When she noticed Greg was still here and hadn't left, beneath Vivian's frozen, calm façade, her heart uncontrollably skipped a beat.
"Did he whisper to Yelena just now to get her to send everyone else away?"
"Why would he do that?"
"What does he... want to do by staying behind alone now?"
"If he just wanted to resign from the Student Council, there's no need to go this far, right?"
Countless questions instantly flooded her mind, throwing her proud, calm rationality into brief chaos.
The instant she realized the reality of being alone with him, her body imperceptibly stiffened slightly.
However, her long-standing habit of protecting herself behind absolute rationality and an icy shell made her forcibly suppress all emotional turbulence back into the deepest depths of her heart in the next instant.
"It's no big deal. It's just him deciding to leave me once again, that's all."
Vivian bowed her head deeply once more, her long ice-blue hair falling down, almost completely concealing her profile.
The hand holding her quill pen tried to refocus on the documents before her.
Yet those words that were once so familiar now twisted like wriggling bugs before her eyes, impossible to piece together into a single meaningful sentence.
The tip of her pen hovered above the parchment, trembling slightly, unable to bring itself to touch down.
In the end, in the places requiring her signature of approval or rejection, she unconsciously drew messy lines one after another, as if reflecting the chaotic thoughts in her mind.
"Tap... tap... tap..."
Clear footsteps rang out abruptly in the office, which was quiet enough to hear a pin drop.
Greg did not speak. He simply took step after step toward the ice-blue figure behind the desk who seemed intent on burying herself in documents.
Most of the sound was absorbed by the soft carpet, yet in this extreme quiet, every step felt as if it trod upon Vivian's taut heartstrings, echoing dull and clear.
"He... is going to leave my side once again..."
Vivian lowered her head even further, almost touching the desk.
Her knuckles turned white from the force of her grip on the quill, while her other hand beneath the desk unconsciously clenched her skirt.
She could clearly feel her breathing growing imperceptibly hurried under the oppressive pressure of his step-by-step approach.
Her ice-blue eyes fixed dead ahead on the documents she had scribbled over, trying to block out the approaching footsteps.
But she failed.
Because the footsteps suddenly stopped.
They stopped right in front of her desk, no more than a desk's width away from her.
Vivian's body stiffened imperceptibly.
She could even feel the shadow he cast, eclipsing a small portion of the desk before her.
"..."
A dead silence descended once more.
It was heavier and more suffocating than when the others had left just now.
In the air, invisible strings seemed to stretch tight, letting out a groan as if on the verge of snapping.
"Bam!"
Two hands suddenly slammed heavily onto the broad mahogany desk in front of her, making a dull, loud thud!
The stack of documents on the desk jolted slightly, sending ripples through the ink in the inkwell.
Startled by the sudden noise, Vivian's head, which had been lowered all this while, snapped up!
Her long ice-blue hair whipped back with the movement, revealing her exquisitely beautiful face, which now looked somewhat stiff from shock and forced composure.
Those ice-blue eyes, seemingly containing ten thousand years of frost, were finally forced to look straight into another pair of eyes close at hand.
Greg Sass's face was right in front of her, less than an arm's length away.
Because he was leaning forward on the desk, the distance between them grew even closer.
The light of the setting sun shone from the side, gilding his long golden hair and handsome profile with a warm glow.
Their eyes met.
The air froze.
Vivian could even see his long, thick eyelashes and feel the touch of the faint airflow from his breath brushing against her cheek.
Her ice-blue pupils constricted slightly, her heart pounding uncontrollably in her chest, thudding again and again, making her eardrums buzz.
She wanted to avert her gaze, to put that cold mask back on, to scold his rude behavior with the authority of the Student Council President...
But her body and her gaze seemed firmly locked by those amber eyes, rendering her unable to move.
A long-lost tension and palpitation belonging to 'Vivian' as an individual quietly spread within her.
In this eye contact where time itself seemed to freeze—
Greg suddenly moved again.
Instead of stepping back, he leaned down even lower, bringing his face even closer to Vivian's.
The distance between them was so close that Vivian could even smell the faint scent of sunlight on him, along with a slight trace of alcohol.
Greg suddenly spoke:
"Vivian..."
He called her name—not "President," nor with "Your Highness" attached to the end, just "Vivian."
This long-absent call immediately reminded Vivian of the emotion she had long decided to abandon.
Then Greg tilted his head slightly, his thin lips almost brushing against her fair earlobe, as he asked softly in a tone filled with endless temptation and probing:
"Do you... desire power?"
Vivian: "..."
Rate on N.U.
