To Live Again, For the First Time!

"Teacher! You can't be like this," a silly coquettish voice sounded, even though it was a few octaves too low to be mistaken for that of a female, the tone was still a little too much.

Even so, that wasn't the end of it as this voice was quickly drowned in that of the others.

"How can this be?"

Another one was still in disbelief.

"Teacher, he's the enemy! THE ENEMY!!"

One more was indignant.

"TWO's the one we've been looking for..."

"That one we were fighting before!"

"TWO is the one Boss is looking for!"

"We've already invested 7 months on catching him!"

Various different voices started to overlap, and in the end, though Master Giovanni got some keywords, the main point still wasn't transmitted.

The greatly overlapped sentences really couldn't be understood by normal humans and Master Giovanni was no alien.

"Speak one at a time!"

Master Giovanni spoke with great exasperation.

His eye and lip twitched concurrently as if having come to an agreement beforehand.

In the end, he simply pointed at the first person to his right, which just happened to be the indignant Serpent.

Though Serpent had been fired up, when push came to shove, he was still able to become cool-headed.

Cool-headed enough to explain the whole situation without having his temper flare up noticeably.

At least he was able to vent through his summarizing.

Though of course, his bias during the storytelling was also promptly noted by not only Master Giovanni but also by most of the other people in the room.

His calculative side couldn't be reined in properly in a short period of time.

But to be fair, it wasn't as if he knew of the story from the other person's POV anyway, no one really expected him to remain overly objective throughout when recounting this rage-inducing story.

In the following moments, Serpent explained the general frame of things as well as some speculations.

After listening to the whole story, everyone else had also already cooled their temper as they proceeded to wait for their teacher's final verdict.

This was all they could do now.

The more this expert, who was also known as a sly fox in his industry as well as by many others who had worked with him in close contact, thought about this whole situation, the more he smiled.

This smile was bright, yet chilling.

He had clearly noticed something that his students were still too inexperienced to take note of.

That seemed to put him in a good mood.

Not the part about his students not picking it up, that part was quite annoying, but rather the newfound advantage of taking in TWO as his disciple. 

He couldn't help but smile at the discovery.

Master Giovanni looked at things from a bigger picture than the young kids.

He didn't simply look at the grudges, but also at the addition of the new parties in this problem and what they wanted as well as what he could gain from that.

'This is even more profitable than I had previously thought...'

Master Giovanni rubbed his goatee before finally voicing his judgment.

"This is good... very good!"

And from everyone else's eyes which nearly just popped out, it was clear that they didn't understand why their teacher was so... excited??

"Then, does that mean you are still taking in TWO as your disciple?" Falcon asked with a shaky voice.

Was it of excitement or disbelief?

"Take him in! Of course, I must take him in! Why shouldn't I take him in as my disciple?"

The others nearly spat out blood.

They felt like they could list a million reasons why TWO shouldn't become their junior brother, but suddenly, when one of them wanted to open their mouth, none of them could come up with anything reasonable.

They had thought that their teacher may finally realize everything that was wrong with accepting this enemy as a disciple/ junior brother.

But what was this?!

Were they somehow convinced that it wasn't necessarily a bad thing?

Was there something wrong with their brain all of a sudden?!

Weren't they perfectly fine before their teacher came out of seclusion?

Did the seclusion do something to their teacher's neurological functions or did his appearance make them all go nuts? Because if so, they didn't know what they would be able to do about that.

If Master Giovanni could hear his disciple's thoughts, he would surely kick every single one of their asses before cooling down.

But he wouldn't think that they were wrong, he would agree with the point about his disciples not being the brightest bunch as long as his name was removed from the equation.

But seeing that none of his disciples understood, he decided to enlighten them a little, of course, not in a straightforward manner.

"If you don't have anything else to say, then let us leave the conference room."

Master Giovanni was already concocting his own plans as he said these words, but those perfect plans were interrupted by the voice of someone he didn't expect to speak at this moment.

"What about the situation with Sister Margo?"

It was Sloth who was worrying about his favorite cousin.

Now that Master Giovanni thought back to it, he finally realized what had been bugging him!

He had been played!

Master Giovanni had been completely carried away by the flow of the conversation that the other person set, worried about the things that they wanted him to be worried about like the pros and cons of the deal when it came to accepting this disciple.

So much so that he hadn't even put any importance on what had brought them to that position in the first place.

Misdirection at its finest.

He was completely fooled.

And to think that that whole time he was worrying about whether that deal was profitable enough for him, so immersed in that back and forth, determined not to be tricked by the opponent.

Who knew that it was exactly that tunnel-visioned caution that had led him to this point, falling completely into the other person's trap.

He had lost his biggest negotiation chip.

The window for negotiation had ended.

Now was the phase where he could only either go through with his agreement as promised or completely drop the whole thing and go back on his word, which would be a complete loss for him.

Something he wouldn't do.

He would lay waste on all his previous chips, yet looking back, no matter how he comforted himself, what he had thought to be a good deal now left a sour taste in his mouth.

Now you may be confused since Emilin had clearly addressed this issue previously in their conversation.

But she had addressed it so nonchalantly, saying that she wouldn't be affecting their security and that she would leave their system be that he hadn't had the time to note how big of an opportunity he had missed.

The problem was that of course, he wouldn't be able to confirm this.

Though in the first place, he wasn't worried.

Master Giovanni had long informed his brothers of the issues concerning information privacy online.

As smart as his youngest brother was, all the important information concerning his family and their business was on paper, everything online made them seem rather normal, at least if you weren't a Master hacker determined to dig something out.

That's why Master Giovanni hadn't made a big deal out of it for fear of upsetting the other person, making them regret the decision of reaching out to him at that time.

But now that he thought back to the matter, he could have clearly made use of this fact to push on the other side to owe him!

After all, they did in fact hack them first, right?

Couldn't he claim trauma?

Of course, now he couldn't anymore, which was quite sad.

Going back now to ask for compensation would make him seem petty since the matter had already been concluded and dealt with.

(What Master Giovanni didn't know was how dumb this whole thought really was in retrospect.

This was because... Emilin could simply call it even with them when taking into consideration that they had also tried hacking into Theodore's system in the past.

Then again Emilin's wasn't quite as intentional and premeditated as Master Giovanni's disciple's attack

If both of them played it off as something they had done just for fun and with no ill intentions, then, in the end, these things still wouldn't have been able to be used as a bargaining chip.

Master Giovanni was just thinking a little too much right now due to the pressures from all these sticky eyes.

Then again, in the end, this wasn't necessarily a bad thing.

Later on, when everything with the boss and his disciples were dealt with, he would still have to ask his younger brother and his niece and nephew to see if they could find out what was going on.

Of course, this was only later on.)

Seeing as Master Giovanni seemed to be lost in thought at the moment, Sloth didn't proceed with his questioning.

Since his uncle wasn't showing a worried expression but rather a contemplative one, Sloth was sure his uncle would deal with it.

There was no point in asking any further as he wasn't an incredibly curious person.

That last question, though simple sounding, had in fact condensed all the worry he had for his favorite cousin Margo.

He only has two cousins…

In the end, Master Giovanni left the conference without responding to Sloth's question.

Everyone else followed him out and stuck close to see what their teacher was going to do next, but they didn't dare make a sound seeing how concentrated their teacher was.

That is until someone did.

"Teacher, who are you calling right now?" Falcon asked not so cautiously.

This is why people needed someone like Falcon in the team, to bite the bullet for everyone.

"Your boss of course."