, as he trudged along the tree-lined path back to the dormitory, the evening sun casting long shadows across the concrete, he pulled out his notebook from his canvas backpack. The worn cover was smudged with graphite, the corners bent from being stuffed carelessly between textbooks. He flipped it open, scanning the pages of notes from Analytical Mathematics. Equations, derivations, and random doodles in the margins—a floating cube, a geometric flower, a stick figure falling off a cliff. Then he reached the page where he had been taking notes during Thursday’s lecture.

His heart stopped.

There, nestled between a dense block of integral formulas, was a drawing. A woman, rendered in fluid pencil strokes, her arms bound behind her back with a series of intricate loops. The ropes wound around her torso in a precise, symmetrical pattern, crossing between her breasts and cinching at the waist. Her legs were bound at the ankles, and a length of rope trailed upward, suggesting she was suspended. He had drawn her face in partial profile—eyes closed, lips slightly parted, an expression of surrender. The image was disturbingly detailed, the anatomy surprisingly accurate for a spontaneous sketch. He had done this during class, lost in a daydream while Professor Xia’s voice droned on about Gaussian integrals. He remembered the feeling: the pencil moving almost of its own accord, the thrill that coursed through his fingers as the ropes took shape on the paper. It was a compulsion he couldn’t explain, a dark curiosity he had never spoken aloud.

And now this drawing was sitting in his notebook, on the very page that had been open on his desk. The same page Professor Xia had seen when she walked past him to hand back his assignment. The same page she had looked at with that enigmatic expression.

Qin Hao’s hands began to tremble. He slammed the notebook shut, his breath coming in short, ragged gasps. He looked around frantically, but the path was empty—just a few students in the distance, heading toward the dining hall. No one was watching him. He stuffed the notebook back into his bag and broke into a run, his sneakers pounding against the pavement as if he could outrun the panic clawing at his chest.

Reaching the dormitory, he burst into his room and locked the door behind him. His three roommates were still out—one at the library, one at basketball practice, one in the cafeteria. He was alone. He collapsed onto his bed, staring at the ceiling, his mind a churning maelstrom of fear, shame, and mortification.

*She saw it. Professor Xia saw the drawing. She knows.*

The thought was a hammer blow to his skull. He pressed the heels of his palms against his eyes, trying to blot out the image of her face—that composed, knowing look. “You dropped something.” She had to have meant the drawing. She had seen it, realized what it was, and decided to return it to him with that cryptic remark. But why hadn’t she said anything directly? Why hadn’t she called him out on the spot? Was she planning to report him to the department head? To his parents? Or worse, was she going to tell the entire class?

A fresh wave of nausea rolled through him. He sat up abruptly, his head spinning. He could imagine the headlines: *First-year male student draws obscene images of bondage in math class. Pervert exposed.* His reputation would be ruined. His parents, strict and traditional, would be devastated. His mother’s voice echoed in his memory: *“Focus on your studies, don’t waste time on foolishness.”* And then there was his father’s stern silence, more damning than any words. The thought of them receiving a phone call from the university made his stomach clench.

He opened his notebook again, staring at the drawing with equal parts horror and fascination. How could something so artistically pleasing to him be so shameful? He had been drawn to the aesthetics of rope bondage ever since he stumbled upon a photography book in the art library a few months ago. The way the ropes traced the curves of the human body, the interplay of tension and vulnerability, the trust implicit in the act—it captivated him. He had started sketching similarly bound figures in the margins of his notebooks, telling himself it was purely artistic, a study of form. But he knew, deep down, it was more than that. The images stirred something primal in him, a heat that spread from his chest to his groin, a craving he couldn’t name.

And now that secret was in the hands of the one person he least wanted to know: his mathematics professor, the beautiful, icy, inscrutable Xia Zhi Xue. The woman he had secretly admired for her grace and intellect. The woman whose long legs and slender fingers had occasionally distracted him during her lectures. The woman who now possessed a piece of his hidden self.

He spent the rest of the evening hyperanalyzing every detail of the encounter. He replayed the moment she handed back his assignment: her fingers brushing against his, the slight pause before she picked up his notebook and glanced at the page. Had she really seen it? Or had she glimpsed only a blur of lines? The notebook had been open at an angle. She might not have recognized what the drawing was. She might have dropped something else—a pen, perhaps, that he hadn’t noticed. The more he tried to convince himself, the less convincing it became. He remembered her eyes lingering on the page, the subtle raise of her eyebrow. She had seen it. There was no doubt.

He didn’t sleep that night. He lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, listening to the rhythmic breathing of his roommates, wondering if tomorrow would be the day his life fell apart.

The next morning, Qin Hao walked into the mathematics lecture hall with a sense of impending doom. He took his usual seat in the third row, far enough from the front to avoid being singled out, but close enough to see the board clearly. Every nerve in his body was on high alert. When Professor Xia entered the room, his heart leaped into his throat. She was dressed in a tailored navy blue blazer over a white blouse and a knee-length pencil skirt, her hair pulled back in a sleek ponytail. She looked exactly as she always did: composed, professional, unapproachable. She set down her materials on the lectern, adjusted the microphone, and began the lecture without preamble.

Qin Hao could barely focus. The equations on the board blurred into meaningless symbols. All his attention was fixed on her: the way she moved across the front of the room, the occasional flicker of her gaze toward the students, the precise articulation of every word. He waited for her to call his name, to ask him to stay after class, to make a veiled remark. But nothing happened. She taught the material with her usual efficiency, pausing only to answer questions from other students. When her eyes swept over him, they passed without lingering. There was no accusatory glare, no knowing smile. Just the same cool, professional indifference she showed to everyone.

The first lecture ended, and she left the room without a backward glance. Qin Hao felt a surge of relief so powerful it made him dizzy. But then the paranoia returned. Perhaps she was waiting to report him formally. Perhaps she wanted to gather evidence. Perhaps she was playing a game, toying with him, letting him stew in anxiety before she struck.

Over the next few days, the pattern repeated. He would attend her classes, his stomach churning with dread, and she would teach as if he were invisible. During one lecture, she called on him to solve a problem on the board. He walked to the front with trembling legs, his chalk scraping against the slate, and managed to produce a correct answer. She nodded, said “Good,” and moved on. That was it. No hidden meaning. No pointed comment. He returned to his seat feeling like he had passed a test he hadn’t known he was taking.

