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 “Aside from having a funny character, he’s withdrawn, easily irritable, obsessed with research, and has zero regard for interpersonal communication skills.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.

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. Having had enough of his eccentricity, his ex-wife left him long ago. As he has no children and did

thinking, the pair found

man who never flatters anyone. He does what he

thought that he

that give Benedict as

eyes, Cedrick

Knock, knock, knock.

thrice in a

in the office, nor was there the

said. “Why don’t I keep an eye here and let

the lab during work hours. He must be in

force, he

A raspy, irritated voice sounded from the office. “What good would knocking do? Why won’t you say why

was sweating profusely on the other

earful before we even stepped

is Prof. Mallory.

a moment’s silence, the doorknob twisted with a

opened and revealed Eugene, still bleary-eyed, glaring at them. “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

who was his father’s age.

Chanaea, Professor Yortz. How could you be taking

scanned him up and down before fixating his gaze on his face. “I opened the door like you wanted, and you’re telling me off,” he

Cedrick replied. “Like you, Professor Yortz, I am merely

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