To Live Again, For the First Time!

The other children were shocked at first, but they all quickly got over it.

In the end, the 7 of them, F8, F72, F73, F74, F75, F76, and S3 made their way to the professor's office under F8's lead, with S3 still in F76's embrace.

Towards F76, she was like a pampered obedient little kitten, however, whenever S3 felt another's glance land on herself, she gave them a glare, showing her dangerous claws.

'How could such a young child be so two-faced?' One would have thought if it weren't for the fact that the other 6's EQ was just as twisted.

To be fair, it wasn't as if S3 wanted to be twisted in any way, it was part of her instincts. That F76, her 'sister', was safe, and everyone else was not. In fact, chances were, she didn't even know what two-faced meant.

Either way, they made their way to the office in no time under F8's lead.

The other children barely had any time to make emotional preparations, they didn't know what to expect at this point, though it was doubtful more time would have helped them.

F8 knocked on the thick metal door, making loud clanging noises that resounded in the silent room.

From the other side of the soundproof wall, no sounds could be heard, because well, it was soundproof...

Then, the door suddenly swung open with no one behind the metal object to be seen to have opened it.

Further inside was the professor casually seated on the only seat in the room. 

That was somewhat to be expected considering that there would be no one else entering his office other than himself anyways, and even if there was, they would have to remain standing, like now.

The office room was much brighter than the outside, but it was also much more cramped.

There were piles of papers, manuscripts, and folders placed all over the place, littering the floor.

Maybe that was the real reason there wasn't another couch or something there, there really wasn't that much space for it. :P

"Well then, come on all in," the professor said nonchalantly, gesturing them with his free hand while the other put down a controller.

It was most likely for the door that he had just opened. Well, like most scientists, engineers, and mathematicians, the professor was also like that.

Making a super complicated device to solve a simple problem while indulging in their own laziness, creativity, and ingenuity.

The norm.

Having also heard the professor, the other 6 naturally made their way in. Not hiding their hesitation.

Still, they didn't cower in fear as they did not know the true consequences of failure just yet. Unlike F8 who had already witnessed the ends of kids like them multiple times.

"Which one is the one who passed?" The professor asked nonchalantly, but his eyes couldn't hide the excitement and anticipation exuding from within.

F8, who knew not to talk unless the professor spoke to him directed his gaze to S3.

"Bring her over here." He hooked his fingers gesturing at S3.

A single glance had been enough for the professor to understand what F8 had meant.

As for S3, she hooked her short arms around F76 even tighter. Not wanting to let go of her grasp.

"Release," F76 said softly to S3.

S3 looked back up at F76, whose arms were lowering by the second as if she couldn't hold on to S3's weight anymore with puppy eyes.

Then, seeing how serious F76 looked, S3 reluctantly let go of her tight grasp, turning around from F76 with a huff and a pout.

Not forgetting to give F8 a glare before turning to the most dangerous person in this room.

The professor, who was observing S3's every move.

"So you are the one huh? Our best product as of yet!" The professor rolled those two words in his mouth for a while with pleasure, 'best product'.

He liked the sound of it quite a bit.

The professor was looking at S3 with scary eyes, displaying his obsession as plain as day. 

It wasn't in a romantic nor sexual way, after all, the professor was a lot of things, but a pedophile he was not.

It was more like an obsession for an object.

But just dilated to the extreme.

"S1 started off at 19% and now, after some training, he finally reached the 25% mark. S2 started off at 22%, with him having come after S1, he's still stuck at 24.99%, the mark that S1 had been stuck on for months, but you! You're clearly different," The professors' eyes, brown in color, shone with a red craze.

A madness like no other.

And the ominousness in his voice only intensified with every following word, so much so that it even gave F8, who had known him the longest here, the one that had seen what he had thought to be the true form of the professor, the chills.

F8 had always thought that the professor was an unfeeling person, he watched children be tortured, killed, and dissected with a face that clearly told everyone around that he was bored.

Every once in a while, he would smile or frown, his voice would fluctuate a little, he would show some disdain or disgust, but in the end, behind all that, he was just as bored as he had been from the very beginning of it all.

This was the first time that F8 had seen something like this from the professor.

Something much scarier than the indifference that F8 had originally feared.

So much emotion, and raw emotions at that.

There was no pretense nor boredom.

It was all too real.

Borderline scary. No. It had passed that mark a long time ago.

"Yes, you... you are different. You will be different...."

It was unknown if he was talking to himself or one of the other 7 people in the room, either way, it didn't matter much seeing as everyone else was just a wallflower in front of him in this scene.

Out of nowhere, the professor started a laughing craze.

It started as a chuckle, then a giggle, followed by a full-blown laugh-fest, the type that one would have to hold their stomachs too.

Insane, that was the only word to describe it. He had gone senile.

"Someone who comes out of the trial with 61.27 percent of the data processed! I couldn't have imagined it even in my wildest wet dreams!"

A strange comparison, but okay.

"Haha!"

"And here I thought I would have to go another decade just to start the next trial properly, but it seems like that won't be necessary anymore since we have you here."

"You don't know how torturous it was to get S1 to that 25%, I could only imagine the barrier imposed on the 50% mark, but here we have you! S3, you who easily surpassed all of your predecessors, there is quite literally no precedent."

The professor was practically drooling.

S3 didn't know that her own tag name had been called out amidst the professor's words, but her instincts told her that there was nothing good about it, especially sensing the strong emotions from the professor towards herself.

Emotions that S3 didn't know quite well how to describe.

It was like greed, but not quite the one that she was familiar with, the one that she had felt towards other people who had food to eat when she was on the streets. 

She could feel that the professor did not greed for what she had, instead, it was more like that greed was directed to herself as a whole, which only made her even more on alert.

"With you, we'll be able to start testing for phase 3 right this moment!" The professor continued to speak, despite having realized the young girl's defensiveness.

This was just too much of a shock, a pie falling from the sky on a clear blue sky. A good surprise.

The greatest of good news.

He had even pinched himself a couple of times where he knew it would hurt to make sure he truly wasn't in a wet dream.

As for how S3 felt about all this… that didn't matter to him, her emotions didn't matter to him at all.

There was no need to care for how she felt, after all, the experiments would proceed accordingly either way.

Or so he thought.

How was he to know that soon, the whole laboratory would be turned upside down, their previously meticulously mapped out plans overthrown, and their methods changed due to this simple encounter.

No, it would be more accurate to say that their plans would have been overthrown either way. It just would have occurred at a much later date and at that point, they might have even entered a slump in their research, like a writer's block for authors.

They should really have been thankful towards S3, but they wouldn't have known that. That was because the chaos created by the issues that arose due to the 3ed trial was of no small scale.

As for the problems with S3, they were out of their expectations.

The following events were not at all as jovial as the professor was at this moment.

The plans that the researchers came up with to deal with S3 were not to either side's liking.

It soon became a lose-lose situation where both sides suffered both physically and mentally.

And at the very end of it all, all hell broke loose with no forewarning whatsoever.

The results of this madness.

This insanity.