But the fear didn’t subside. If anything, it evolved into a chronic unease that followed him everywhere. In the dormitory, his behavior grew odd. He would flinch when his phone buzzed, expecting a call from his parents or the dean. He would jump at sudden knocks on the door. His roommate, Li Wei, a burly sports science major, noticed the change first.

“Hey, Qin Hao, you okay?” Li Wei asked one evening, tossing a basketball from hand to hand. “You’ve been looking like you’ve seen a ghost for the past few days. Did you fail a test or something?”

Qin Hao forced a smile. “No, it’s nothing. Just… a lot of classwork.”

“Classwork,” Li Wei repeated skeptically. “You barely touched your novels yesterday. You’re usually nose-deep in some fantasy world by now.”

“I’m fine,” Qin Hao said, more sharply than he intended. He grabbed a towel and pretended to head for the shower, effectively ending the conversation.

His other roommate, Zhao Ming, a quiet engineering student, occasionally gave him sideways glances but didn’t probe. The third roommate, Sun Peng, was an extroverted business major who talked incessantly about startup ideas and never noticed anything amiss. Still, Qin Hao felt exposed in his own room. He began taking his notebook to bed with him, hiding it under his pillow. He stopped sketching altogether, afraid to even touch his pencils.

During meals in the cafeteria, he would scan the crowd for signs of gossip. He listened to whispered conversations, expecting to hear his name. But no one pointed at him. No one stared. Life at Qinghua University continued its ordinary rhythm—students studying, laughing, arguing, living. And yet, he felt detached from it all, as if he were watching his own life from outside his body.

By Wednesday, the strain had become almost unbearable. He had lost his appetite. Dark circles ringed his eyes. He caught himself zoning out in class, only to be jolted back to reality by the sound of Professor Xia’s voice. And then, during Thursday’s lecture, something happened that broke through his wall of anxiety.

They were working through a particularly dense proof involving multiple integrals. Professor Xia had turned her back to the class, writing an expansion on the whiteboard with swift, elegant strokes. As she raised her arm to reach the top of the board, her blazer pulled taut across her back, outlining the curve of her waist. Qin Hao watched, mesmerized, without meaning to. The fabric clung to her body, pressing against the swell of her hips where the pencil skirt hugged her figure. Her legs, sheathed in sheer black stockings, were in perfect alignment, one heel slightly lifted as she balanced on the other foot.

And then, as if sensing his gaze, she paused. She turned her head just slightly, her eyes meeting his over her shoulder. There was a flicker of something in her expression—recognition, perhaps, or amusement? Or was it just exhaustion? She held his gaze for a second longer than necessary before turning back to the board and finishing the equation.

Qin Hao looked down at his desk, his face burning. His heart hammered against his ribs. *What was that? Was she warning me? Testing me?* He couldn’t decipher her intention. But he couldn’t shake the feeling that the next move belonged to her.

Saturday arrived, and still no axe had fallen. Qin Hao spent the morning in the library, trying to catch up on homework he had neglected. But his mind kept wandering back to that moment in class, the way her eyes had locked onto his. The more he thought about it, the less it seemed like a warning.

（本章内容较长，当前页面已截取部分内容）

Chapter 5: Bold Tentative Actions

The silence of the dormitory pressed in on Qin Hao as he lay on his bed, staring at the ceiling. The fan above spun lazily, its soft hum the only sound in the room. His roommate had gone home for the weekend, leaving him alone with his thoughts, which was both a blessing and a curse.

He rolled onto his side, his mind replaying the moment in Professor Xia's office over and over again. The way her cheeks had flushed when she handed back his homework. The slight tremor in her fingers. The way her eyes had darted away from his, as if she couldn't bear to meet his gaze.

No, Qin Hao thought, sitting up abruptly. That wasn't normal. If she had been angry or disgusted, she would have said something. She would have called him out, threatened disciplinary action, contacted his parents. Any reasonable professor would have.

But she hadn't.

He swung his legs over the edge of the bed and rested his elbows on his knees, his head bowed. The sketchbook lay on his desk, open to the page where he had drawn the woman bound in intricate patterns of rope. He had stared at that drawing so many times over the past few days that he could trace every line from memory.

What if... what if she understood? What if she saw something in that drawing that resonated with her?

The thought made his heart race. It was dangerous, reckless, and probably delusional. But he couldn't shake it.

He stood and walked to his desk, picking up the sketchbook. His pencil was still there, lying beside it. He sat down and flipped to a blank page, his hand moving almost of its own accord.

This time, he drew with more care than ever before. The figure was still a woman, her form suggested rather than explicit, but the ropes were more detailed now. He drew them looping around her wrists, her ankles, across her chest and hips. The knots were precise, the tension visible in the way the lines curved. He added subtle shadows to emphasize the tightness of the bindings.

But it was the expression on her face that made his heart pound. He drew her eyes half-closed, her lips slightly parted, her head tilted back. Not in fear or pain, but in surrender. In trust.

He finished the drawing and set down his pencil, his hands trembling slightly. This was it. If he included this in his homework, there would be no mistaking it for an accidental doodle. No pretending it was just a study of anatomy or a random sketch.

This was deliberate. This was intentional.

And if he was wrong, if Professor Xia was not what he suspected, he would be facing consequences he couldn't even begin to imagine.

But if he was right...

He closed the sketchbook and set it aside, his mind churning.

The next few days were torture. Every time he saw Professor Xia in the hallway or in the lecture hall, his stomach clenched. She seemed so composed, so professional, her blouse buttoned to the collar, her skirt falling just above her knees. She walked with a straight back and measured steps, every inch the dignified academic.

But he had seen the blush. He had seen the way her breath had caught when she looked at his drawing.

He watched her during lectures, noting the way she gripped the chalk, the precise movements of her hands as she wrote equations on the board. She had long, slender fingers, elegant and capable. What would they look like if they were bound? What would she look like, her wrists tied behind her back, her body arching against the ropes?

He shook his head violently, forcing the image away. This wasn't the time. He needed to focus.

