In Every World, Annoying Sisters Will Always Be Annoying
En rolled his eyes, a habit he'd picked up from not hanging out with anyone else besides the lady who had just entered the room. Despite the fact their personalities were very different, she was the only person in the entire laboratory he could tolerate, or even like, as far as he knew.
Perhaps he needed to go out more, interact with others in the cafeteria or visit other floors and other rooms, but he just never seemed to find the time. He'd been going out more frequently as of late, now that his homunculus wasn't in its most fragile state, yet the only places he'd visit besides his own living quarters was the cafeteria, and the Plant Cultivation area.
For each of these places he'd visit, there were one or two people who loved to bug him about every little thing. They usually refused to go down to this space he'd claimed for the homunculus project, claiming it was too gloomy and too dusty, but what was the essence of a workroom if it was not clustered and cluttered with junk and dust?
'No', he thought. 'Not junk.'
He internally apologized to the tools and papers he'd just indirectly called garbage.
His gaze moved from a corner of the room, to the homunculus in the capsule, to the woman beside him, who was still staring fixedly at the fake human in front of them. As if compelled by a collective will, En directed his line of sight back to the homunculus as well.
"Word, you could just stare at him forever. What are you naming him?"
En's brain looked through the project name he'd memorized, in his head.
"GLENN."
The woman hummed, a bit dissatisfied with the plainness but somehow unable to come up with a better one. She whipped her head around, her blonde hair flying towards the side and making conact with En's smooth black hair that was now getting to a point of stringiness.
"How'd you come up with that?" She asked, genuinely curious about the origins of the homunculus' name. "I'm surprised you were so quick to find a name when you're usually so bad with them." She teased, and before En could answer, she continued to dig through memories and facts that were not very pleasing to the senses.
"Considering you're the kind of person who'd name his project, 'MetalMaster Mark2'... Or cultivate blue tomatoes and call them "Blue Balls, Red Taste"... You know how much the old man Handel loved that. He wouldn't shut up about it for weeks."
En sighed. The first one was pure cringe from his childhood, but the second one was a beautiful coincidence he hadn't thought of when he named it. He had no idea if he'd feel better about claiming it as an accident or if it would do him well to just own it, ride the waves, and declare his genius.
"What? It's not that bad."
"You named a mouse Sparky after it died from an electric malfunction."
"It makes sense."
"Why would you name something that just died?!"
"Calm down, Blanche. Just because he was as messy as your last project doesn't mean you have to bring him up."
The blonde woman paled even further, the hand that rested as a palm in the air froze, its previous grace solidifying under the pain of having failed an experiment that seemed a little outlandish in the first place, yet she had fought for.
She sighed. So did En.
"The idea of giving a creature the ability to shapeshift," En began. "Was pretty awesome, but maybe that's not something we can achieve with our current data..."
He trailed off as he saw the homunculus' finger twitch slightly.
It wasn't supposed to do that until a few more weeks.
He was in genuine shock. He couldn't even find it in himself to be awed by this feat, and he began to worry if he'd made a mistake in programming, or worse, calculating. He strode over to the monitors that were in sleep mode; he only occasionally checked them, as everything onscreen had been stored in his brain, and he could keep track of the necessary information and numbers until about three months in advance by counting in his head and making mental charts. There were eight monitors in his head at the moment, but somehow one didn't match with the physical screen.
"Remaining Incubation Period... Six days."
He stood staring at the keyboard, his eyebrows furrowed as thoughts continued to run through his head. There was definitely an anomaly, yet he couldn't quite find what caused it, or what it was. He ran over the document, and now unsure, he reached to the side and picked up the thick stack kept together by a metal ring punched through a corner. He brought it closer to the monitors out of habit, although the lights from the elevator were enough to give the papers sufficient visibility.
"I'm pretty sure I didn't neglect anything..." he muttered as he flipped through the pages, eyes scanning familiar words and illustrations with lightning speed.
He heard the sound of high heels clicking behind him, followed by Blanche's slightly sultry but comforting voice.
"What's up? As far as I can see, there are no abnormalities in his vitals and functionality." She stepped over to touch the screen on the monitor projecting a detailed diagram of bones and muscles. She tapped on the skeletal system, disassembled the diagram, and looked through each piece with practiced fingers. "I don't see anything wrong with his bones either. It'll hold, right?"
She moved on to the nervous system, then partitioned each set of organs through their respective category. Her curious nature, present in every avid researcher of this laboratory, compelled her to participate in dismantling the parts of the homunculus, like it was a new machine waiting to be taken apart and observed.
It was a common trait, their methods of observing to adapt a shared list among everyone who engaged in living beings and machinery in this laboratory, yet somehow, there was a faint annoyance at the back of En's mind. He wasn't greedy, but he didn't like how Blanche invited herself to dissect the homunculus while he was poring over something he considered vital.
It probably wasn't, but he was shocked by the sheer amount of days it skipped for the incubation period. It was less 27.79 days, nearly an entire month. He squinted, reaching the bottom of the final page.
"That aside, why do you still keep data on paper? It's easier to have everything in computers, and yet..." Blanche mumbled as she moved to tap the screen that showed the current status of the vital organs through graphs. Before she could, though, the monitors turned dark once more, and she glanced at En, a little confused.
"So people like you would be too lazy to look through them." The dark-haired male huffed, placing the thick stack of papers gently back where he'd picked it up from, which was the side of the table that wasn't occupied by a machine or contraption. He pressed the shutters closed, hiding the homunculus from view.
"En, is there anything wrong with the project? As far as I could see, he was functioning properly." Blanche walked slowly towards him, and he sighed, the tension in his brows relaxing. He felt sorry about being irksome, but he didn't have it in him to communicate such a thought.
"It's functioning too well somehow, and the incubation period jumped past a huge number."
Blanche was very well aware of his tendency to be obsessed with what was predetermined, or what had been measured through meticulous planning and consideration of all the possible variables that might affect the end result. As such, he would be easily upset when things wouldn't go his way, which was understandable because it never happened more than once on a major scale, until now.
She smiled, then elbowed En playfully to return a bit of cheer to the atmosphere that had suddenly turned gloomy. For what it's worth, most women had a better sensitivity towards the feelings of others, and somehow she knew the moment she entered the room, that he was not quite himself today.
"Come on, you need a good meal! Feasting your eyes upon Glenn's big thing isn't going to be sufficient." She winked. "He's blessed in all aspects, huh?"
She knew she got on En's nerves with her final statement, but what was a better role than one that allowed you to be able to distract a troubled little brother?