While Key was in his room, binge-playing on his desktop, Loter and Ramiron were watching a stupid variety show. Hiroku and Glacia were cuddling in the garden. Ramiron finally saw the great contrast between Glacia and Hiroku during lunch. Just like Key and Loter, she kept her mouth shut about this.

The afternoon courses were as usual. Rag Dowii took Loter to the fourth floor for personal training and told the rest to stick to their routine. He taught Loter how he could move forward while dodging sideways. This method allowed Loter to press his opponents backward even when he was under attack. Granted, it did not work on Dowii.

Loter anticipated Dowii's punch. When the fist came forward, he stepped in his front right direction. Then, Dowii smacked him in the face with his spare hand. He dropped to the ground as Dowii began lecturing.

"You need to defend and attack, Loter. Don't just let me hit you."

"It's not working," Loter complained, rolling on the ground.

"Just try again. Remember to place your hands before your chest and lift it before your face when I attack."

"Alright…" The sentence was loaded with reluctance.

Dowii punched.

Loter dodged.

Loter raised his fist.

Dowii kicked him in the shank.

"Auh, you didn't tell me you will kick me." Loter rolled while hugging his attacked shank.

"I only told you I will hit you. I never specified where I'd hit."

"Fine, at least I know it might come next time." Loter stood back up.

Dowii threw his fist forward.

Loter stepped to his front left, jabbing immediately.

Dowii shifted his head sideways and kicked Loter's shank.

"Wait, you're cheating," Loter accused while holding his shank on the floor. "There is no way to block a hit to the legs."

"No, I taught you before. You need to stand still with your legs to defend others' attacks on your legs. Your legs do not need special blocking technique." Dowii sighed in disappointment and said, "Come on, Lot. Keep trying."

"Okay," Loter answered while moaning in reluctance.

Dowii punched.

Loter stepped to his front right.

Loter stood still.

Loter was smacked in the face.

Loter dropped to the ground.

"Good. Now remember you need to block and attack while dodging." Dowii pulled out a red-and-blue comb to brush his beard and mustache.

"Augh…" Loter lay on the floor with his limbs spread out and whimpered to complain.

"Come on, Lot. You aren't an infant," Dowii said, crouching beside Loter and lightly poking him with his comb.

"How far are we from the break time?" Loter squeezed these words out of his incessant whimpering like he was in actual pain.

"Fine. Take your break, and we will continue with your strength training afterward."

Loter, in response, whined but took the break.

Meanwhile, Key was on the first floor alongside Ramiron. He was wearing the same red costume in the simulation. However, he had a U-shaped device on each arm this time. Two rubber hoes connected the two "U"s to two ball feeders, each containing thirty bouncing balls.

Key's task was simple. Without looking, he had to rebound the balls off the wall in front of him and hit the targets behind him. Whenever a target was raised from the ground, it made a sound cue for Key to track its location.

Ramiron stood beside the target field, leaning against the wall. She was supposed to be meditating, yet she chose to watch Key instead.

As Key fired the sixtieth shot, the voice of a typical female broadcaster came from the room's ceiling despite the lack of speakers, "First stage training finished. Lasted time: fifty-five minutes. Hit: twenty times. Break time: ten minutes, until two-o-five p.m."

Balls rolled on the ground and got picked up by plate-shaped bots to refill the feeders.

Key let go of his tired arms and hung them on his sides. There was a clear sore in his shoulders for holding his arms up nearly an hour, not to count the two U-shaped machines on his vambrace.

"I always wonder, what are you training for? Doesn't your power require your vision to activate?"

Lightly panting, Key answered, "That's why I trained like this. So that my power would develop into my 'earing, too."

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"Are you sure this is how your ability works?"

"Yup, the modification in my brain is supposed to be evolvable. It should develop more functions and become stronger the more I use it and expand it."

"How do you know?"

Key paused for a moment and sighed. "We 'ave never talked about our powers' origins before. You sure you want to know?" He turned toward Ramiron, looking through the sunglasses on his helmet.

"Aye, I recently decided it will be better if we can get closer as a team." Although her response did not seem too serious, there was no smile or any funny expression on Ramiron's face.

Key stayed silent for a moment. He faced away, bit his lips, and turned back. Eventually, he began, "Three years ago, there was a group of villains that kidnapped people and turned them into monsters. Alt-Evolvers. You remember them?"

"Aye, didn't Tio die fighting them?"

"The Invincible One. 'E died fighting Ever-Evolving Grotesque, EEG, the masterpiece of the Alt-Evolver. It 'ad the power to infinitely develop newer and stronger abilities. It never stopped adapting."

"You were one of the test subjects?"

Key took off his red helmet and stared at Ramiron. Tired sweat glided down his hot, light-brown skin. In the center of his dark-brown irises, slime-green light glowed from the black pupils. He calmly said, "I was EEG."

"..." Ramiron did not say a word, patiently waiting for Key to continue.

He closed his eyes for a second, and the light was gone when he opened his eyes again. "Alt-Evolvers put me into the 'ead of EEG as its brain. After the monster was destroyed, the 'eroes found me still alive in the giant corpse."