The decision came on a Wednesday afternoon, three weeks after the incident in her office. The semester was progressing, and the next homework assignment was due on Friday. Qin Hao sat in the library, his textbook open in front of him, but he wasn't reading. He was staring at the blank page of his notebook, his pencil poised.

This was his chance.

He worked on the math problems first, his calculations neat and precise. He finished all of them, double-checking his work, making sure there were no mistakes. Then, with his heart hammering in his chest, he turned to a fresh page.

He drew the figure in the corner of the page, tucked away as if it were a marginal note, a casual doodle. But there was nothing casual about it. The woman was on her knees, her wrists bound behind her back, a length of rope wrapped around her waist. Her head was bowed, her hair falling forward to obscure her face. The ropes were drawn with meticulous detail, each loop and knot rendered with the same care he had put into the math problems.

He stared at the drawing for a long moment. Then, without allowing himself to think further, he closed the notebook and slid it into his backpack.

Thursday morning, the homework was due. Qin Hao walked into the lecture hall with his heart in his throat. The room was already half-full, students chatting and laughing, oblivious to the storm raging inside him.

He took his usual seat near the back, his notebook clutched tightly in his hands. The skin of his palms was slick with sweat. He wiped them on his jeans, then immediately felt them grow damp again.

The professor's desk was at the front of the room, empty for now. The pile of homework from the other sections had already been placed there, a neat stack of papers and notebooks. Qin Hao's eyes fixed on that pile as if it were a live grenade.

When the bell rang, the teaching assistant stood and began collecting the homework. Qin Hao watched as the stack grew larger, the TA moving methodically down each row.

When the TA reached his row, Qin Hao hesitated. His hand trembled as he held out his notebook. The TA took it without a word, adding it to the pile, and moved on.

It was done.

Qin Hao sat through the lecture in a daze. Professor Xia stood at the board, her voice calm and measured as she explained differential equations. Qin Hao heard none of it. His eyes were fixed on her, on the way she moved, the way she gestured.

She doesn't know yet, he thought. Not until she grades them.

The days that followed were the longest of his life.

He couldn't sleep. He couldn't eat. Every time his phone rang, he jumped, expecting a call from his parents or the dean's office. He checked his email obsessively, scanning for any message from the university.

Nothing.

By Tuesday of the following week, the tension had become unbearable. The homework from the previous week was due to be returned in Thursday's class. Qin Hao had three days to go, and he wasn't sure he would survive them.

What if she had reported him? What if the drawing had been confiscated as evidence? What if there was already a disciplinary file with his name on it?

He forced himself to breathe, to think rationally.

If she had reported him, he would have been called to the dean's office by now. They wouldn't wait. The university had procedures in place for incidents like this. He knew because he had looked it up, spending an hour on the school's website reading the code of conduct.

The fact that no one had contacted him meant something. It meant she was still deciding. Or it meant she had decided to ignore it.

Or it meant she was just as conflicted as he was.

Thursday came, gray and drizzly. Qin Hao arrived at the lecture hall early, taking his usual seat. He watched the door, his pulse racing, as students filed in.

When Professor Xia entered, he felt his breath catch.

She was dressed as she always was: a white blouse, a charcoal gray skirt, her hair pulled back in a sleek ponytail. She carried a stack of notebooks and papers, setting them on the desk before arranging her notes.

She looked up, her gaze passing over the room. When her eyes met his, there was a flicker of something—recognition? acknowledgment?—before she looked away.

He couldn't tell.

The lecture was interminable. Every second stretched into an hour as he waited for the inevitable moment. Would she call him up after class? Would she ask him to stay? Would she pretend nothing had happened?

When the bell rang, the students began to rise, gathering their belongings. Qin Hao remained seated, his eyes fixed on Professor Xia.

She was sorting the homework into stacks, her movements unhurried. The TA approached her, said something, and she nodded. Then, to Qin Hao's surprise, the TA began returning the notebooks.

He watched as the TA worked through the rows, handing back the homework to each student. When the TA reached his row, Qin Hao's heart stopped.

"Qin Hao?" the TA said, holding out a notebook.

His notebook.

He took it with trembling hands. The TA moved on, oblivious.

He stared at the cover, afraid to open it. His fingers traced the edge of the pages, hesitating.

Slowly, he opened the notebook.

The math problems were there, marked with red checkmarks and corrections. A grade was written at the top: 95. Excellent.

And there, on the corner of the last page, was the drawing.

Unremarked. Uncommented. Untouched.

He stared at it, his mind blank. She had seen it. She must have seen it. But there was no note, no annotation, no indication that she had even noticed.

What did it mean?

He looked up, searching for Professor Xia. She was at her desk, gathering her papers. A few students had gathered around her, asking questions about the homework.

He waited, his heart pounding, until the last student had left. Then he stood, his notebook clutched to his chest, and approached the desk.

"Professor Xia?" His voice came out rough, barely above a whisper.

She looked up, her expression carefully neutral. "Yes, Qin Hao? Is there something you need?"

He opened his mouth, but the words wouldn't come. What was he supposed to say? Did you see my drawing? Why didn't you say anything? Are you one of us?

Instead, he said, "I... I wanted to thank you for the grade."

She inclined her head. "You earned it. Your work was excellent."

There was a pause. The silence stretched between them, heavy with unspoken meaning. Qin Hao felt like he was standing on the edge of a cliff, the wind howling around him, and one wrong step would send him plummeting.

He couldn't do it. He couldn't ask.

"Thank you," he repeated, his voice barely audible. He turned and walked away, his footsteps echoing in the empty room.

He was halfway to the door when her voice stopped him.

"Qin Hao."

He froze, his heart lurching. Slowly, he turned around.

Professor Xia was still at her desk, her hands resting on the surface. Her face was unreadable, but there was something in her eyes, a depth he had never seen before.

"Your homework," she said, her voice low. "The marginalia. I noticed it."

His blood ran cold.

"I'm not going to report you," she continued, her tone calm. "But I want you to understand that such material is... inappropriate for a classroom setting."

He nodded, not trusting himself to speak.

She held his gaze for a long moment. Then, so softly he almost missed it, she added, "However, I do recognize the... skill involved. The attention to detail."

