Austin turned and saw Lily approaching.
“Professor Thompson.” Lily greeted.
“You came just at the right time. The team just finished a set of experiments, but it’s still not right. Come and take a look at what went wrong.” Thompson was eager to bring Lily into the lab.
“Professor Thompson,” Austin could not help but call out.
“Uh…” That made Thompson tilt his body sideways and raise his hand. “This is Austin Fike. I believe you two met yesterday. You haven’t visited the institute recently, so you might not know him. Austin just joined us not long ago, and he’s the student of a reputable teacher in this field!”
After a pause, he continued, “You two can chat since one of you is an expert in medicinal herbs while the other is an expert in fragrances. I’m sure the two of you can create sparks and miracles through exchanging ideas.”
Lily looked at Austin and nodded lightly as if yesterday's unpleasant incident did not happen. Then she smirked. “I wonder who Austin’s reputable teacher is?”
“Well…” Thompson did not know how to respond to that. Everyone in the industry implicitly understood that Austin was Dominic’s student. However, as it was something Dominic did not publicly announce, no one would mention it even though they all understood it.
After all, Dominic kept his student a secret from the public for now. If he wanted it to stay that way, everyone would pretend they knew nothing about it yet, although it was the opposite.
“His teacher is a respectable man, and he’s one of the pioneer researchers of medicinal herbs. Since he prefers to stay lowkey, I’ll not say too much about him,” Thompson explained.
Austin, who was by Thompson’s side, had his hands placed in front of him as he straightened his back. “My teacher doesn’t care about his fame and likes to stay lowkey. I don’t like using his name to get certain things for myself when working. After all, we’re doctors, and the most important thing is saving lives. We don’t care for fame, popularity, and whatnot.
“Oh?” Lily tilted her head and said profoundly. “Mr. Fike, you don’t want to talk about it, but everyone seems to know about it already.”
“Everyone is kinder to me due to their respect for my teacher.”
Austin would always put on airs in front of Lily, acting like a student who only chased knowledge for everyone’s benefit. His entire demeanor showed that he looked down on Lily.
Last night, Lily was quite angry, but she no longer felt that way. Getting angry over such a stubborn and old-fashioned hypocrite was not worth it to her.
‘This man is just using Mr. Dominic’s name to fool everyone for his benefit, so how dare he put on airs in front of me? It’d be unfortunate to work with such a hypocrite.’
“Professor Thompson, what did you say went wrong earlier?” Lily asked the man, ignoring Austin and the act he put on.
Upon hearing Lily’s question, Thompson suddenly became energetic and motioned with his hands while explaining the situation to Lily as he led her to the lab. “It’s about the formula. The experiment was close to success when you were still around, right? Still, there’s a slight scent of medicinal herbs, so I got them to decrease the amount of it from 3 milliliters, and we’ve decreased it several times over a few experiments.
“However, the problem now is that if we reduced the dosage used, it would reduce the effects of the medicine, but if we don’t do that, the medicinal herbs’ scent would be too potent. Would you advise we make some amendments to the ingredients?”
“We don’t need to change the main ingredient because it’s the only ingredient with the closest scent to the medicinal herbs. Plus, it’s the easiest to mix with the other ingredients. We could work on the proportions, though,” Lily said with determination.
They headed to the lab, with Austin following behind. He wanted to listen to the nonsense she could come up with as someone who knew nothing about the field.
After washing and disinfecting their hands, they put on their masks and gloves before entering the lab.
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