"..."

"Since most of the modification on my body was used to connect to EEG, doctors were able to remove them and repair me."

"But the one in your skull couldn't be reversed."

Key shook his head. "They said it was too dangerous, so I 'ad to live with it. Then, I realized my ability to use my brain as a calculator and see the results with my bare eyes. Now, I'm 'ere."

"You think the thing in your skull can still evolve?"

"I know it can. It must."

"I'm sorry if this is too much for you to share."

"No, it's alright. I don't 'ate sharing my story. After all, this made me who I am now, and I 'ad to face it to move forward." Key put his helmet back on and faced back at the wall.

After a short moment of silence, Ramiron said, "You're strong."

"You don't need to comment on it."

"Aye."

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Loter lay flat on the ground after the final squat. The sore in his knees and the rest of his body was clear and sharp. He could feel the sweat under his shirt and trousers. Sure, he was exhausted, yet there was a contentment in this tiredness.

By the shoe case, Dowii nonchalantly told him, "Come back up. The course is over, and you should be out of here."

"Yeah, yeah," Loter answered, sliding toward with his palms pushing on the smooth wooden floor.

"What, Lot? Are you a worm?" Dowii chuckled. He put on his black sneakers.

Loter did not answer but kept moving. He finally stood up after getting to the door to wear his white sneakers.

As they went down the stairs, Dowii draped a hand on Loter's shoulder across his back. "I think we're making good progress in the training."

"Oh really? Thanks!" Loter replied while rubbing his bicep. "By the way, why aren't you teaching others the fighting stuff?"

"I did. I taught them a lot. It's that they need to hone their own special powers by themselves. I can't help with that."

"That's so cool! Ramiron told me she gained a new ability that allowed her to decompose attacks. Did she invent it by herself?"

"Yes. She is the one with the most talent, and this talent can sometimes be frightening." Dowii's voice became lower and more solemn in the latter half of the sentence.

After they reached the lobby on the first floor, they saw Ramiron leaning against a vending machine all by herself.

"Hey, Rag. Hey, Loter."

"Hi." Loter waved quickly beside his head.

"What's up?" Dowii asked, seeing nobody else in the lobby.

"Just waiting for Loter."

"Yay!" Loter cheered. He did not get waited by his friends often when he was in his old school.

"Great, take care." Dowii patted Loter's shoulder and walked out of the glass double gate.

"Ram, what do you need me for?" asked Loter.

"I just found a website with co-op board games this morning. I think we can play it together. We still have three hours before the dinner."

"I love games, but I don't have much experience with board games—"

"I'll teach you, of course."

Laughing, Ramiron grabbed Loter's upper arm in excitement, teleporting out of the training center with him.

Coming back to the dorm, Loter shoved his unit's door open, and Ramiron was behind him. Hiroku sat on the couch, blankly watching the television. He glanced at the two and moved his eyes back to the television.

"Hello, Hiro!" Loter exclaimed as he sprinted toward the couch. Ramiron closed the door and followed.

"Hello," Hiroku listlessly replied. He was shocked when Loter literally pounced into him.

Hiroku lay on the couch with Loter's hands propping beside his head and beneath his armpit. His untied hair was stuck in between Loter's palm and the leather seat. He just gawked at Loter in his innocent eyes.

For a moment, the living room was paused in silence with only the television's sound and Ramiron's "woo" happening in the background.

"Get, get off me, Loter. You are pressing on my hair," Hiroku commended Loter. There was a faint irritation in his voice that had been missing for quite a while.

"Oh yeah, sorry. I just thought you needed a hug." Loter crawled aside and sat down, hands on his knees.

"I don't need hugs," Hiroku said, getting back to his sitting position while shifting away. The anger buried under his dispirited tone grew closer to the surface. His eyes became watery, yet both Loter and Ramiron did not spot it.

"Not from us," Ramiron suddenly teleported behind the couch and said in a playful tone.

"Hm? No, no, just no!" Hiroku suddenly increased his volume, jumping off his seat.

He held his clenching hands beside his face and swung them down while stomping on the ground. "I don't want hugs from anyone! I don't need hugs. I hate hugs. No matter who is giving me hugs, I don't want to be hugged!" Even in an outburst of anger, His voice sounded restrained.

Loter was scared into silence.

Ramiron softened her tone and carefully stepped toward Hiroku. "Hiro, what's wrong? What happened? How can we help?"

"Nothing's wrong. I don't need to be helped."

"We know you like to display a poker face, but you look really depressed recently. There is something wrong, and we can help." Ramiron pushed forward with her words, not shooed away by Hiroku's rejection.

Tearing up, Hiroku turned away. His arms crossed. After an instantaneous pause, he said in a barely contained usual volume, "If you really want to help, tell Glacia to leave me alone." His voice gradually diminished.

"What? No, don't you like Glacia—"

"I don't like her. I don't fucking like her," Hiroku firmly asserted and went into his bedroom, slamming the door.