And then she turned and walked away, leaving him standing there, his heart racing, his mind reeling.

The door clicked shut behind her.

Qin Hao stood in the empty lecture hall for a long time, his notebook pressed against his chest. The words echoed in his mind, over and over.

The attention to detail.

She recognized the skill.

She knew.

He walked back to his dormitory in a daze, his feet moving on autopilot. The rain had stopped, leaving the air fresh and cool, but he barely noticed. His mind was consumed with what had just happened.

She had seen the drawing. She had acknowledged it. And she had not reported him.

More than that—she had complimented him.

He collapsed onto his bed staring at the ceiling, his thoughts spiraling. The door was locked, the curtains drawn, the room dim and quiet.

She recognized the skill, he repeated in his mind. Those words felt like a key turning in a lock, opening a door he had been afraid to approach.

But what now? Where did he go fro

（本章内容较长，当前页面已截取部分内容）

# Chapter 6: Summoned Again

The morning sun streamed through the tall windows of the mathematics lecture hall, casting long golden rectangles across the worn wooden desks. Qin Hao sat in his usual seat—third row from the back, near the window—his fingers nervously tapping against the cover of his textbook. Sleep had eluded him the night before, his mind replaying the events of yesterday's encounter with Professor Xia Zhixue. The sketch he had left in his homework assignment, the deliberate choice of subject matter, the silent message he had transmitted through pencil lines and shading.

He had barely touched his breakfast. The cafeteria's congee had grown cold in its bowl as he stared at nothing, his thoughts consumed by the question that had gnawed at him since leaving her office: Had she understood? Had she recoiled in disgust? Or worse, had she simply dismissed it as the work of a disturbed student?

The classroom gradually filled with students. The murmur of conversations, the shuffling of backpacks, the occasional yawn from someone who had stayed up too late—all of it faded into a dull background hum as Qin Hao's gaze remained fixed on the door at the front of the room. Every time it swung open, his heart lurched, only to settle back down when it was just another student entering.

And then she walked in.

Professor Xia Zhixue moved with her characteristic grace, her posture straight and dignified. Today she wore a cream-colored blouse tucked into a navy pencil skirt that fell just below her knees. The outfit was modest, professional, entirely appropriate for a university professor. Yet Qin Hao's eyes traced the silhouette of her figure with a newfound awareness, his mind superimposing images of rope and restraint over the clean lines of her clothing.

She set her leather briefcase on the lectern with a soft thud, her movements measured and unhurried. Her hair was pinned up in its usual neat bun, not a single strand out of place. She adjusted the microphone on her collar—a necessity for the large lecture hall—and began arranging her papers with the efficiency of someone who had performed this routine countless times.

Qin Hao watched her face intently, searching for any sign, any subtle crack in her composure that might betray her reaction to his homework. But her expression revealed nothing. Her features were smooth, composed, the face of a woman who had mastered the art of professional detachment.

"Good morning, everyone," she said, her voice carrying through the speakers with its usual calm authority. "Before we begin today's lecture, I'll be returning your homework assignments from last week."

A ripple of anticipation moved through the room. Some students straightened in their seats, eager to see their grades. Others slumped lower, dreading the results. Qin Hao felt his palms begin to sweat.

Professor Xia reached into her briefcase and pulled out a thick stack of papers. She began calling names in alphabetical order, her voice even and neutral as she handed back each assignment. Student after student walked to the front to retrieve their work, some returning with satisfied smiles, others with grimaces of disappointment.

"Chen Wei."

"Li Ming."

"Liu Fang."

The stack grew thinner. Qin Hao's heart pounded against his ribs, each beat echoing in his ears. He watched her hands as she sorted through the papers, her long fingers moving with deliberate precision. Those hands. He had spent hours thinking about those hands, imagining them holding rope, tying knots, pulling taut.

"Wang Jie."

"Xu Lan."

"Yang Tao."

The name he was waiting for—dreading—did not come. The stack dwindled to just a few papers, and then to none. Professor Xia placed the remaining assignments back into her briefcase and closed the clasp with a decisive click.

Qin Hao's stomach dropped.

She had kept his assignment.

He forced himself to take slow, steady breaths, trying to calm the storm of anxiety swirling in his chest. This could mean anything. Perhaps she had simply forgotten to include his paper in the stack. Perhaps she had wanted to discuss his mathematical errors with him privately. Perhaps—

No. He knew what it meant. He had known the moment he slipped that sketch into the pages of his homework. The drawing of the woman bound in intricate rope patterns, her face tilted in an expression of serene surrender, her body displayed like a work of art. It had been a test, a gamble, a reaching out into the dark with the desperate hope that someone might reach back.

And now he would learn the result.

"Before we proceed to today's lesson," Professor Xia said, her gaze sweeping across the room, "Qin Hao, I'd like you to come to my office after class. I have some feedback on your assignment that I'd like to discuss with you."

The words hung in the air, seemingly innocent, perfectly professional. Any other student might have assumed she wanted to discuss a mathematical error or offer guidance on improving their work. But Qin Hao heard the unspoken weight behind them.

"Yes, Professor," he managed to say, his voice coming out steadier than he expected.

She nodded once, then turned to the whiteboard, picking up a marker with practiced ease. "Now, let's continue with our discussion of differential equations. Open your textbooks to chapter seven."

The next ninety minutes were an exercise in controlled agony.

Qin Hao sat rigid in his seat, his notebook open before him, his pen held in a death grip. He tried to focus on the equations flowing across the whiteboard, on the patient explanations of integration methods and boundary conditions, but his mind refused to cooperate. Every few seconds, his gaze would drift from the board to the woman at the front of the room, studying her with an intensity that bordered on desperation.

She taught with her usual precision, her voice never wavering, her movements never betraying a hint of nervousness. She paced the length of the stage as she lectured, occasionally gesturing with her hands to emphasize a point. When a student asked a question, she answered it with patience and clarity, her smile warm but professional.

It was maddening.

Qin Hao wanted to see something—anything—that would confirm his suspicions. A lingering glance in his direction. A slight tremor in her hands as she wrote. A momentary pause when her eyes passed over his seat. But there was nothing. She was a fortress of composure, her walls impenetrable, her secrets locked away behind a facade of academic authority.

