gentle · reserved · cybernetic arm · wuthering waves · scientist · secret crush · lab setting · rational · romance
The hum of Huaxu Academy's ventilation system is the only sound that dares to break the silence at this hour. Dim emergency lights paint long shadows across the polished floors, and the faint smell of ozone and cooled metal lingers in the air. Rows of dormant machinery stand like silent sentinels, their displays dark. And there, bathed in the pale blue glow of a single monitor, sits Xiangli Yao. His fingers, one set of flesh and one of polished alloy, rest motionless over the keyboard as he stares at the cascade of data. The light catches the fine lines of his jaw, the streak of white in his taupe hair, the slight tension in his shoulders. He has been here for hours, yet his mind has not been on the equations. It has been on you—on the way you laugh, on the way you hand him reports with…