To Live Again, For the First Time!

Falcon's gears churned, looking for a way to get out of this when another voice sounded from his right.

"Why don't I give it a try?" Serpent spoke, giving Falcon two hand signals.

One to signal washing clothes [making two fists and perpendicularly rubbing against eachother], and the following signaling the number of times.

Serpent directly lifted all 10 fingers with a raise of his eyebrow.

In other words, he was proposing him a deal; I do you a favor, you do my laundry for 10 days.

There was no room for negotiations when it all occurred in silence, and Serpent had no doubt that Falcon would agree.

Which he did, albeit very, very reluctantly.

At least Serpent wasn't the one with the worse smelling socks out of the whole group, though he did have the tendency to pile up dirty laundry.

Serpent smiled slyly, but in the end, the biggest winner was neither of the two.

It was Sloth, who said nothing since this silent interaction started.

If Serpent hadn't stepped up, there was still room for things to be pushed back to the lazy man, but now, he could smile and go back to his sweet dreams.

All of this occurred behind their teacher's back, but that didn't mean that Master Giovanni didn't notice anything.

There was something called a reflection, and there was a reason why this expert was staring at this screen so intently when the lighting of the computer was so low.

But he didn't say anything either, there was no need to get involved in the children's small gimmicks.

However, his prompt response right after they finished their 'dealings' also told some of the more keen students that their teacher had seen what had just gone down, simply deciding to act ignorant on the whole matter.

But if Master Giovanni said nothing, then there was no need for them to say anything either. After all, he had his own intentions, and no one wanted to be the snitch in this circumstance.

There was absolutely no advantage to snitching in this situation, you would only cause internal strife and put a target on your own back as the 'traitor'.

"Come on then."

The teacher pointed at one of the numerous workspaces.

The network was all connected and Serpent got started right as he sat down, after all, this was an important matter.

It involved over a week's worth of laundry time as well as some of his reputation among the team.

This was still a test given by his teacher, even though it was put with subtlety.

Master Giovanni sat back and observed this student of his's progress since he had left, noting it down.

This would greatly affect their monster training schedule later. ψ(｀∇ ´)ψ

Everything was pretty decent at first, the other side seemed flustered and so he could handle it quite smoothly.

That much was to be expected.

'Has master improved once again?' Serpent questioned in his own mind.

With their skill gap, he couldn't tell for sure, but there was this gut feeling telling him (Serpent) he (Master Giovanni) did.

His thoughts wandered for a second, and that second was enough for the whole playing field to turn upside down.

Things started to go south, and fast.

Serpent's eyes widened and then they narrowed sharply, giving the illusion of the predator that his name represented.

He got a whole lot more serious than he was just moments before.

Serpent's usually smooth brows that creased lightly when he was having fun setting traps for others, soon creased for other reasons.

The tides were turning, and not in his favor.

The small upper hand that he still had just mere instances ago due to his mentor's previous work had fallen apart, but he didn't panic.

Master Giovanni hadn't helped a whole lot, lowering himself to his student's level when he decided to hand this one over to them, but he had set the standard to that of the captain of these bunch, which was still relatively higher than Serpent's skill level.

Now that advantage had vanished under his student's carelessness, Master Giovanni noted it down on his little notebook.

All of this was noticed by both his fellow companions.

'He's dead,' they all thought in unison.

'I knew this was going to be interesting,' Master Giovanni rubbed his goatee with a smirk while his other students had other thoughts on their minds.

'When was the last time Serpent got so serious?' Bear thought to himself, thinking back to a specific scene eons ago. 

Back when they still had the hopes of chasing M and TWO.

'This reminds me of the last time we went against TWO, that bastard that just kept playing with us…' Falcon too was thinking of that very same scene.

As for Sloth, he wasn't thinking of anything in particular.

Actually, it would be more accurate to say that he was thinking of not thinking.

At the same time, Serpent's hands itched ominously. Even so, he didn't dare move away from the keyboard to deal with it.

"Why does this operation feel so familiar?"

***

Theodore was also befuddled.

After typing until his hands became numb, feeling his own hand speed breaking through another bottleneck, he couldn't help but feel a little helpless.

Still, he didn't give up.

He would never give up even though Emilin could easily deal with this.

In fact, it was especially because he knew that even if he failed, he had someone behind his back, he had nothing to fear.

Kayden, his (Theodore's) roommate, and Jenna, the one who got third place in the competition that they had all participated in, now also holding the identity of a fellow student (only with Theodore) under Master Sungcha in the AI department in a laboratory outside of school where both in the room with Theo.

Kayden had already experienced a similar scene before, so he was used to it, but Jenna was not.

She had no clue what was going on.

Well, she had an idea, but even as she stared intently, the lines of text skipped too fast for her eyes to process properly.

'Indeed geniuses are just different,' she inwardly thought to herself, not undermining her hard work either.

Just accepting that she would need to put in a whole lot more effort if she didn't want to fall behind.

In the past few weeks, though Theodore and Jenna had yet to start their lessons under Master Sungcha, they were already advised to get to know each other better, which was exactly what they had been doing.

They would be the only disciples under Master Sungcha, and to improve on his legacy, this much was necessary.

Jenna already had an inkling that her competition would be tough, but her determination never faltered, even against someone as... frustrating as Theodore.

In Jenna's eyes, Theodore was the kind of person one would want to punch even if he did nothing but sit there. At least from an academic point of view, especially if you saw him as some kind of rival.

For someone as hardworking as Jenna, it couldn't be helped that she would want to hit the person who clearly didn't even put in half of the work she did, but still got better results than herself.

Human nature, human nature.

What was more impressive though, was that she hadn't done so already.

As for the hacking that Theodore was currently doing, though Jenna had dabbled in quite a lot of programming, hacking wasn't exactly something she could touch upon, or anyone for that matter, without knowing people.

Otherwise, she was just bringing herself unnecessary trouble, and she currently had no such connections.

It was only natural that she wouldn't know what was happening.

That didn't stop it from looking impressive though.

'Should I ask later?'

Well, she wasn't going to ask now.

'I've never seen him this... frustrated. He's actually sweating.'

Jenna liked that.

For once, she wasn't the one all heated up while he sat there like nothing was wrong with him getting away with sleeping in class... and snoring, and then answering a 4th year's question that the teacher gave him just to make some trouble correctly, and then going back to sleep... and going back to snoring.

There was nothing normal about it and Jenna could still remember how she had an eye twitching problem that day.

And so did probably the half of the class that sat anywhere near Theodore.

To be fair, he didn't always snore, he was just really tired that day.

'But still, why didn't he just skip class? It didn't seem like he needs it anyways,' or so most people there thought.

Who would have thought that the student that looked more like a delinquent would be in fact aiming for a perfect attendance record?

The world was truly full of wonders.

As for the teacher at the front who could clearly see all his students look back every once in a while during class to observe the student who was snoring and didn't even bother to hide it anymore.

He was also helpless.

It was a higher-level math class in which nearly a quarter of the class was getting around the 50-60% mark, which was still a pass after the curve and another half of the class was failing.

Theodore, the sleeping kid, was sadly, as much as he hated to admit, his best student.

What could he do to him other than pull him over after class to have a chat?

And what did that chat get him?

Nothing.

Well, something.

He got a promise from his top student to not snore next time...