He began to doubt himself. Perhaps he had misread the entire situation. Perhaps she had seen his sketch and dismissed it as the bizarre fantasy of a troubled student, filing it away in the category of things she would never speak of again. Perhaps today's summons was genuinely about his mathematical performance, and he would spend the entire meeting discussing integration techniques while she silently judged him as a pervert.

The thought made him want to sink through the floor.

But then, in the final ten minutes of the lecture, something happened.

Professor Xia was explaining a particularly complex equation, her back to the class as she wrote on the whiteboard. She finished the line of notation and turned to face the students, her hand still holding the marker. As her gaze swept across the room, it passed over Qin Hao's seat, and for just a fraction of a second—so brief he might have imagined it—her eyes lingered.

There was something in that glance. A flicker of recognition. Of acknowledgment. Of—dare he hope?—connection.

Then it was gone, and she was moving on to the next step of the equation, her voice steady, her expression unchanged.

Qin Hao's heart raced. He pressed his palms flat against the cool surface of his desk, trying to ground himself. That look. He hadn't imagined it. He was sure of it.

The final minutes of class dragged by with excruciating slowness. Qin Hao checked the clock on the wall so often that the student sitting next to him—a young woman named Zhang Wei who occasionally borrowed his notes—leaned over and whispered, "Are you okay? You seem really tense."

He forced a smile. "Just nervous about the feedback. Math isn't really my strong suit."

She nodded sympathetically. "Professor Xia can be intimidating. But she's actually really nice if you go to her office hours. She explained a concept to me five times last semester without getting annoyed."

"Good to know," Qin Hao said, though the reassurance did little to calm him.

Finally, mercifully, the lecture came to an end. Professor Xia set down her marker and addressed the class one last time. "That's all for today. Review chapters seven and eight before next week's quiz. If you have any questions, my office hours are posted outside my door."

Students began gathering their belongings, the rustle of papers and the scrape of chairs filling the room. Conversations erupted as people compared notes and discussed weekend plans. The noise was a welcome distraction, a buffer between Qin Hao and what lay ahead.

He did not move.

He sat in his seat, his hands gripping the edges of his desk, watching the other students file out of the room. Some glanced at him curiously, wondering why he remained seated, but most were too absorbed in their own affairs to pay him much attention. A few at a time, they trickled through the doors, their voices fading into the hallway until only silence remained.

Qin Hao was alone.

He took a deep breath, then another. His heart was hammering so hard he could feel it in his throat. His palms were slick with sweat, and his mouth felt dry as sandpaper.

*You can do this*, he told himself. *It's just a conversation. She's just a professor. There's nothing to be afraid of.*

But it was a lie. He was terrified. Not of her authority, not of the potential academic consequences, but of what this meeting might reveal. If she had understood his message and responded with disgust, he would have to face the crushing weight of rejection. If she had understood and responded with interest, he would have to confront the terrifying reality of his desires made manifest.

Either way, there was no going back.

He forced himself to stand, his legs feeling unsteady beneath him. He gathered his books and his bag with mechanical movements, his mind elsewhere. The classroom felt cavernous now, the empty desks stretching out in neat rows like gravestones.

The walk to the door felt like an eternity. Each step required conscious effort, a deliberate act of will. He paused at the threshold, one hand resting on the doorframe, and looked back at the room one last time. The whiteboard was still covered in equations, the ghost of Professor Xia's lecture lingering in the chalk dust.

Then he stepped into the hallway and began the long walk to the faculty office building.

The corridors were mostly empty at this hour, the lunch rush yet to begin. His footsteps echoed on the linoleum floor, a lonely rhythm that matched the beat of his heart. He passed bulletin boards covered in flyers for student clubs and academic events, water fountains that hummed with the sound of circulating water, doors that led to classrooms and laboratories and offices he had never entered.

The faculty office building was a separate structure connected to the main building by a covered walkway. It was older, quieter, with a sense of history that seemed to seep from the walls. The air smelled of old paper and floor wax, a scent that had always struck Qin Hao as reassuringly academic.

He climbed the stairs to the second floor, his legs feeling heavier with each step. Professor Xia's office was at the end of the hall, room 207. He had been there before, of course, but that had been a different visit, a different context. Now everything felt charged with significance.

As he approached, he noticed that the door was slightly ajar. A sliver of light escaped through the crack, and he could hear soft sounds from within—the rustling of paper,

（本章内容较长，当前页面已截取部分内容）

The afternoon sun filtered through the venetian blinds in Professor Xia Zhi Xue’s office, casting neat stripes of light and shadow across the polished wooden floor. She sat at her desk, trying to focus on the stack of papers in front of her, but her hands trembled as she turned a page.

When she heard the knock on the door, she nearly knocked over her coffee cup. Her heart slammed against her ribs as if trying to escape her chest.

“Come in,” she said, her voice breathless and strange. She cleared her throat as the door opened.

Qin Hao stepped inside. He looked nervous, his hands shoved into the pockets of his hoodie, his eyes flicking around the room as if he were entering a lion’s den. Sunlight caught the edge of his jaw, and she noticed for the first time that he had a quiet intensity about him, a stillness that contrasted with the nervous energy of most freshmen.

“Professor Xia,” he began. “You wanted to see me?”

She nodded, her mouth suddenly dry. Words scattered inside her head like startled birds. She had called him here for a reason, of course. The sketchbook. The drawings. The question that had been burning in her mind for the past two days. But now that he stood before her, all her prepared speeches evaporated.

“Qin Hao,” she said, and her voice cracked on the second syllable. She picked up a pen from her desk, put it down, picked it up again. “I... um... I wanted to... That is to say, I wanted to make sure that you're... settling in well.”

She heard herself and cringed. That wasn't what she had planned to say at all.

“The first semester of university can be very... very challenging,” she continued, her words stumbling over each other. “Academically, emotionally, socially. It's a big transition. So if you have any... any difficulties, I mean problems, with anything, any of your courses, or with... with adjusting, you can always come to me.”

She gestured vaguely with the pen, nearly knocking over a framed photo on her desk. She caught it just in time, her face flushing.

