Joshua noticed Cedrick’s unusually stern expression. “What’s on your mind, Cedrick?”

Cedrick was staring at the cover of the book, Abnormal Psychology, and thinking about what Benedict had said to him earlier in the ward.

“Benny told me a professor in the lab gave it to him, so I came to ask you since you were with him the most. Who else spends that much time with him?”

He wanted to know if it was a coincidence or a deliberate act to give a five-year-old child something so disturbing.

“I’ll look into it,” Joshua promised. “I wouldn’t be too worried, though, Cedrick. It must have been a coincidence.”

Cedrick nodded.

Five minutes later, Joshua found out from the professors on duty in the laboratory that it was given by a biochemist named Eugene Yortz.

Eugene was an elderly professor of about sixty, with a snow-white beard, a straight nose, and chiseled features.

He was not Chanaean. Instead, he was sent from Astoria as part of a collaborative project.

Joshua led Cedrick to Eugene’s office to pay the professor a visit.

“Eugene is a strange fellow,” he warned Cedrick in a whisper along the way. “Aside from having a funny character, he’s withdrawn, easily irritable, obsessed with research, and has zero regard for interpersonal communication skills. The things he does sometimes are bizarre.”

Behind his back, the other professors called him Professor Nuts.

After listening intently, Cedrick mulled it over for a while.

researchers and doctors are weirdos. Wasn’t Kieran initially an oddball? After he got married, he now shares a stable and loving relationship with Inez. Compared to the earlier version of himself who had devoted his life to research, he seemed to have become an entirely different person. However, Eugene is different. He is sixty years of age.

pair found themselves outside Eugene’s

He’s a man who never flatters anyone. He does what he wants and speaks his mind when something displeases him. He doesn’t care who you are or

and thought that he quite

give Benedict as strange a journal as Abnormal

Cedrick knocked on Eugene’s

Knock, knock, knock.

knocked thrice in

office, nor was there the sound of someone coming

out on business,” Joshua said. “Why don’t I keep an

saw him leave the lab during work hours. He

he

knocking do? Why won’t you say why you’re here? Your mouth is not something you use just to eat,

was sweating profusely on the

have already gotten an earful

Prof. Mallory. I have something urgent to talk

moment’s silence, the doorknob twisted

“If you come knocking again without stating your intention, Joshua, I’ll assume you’re mute. It’s a waste for you to have a mouth and not

colleague as an elder who was his father’s age. Being

“You work in a premier laboratory in Chanaea, Professor Yortz. How could you be

like you wanted,

what I meant,” Cedrick replied. “Like you,

“I know who you are. You look a lot like the boy in the lab ward, the one who has the S404 RNA virus in him. You

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