“I mean it,” she said, her voice too high, too bright. “I want to be a resource for my students. A support system. So if you need anything, anything at all, textbooks, study guides, tutoring, advice about... about life, you can just... you can knock on my door. Or send an email. I check my email many times a day. Probably too many times a day.”

She laughed, a nervous, breathy sound that felt foreign to her own ears. She rubbed the back of her neck, feeling heat creeping up her throat.

“The library has excellent resources too,” she added, for no reason at all. “Did you know they have a 24-hour study lounge? I didn't use it much as an undergraduate, but some students swear by it. They say the quiet helps them focus.”

She was rambling, and she knew it. Every word she spoke only made the gap between what she meant to say and what she actually said wider. Her professional composure, which she had cultivated for years like a carefully pruned bonsai tree, was unraveling in front of a freshman.

Qin Hao stood there, not interrupting, his expression calm but alert. He seemed to be waiting for her to finish her spiral.

“So,” she said, finally forcing herself to stop. “That's what I wanted to say. How are things going for you? Any challenges?”

She set down the pen and folded her hands on the desk, trying to project an authority she no longer felt. Her fingers were ice cold, and she could feel a bead of sweat tracing a path down her spine.

Qin Hao was silent for a moment. His dark eyes met hers, and she felt as if he could see right through her, past the professor, past the measured words, past the carefully constructed facade she had built over years of quiet desperation.

“Professor Xia,” he said slowly, “I think you know why I'm here.”

The words hit her like a bucket of cold water. She stiffened, her composure shattering completely.

“I... I don't...” she started, but the protest died on her lips. There was no point in pretending. Not anymore.

Qin Hao took a step forward. He was nervous too, she could see it now. The hand he pulled out of his pocket was trembling slightly. But there was a determined set to his jaw, a resolve that surprised her.

“I’ve been thinking about this for a while,” he said. “Ever since I turned in that first sketchbook. I thought you might say something then, but you didn't. So I did it again. The second sketchbook, the one with the girl in ropes. I drew it because I wanted to know.”

“Know what?” she whispered.

“Know if you were like me.”

The admission hung in the air between them, fragile and dangerous. Qin Hao took a deep breath, and the words began to spill out of him like water through a cracked dam.

“It started at the beginning of the semester,” he said. “I was in my dorm room, alone. I couldn't sleep. I was scrolling through my phone, just browsing random websites, and I accidentally clicked on a pop-up ad. It was for a BDSM website.”

He looked down at his feet, his cheeks reddening. “I almost closed it immediately. I was embarrassed, you know? But something made me stay. I don't know what. Curiosity, maybe. Or something deeper that I hadn't recognized yet. I started looking at the pictures, reading the articles. And the more I saw, the more I felt... something. An excitement. A pull.”

He looked up at her, his eyes pleading for understanding. “I've always been drawn to beauty. That's why I love drawing. I love capturing the shape of a body, the way light falls on skin. But those pictures... they showed me something I had never seen before. Beauty combined with restraint. Vulnerability combined with trust.”

His voice grew stronger as he spoke, as if the act of confessing was liberating him from years of unspoken desire. “I started researching more. I read about rope bondage, about shibari, about the psychology behind it. And the more I learned, the more I understood myself. I realized that the reason I felt so drawn to those images wasn't something shameful. It was just a part of me. A part of me I had never known existed.”

He paused, taking a ragged breath. “But I didn't know who to talk to about it. I couldn't tell my friends. I couldn't tell my parents. I didn't know anyone who would understand. And then I had your class. When I drew that first sketchbook, I wasn't even thinking about it. I just drew what came naturally. But when I handed it in, I realized what I had done. And I waited for you to say something.”

“But you didn’t,” he continued. “So I thought, maybe she didn't notice. Or maybe she didn't care. But something told me to try again. To draw something more explicit. To see if you would react.”

He met her eyes again, and there was no shame in his gaze. Only honesty. “That's why I drew the second sketchbook. It was a test. I wanted to know if you were someone I could trust. Someone who would understand.”

The confession emptied the room of sound. The humming of the overhead lights seemed to fade, the distant murmur of students in the hallways disappeared, and there was only the two of them, suspended in a moment of raw vulnerability.

Xia Zhi Xue sat frozen, her hands gripping the edge of her desk. Her mind was a whirlwind of emotions. Shock, relief, fear, desire. All of them tangled together into a knot she couldn't untie.

When she finally spoke, her voice was hoarse. “You drew those pictures to test me?”

“Yes,” he said simply. “And now I know the answer.”

She closed her eyes, and a long, shuddering breath escaped her lips. For years, she had kept her desires locked away in the deepest corner of her heart. She had lived a life of quiet restraint, channeling her passion into mathematics, her grace into yoga, her longing into secret fantasies she never dared to share with another living soul. She had accepted that this was her burden to carry alone.

But now, a student half her age had cracked open the door she had sealed shut.

“Qin Hao,” she said, and her voice broke. She pressed her fingers to her temples, trying to gather herself. “Do you have any idea... any idea what you're saying?”

“I know exactly what I'm saying,” he replied. “And I know what I want. I want to learn. I want to explore this side of myself. And I think... I think you want the same thing.”

She stood up abruptly, her chair screeching against the floor. She turned her back to him, facing the window. Outside, the campus was bathed in golden light, students walking along the paths, laughing, living normal lives. She felt like an imposter, a woman with a double life, one of the world's best-kept secrets.

The silence stretched between them, thick and suffocating. She could feel his eyes on her back, waiting, hoping. She knew she could still end this. She could turn around, put on her stern professor face, and tell him that he was mistaken, that his drawings were inappropriate, that he should see a counselor. She could shut this door and never open it again.

But the thought of that felt like a death sentence.

She turned around slowly. Her eyes were glassy with unshed tears.

“Come to my house tonight,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. “At eight o'clock. I'll text you the address.”

She saw the surprise flicker across his face. He opened his mouth as if to ask a question, but she held up a hand to stop him.

“Don't ask me anything right now,” she said. “Just... go back to class. We'll talk tonight.”

He hesitated for a moment, as if he wanted to say more, but then he nodded. “Okay. I'll be there.”

He turned and walked to the door, his footsteps echoing in the quiet room. As his hand touched the doorknob, she called out his name.

“Qin Hao.”

He looked back.

“Be careful,” she said. “This isn't a game.”

He gave her a small, reassuring smile. “I know.”

And then he was gone, the door clicking shut behind him. Xia Zhi Xue sank back into her chair, her legs weak, her heart pounding. She stared at the closed door for a long time, her mind a blank canvas of fear and anticipation.

Qin Hao walked out of the math building and into the warm autumn sunlight. The campus was alive with activity, a steady stream of students heading to their next classes. He felt like he was moving through a dream, his body on autopilot while his mind replayed the conversation over and over.

He had done it. He had actually confessed.

A part of him had expected her to react with anger or disgust. He had been prepared for the worst, ready to face a disciplinary meeting, maybe even academic probation. But instead, she had looked at him with something that resembled understanding. And then she had invited him to her house.

What did that mean?

He ran his hand through his hair, trying to make sense of it. Was she going to offer him resources for professional help? Or was she going to... he didn't even dare to finish the thought.

He walked across the quad, past the library, past the student center, his feet carrying him toward the dormitory without any conscious direction. His mind was a jumble of questions. Why her house? Why tonight? What did she want to talk about?

He stopped at a bench near the fountain and sat down, watching the water dance in the sunlight. He thought about the expression on her face when he had confessed. The way her eyes had softened, the way her hands had trembled. She was hiding something. He could sense it.

But what?

He pulled out his phone and checked the time. It was only 2:30 in the afternoon. He had hours to kill before he was supposed to meet her. The waiting felt like torture.

Back in her office, Xia Zhi Xue sat motionless, her hands resting on the chair's armrests. The office had never felt so small, so suffocating. She could almost hear his words echoing off the walls.

"I wanted to know if you were someone I could trust."

She had spent years trusting no one with this part of herself. The few times she had come close, during late-night conversations with friends that skirted too close to the truth, she had always backed away, laughing it off as a j

（本章内容较长，当前页面已截取部分内容）

The evening air was cool against Qin Hao’s skin as he stood at the entrance to the apartment building. The address Xia Zhixue had given him earlier that day was etched into his memory, a small slip of paper with neat handwriting that he had folded and unfolded a dozen times since leaving campus. He checked his phone again, the screen casting a pale glow on his face as he confirmed the apartment number: 402.

His heart was beating strangely fast. It was just a dinner, he told himself. A student invited to his professor’s home for a meal. That wasn’t unusual. Many professors held office hours at home, or invited students for tutoring sessions. But this wasn’t a tutoring session. Xia Zhixue had made that clear with her parting smile, the one that had lingered in his thoughts all afternoon like a half-remembered melody.

He pushed the door to the building and stepped into the foyer. The hallway was clean and quiet, the kind of quiet that seemed to amplify every small sound. His footsteps echoed softly against the tiled floor as he made his way to the elevator. The doors opened with a soft chime, and he stepped inside, pressing the button for the fourth floor.

The ride up was brief, but it felt longer. Qin Hao adjusted his collar, smoothed down his hair, and took a deep breath. He was dressed simply but neatly: a light gray button-up shirt and dark slacks. He had debated whether to dress more formally, but decided against it. He didn’t want to seem like he was trying too hard. This was just a dinner. A friendly dinner between a student and his teacher.

The elevator doors slid open, and he stepped out into the corridor. Apartment 402 was at the end of the hall, a plain wooden door with a brass number plate. He walked toward it slowly, his footsteps muffled by the carpeted floor. When he reached the door, he paused, his hand hovering near the doorbell.

What was he doing here? He could still turn back, make some excuse, say he wasn’t feeling well. But even as he thought it, he knew he wouldn’t. The pull he felt toward Xia Zhixue was something he couldn’t explain, something that had been building since that afternoon in her office. Since she had revealed a side of herself that no student had ever seen.

He pressed the doorbell.

A soft, melodic chime sounded from inside the apartment. Qin Hao stood still, his ears straining for any sound from within. For a moment, there was nothing. Then a voice, warm and slightly muffled through the door, answered.

“Coming.”

The voice was Xia Zhixue’s, but it had a different quality to it than the one she used in the classroom. Softer. More relaxed. Almost musical.

Qin Hao’s breath caught in his throat. He heard footsteps inside, the distinctive sound of slippers on a wooden floor. The footsteps approached the door, and there was a brief pause, as if she was checking through the peephole. Then the lock clicked, the handle turned, and the door swung open.

For a moment, Qin Hao forgot how to breathe.

Xia Zhixue stood in the doorway, and she was nothing like the woman who lectured in front of the blackboard with such stern authority. She had changed out of her professional attire and was wearing a thin, sleeveless shirt made of some soft, flowing material. It was a pale lavender color, and it hung loosely over her frame, the fabric draping just past her hips. The hem of the shirt barely covered the tops of her thighs, revealing a pair of long, slender legs that seemed to go on forever. She wore no pants, only a pair of soft-looking shorts that were almost entirely hidden beneath the shirt.

The shirt itself was translucent enough that Qin Hao could see the outline of her body beneath it. Her breasts, full and round, moved subtly with her breath, and he could see the darker shade of her nipples through the thin material. She was not wearing a bra.

His face flushed instantly. He tried to look away, but his eyes seemed to have a will of their own, tracing the curve of her hips, the smooth line of her thighs, the small waist that her shirt clung to. She looked like something out of a dream, or perhaps one of the more provocative paintings he had studied in art history.

Xia Zhixue watched his reaction with a small, knowing smile. Her hair was loose, falling in soft waves past her shoulders, and she was not wearing any makeup, which made her look younger, more approachable. In the soft light of her apartment, she seemed almost ethereal.

“Don’t just stand there staring,” she said, her voice carrying a hint of amusement. “Come in, Qin Hao. Don’t be shy.”

He blinked, finally snapping out of his trance. “Oh. Right. Sorry, Professor Xia.”

She laughed softly, a sound that was like warm honey. “You can drop the ‘Professor’ for tonight. Just call me Zhixue. Or Teacher Xia, if you must.” She stepped aside, holding the door open for him. “Come in, come in. The food is almost ready.”

He stepped over the threshold, his movements awkward and uncertain. The apartment was warm and smelled of home-cooked food, a rich aroma of soy sauce, ginger, and something sweet. Xia Zhixue closed the door behind him, and the soft click of the lock seemed to seal them both inside a private world.

She moved past him, her bare feet padding softly on the wooden floor. “I have slippers for you. Just a moment.” She walked to a small rack near the entrance and retrieved a pair of simple house slippers, setting them down in front of him. “They should fit. I picked them up earlier today, thinking you might need them.”

The thoughtfulness of the gesture struck him. She had bought slippers specifically for him. He stepped out of his shoes and slid his feet into the slippers. They fit perfectly, as if they had been measured for him.

“Thank you,” he said, his voice still a little shaky.

“It’s nothing.” Xia Zhixue turned and walked further into the apartment, her hips swaying gently with each step. The shirt she wore shifted with her movement, occasionally lifting to reveal a glimpse of the curve of her buttocks beneath the shorts. Qin Hao’s eyes followed her against his better judgment, his face growing hotter.

The apartment was a one-bedroom unit, but it was spacious and well-decorated. The living room was furnished with a comfortable-looking sofa, a low coffee table, and a bookshelf filled with books on mathematics, philosophy, and art. There were a few framed prints on the walls, subtle abstract pieces that added splashes of color. The dining area was adjacent, with a small table set for two. On it, there were already some dishes covered with lids, steam rising from the edges.

Xia Zhixue gestured toward the sofa. “Make yourself comfortable. I just need to finish up a couple of things in the kitchen. Would you like something to drink? I have tea, water, or some juice.”

“Tea would be nice,” he said, sitting down on the edge of the sofa. He felt like a guest in a very formal, very intimate setting, and he didn’t quite know how to act.

“Coming right up.” She disappeared into the kitchen, which was separated from the living room by a half-wall. Qin Hao could see her moving around, her silhouette backlit by the warm lights above the stove. He watched her as she busied herself, her movements fluid and graceful, like a dancer. She reached up to a cabinet to retrieve a cup, and the shirt lifted, revealing the curve of her lower back and the top of her shorts. He quickly looked away, his hands gripping his knees.

Get a grip, he told himself. She’s your professor. This is just a dinner.

But the memory of that afternoon, of her pressed against him in the elevator, of the admission she had made about her hidden desires, haunted him. She had said she had her reasons for choosing him. Those words echoed in his mind, taunting him.

Xia Zhixue returned a few moments later, carrying two cups of steaming tea. She handed one to him, and their fingers brushed briefly. The touch sent a jolt through him, like static electricity. She smiled, a knowing smile that suggested she had felt it too, and sat down beside him on the sofa.

Not across from him. Beside him. Their shoulders were only inches apart.

“I hope you like Chinese food,” she said, taking a sip of her tea. “I made a few dishes that I thought you might enjoy. Nothing too fancy, just some home-style cooking.”

“I’m sure it’s wonderful,” he said, his voice a little too high. He cleared his throat. “Thank you for inviting me, Te… Xia Zhixue.” He stumbled over the name, unused to saying it without the title.

She laughed again, that warm, melodic sound. “You’ll get used to it. It’s just a name, after all.” She set her tea down and looked at him, her eyes searching his face. “You seem nervous. Is everything okay?”

No, everything was not okay. He was sitting in his professor’s apartment, mere inches away from a woman who was wearing a nearly transparent shirt with nothing underneath, and she was asking him if everything was okay. His heart was pounding so hard he was sure she could hear it.

“I’m a little nervous, I admit,” he said, choosing honesty. “I’ve never… been to a teacher’s house before. Like this.”

“Like this?” Xia Zhixue tilted her head, a hint of playfulness in her eyes. “And how is this different from any other visit to a teacher’s house?”

He opened his mouth to answer, then closed it. How could he put it into words? That she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen up close, that her body was practically on display for him, that the air between them felt charged with something unspoken?

“I don’t know,” he said finally, looking down at his tea. “It’s just different.”

She reached out and placed her hand on his knee. The touch was light, barely a weight, but it sent a wave of heat through his entire body. He looked up, startled, and found her looking at him with an expression that was both tender and intensely focused.

“It is different,” she said softly. “And that’s okay. You don’t have to be afraid, Qin Hao. I’m not going to bite you.” She paused, and a slight smile curled the corner of her mouth. “Not yet, anyway.”

His breath caught. Was she joking? He couldn’t tell. Her eyes held his, unblinking, and for a long moment, neither of them spoke. The only sound was the soft hum of the refrigerator and the distant traffic from the street below.

Then she stood up, breaking the spell. “The food should be ready now. Let me just heat up the last dish.” She walked toward the kitchen, and Qin Hao let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding.

He watched her move around the kitchen, opening cabinets and removing lids from pots. The steam rose, carrying the delicious aroma of braised pork belly, stir-fried vegetables, and steamed fish. His stomach growled, and he realized how hungry he actually was.

She brought out dishes one by one, setting them on the dining table. There was a plate of braised pork belly with a rich, dark sauce, the meat tender and glistening. There was a bowl of stir-fried greens with garlic, a plate of fish steamed with ginger and scallions, and a small dish of pickled vegetables. The table was soon filled with an array of dishes that looked and smelled wonderful.

“I made a bit more than I planned,” she admitted, wiping her hands on a small towel. “I got a little carried away. I hope you have a good appetite.”

“It looks incredible,” Qin Hao said, standing up and walking over to the table. “You really didn’t have to go to all this trouble.”

“I wanted to,” Xia Zhixue said simply. “It’s been a long time since I cooked for someone.” She gestured for him to sit. “Please, make yourself at home.”

He sat down at the table, and she took the seat across from him. The arrangement gave him a clear view of her face, her shoulders, and the neckline of her shirt. She leaned forward slightly to reach for a dish, and the fabric gaped, revealing more of her chest. He forced himself to look at her eyes.

Xia Zhixue noticed his effort and smiled. “You’re very polite,” she said. “That’s a rare quality in students t

（本章内容较长，当前页面已截取部分内容）