June 16, 1976, 10:30 p.m.
I stepped out of my office and found the corridor somewhat dim.
I slowly made my way toward the children's rooms.
Even as I walked, the shock I had felt when I learned about that secret room and the contents of the diary still lingered in my head.
Fear, terror, anger, regret, and a dozen other emotions mixed together like a cocktail, filling my chest with a strange and unpleasant sensation.
Honestly, I didn't know how I was supposed to sort these feelings out right now.
And yet my feet naturally kept heading toward the children's rooms... I couldn't tell whether it was because I pitied them, because this had already become my everyday routine, or because it was both.
What I did know for certain was that, somewhere along the way, a little sincerity had begun mixing into this plan I had started purely to survive.
As proof of that, even standing in front of this room had made me tense until yesterday, but in less than a day that tension had eased a great deal.
Rather than tension, all I could think about now was that I should at least give these children the things the original story had denied them.
Before knocking on Alfred's door, I took a moment to steady my breathing.
Whatever the reason, there was no point in showing this unsettled state in front of the children.
After smoothing my expression as much as possible, I knocked twice.
"Alfred, may I come in?"
But there was no answer.
I knocked once more, yet still got no response.
Had he already gone to sleep?
I carefully opened the door a crack.
The room was dark.
And empty.
There was no one on the bed either.
"Huh?"
I looked around the room for a moment.
Alfred was nowhere to be seen.
My heart sank a little.
Where had he gone at this hour?
Had he felt unwell and gone somewhere, or had something happened?
My mind began racing.
'Don't tell me the research team went and...'
No, it was already late at night. There was no way those bastards were still working now.
Then had Alfred gone out of the room on his own?
If so, where to?
As I thought about it, my gaze naturally drifted to the door of the adjacent room.
Could it be...
I walked up to the next door and knocked twice.
"Come in."
It was Alexia's voice.
I opened the door.
Alexia was sitting at her desk with a notebook spread open in front of her.
And beside her, Alfred had pulled his chair close and was peering at Alexia's notes with her.
I watched the scene for a moment and let out a sigh of relief.
'Phew, there you are.'
Then I walked over to the children and asked,
"How long have you been here?"
Both children looked up at the same time.
Alfred shrank back slightly before speaking.
"Um... this morning's question, you know. I was thinking about it on my own, but I couldn't really figure it out, so I came to ask Alexia..."
Alexia added briefly,
"I thought it would be better to think it through together."
I looked back and forth between the two children.
Alexia's notebook was filled with the dense logical structure she had been working on since this morning.
And beside it were a few short notes in Alfred's handwriting.
So they had been thinking it through together.
Come to think of it, Alexia actually letting Alfred stay beside her while she reasoned things out... considering her original personality, she was the type to look down on Alfred, not keep him close.
Maybe the fact that Alfred had come close to the correct answer yesterday had been a rather fresh shock for Alexia.
"How far have you thought it through?"
Alexia pointed at the notebook.
She looked down at it and slowly began to speak.
"I think it's the relationship between the choices a person makes and the results that follow. To understand yourself is, in the end, to understand the choices you've made. That's the most fundamental relationship."
Alfred shook his head carefully.
"I think it's a little different. I think it's the relationship with other people, including family. If I had to live all by myself without family, I'd be lonely. So I thought that was the most important thing."
The two children looked at each other.
One was self, the other was others. Their eyes showed that they knew their opinions had split in completely opposite directions.
Then they both looked at me with the same expression, as if demanding that I decide whose answer was correct.
I glanced back and forth between them for a moment.
To be honest, the answer I had in mind for today's question was closer to Alexia's.
But that didn't mean Alfred's answer was wrong.
Maybe the answers the two children had given were actually pointing to the same place.
"...Neither of you is wrong."
At my unexpected reply, Alexia and Alfred both looked at me.
"Alexia, the relationship between choice and result that you mentioned. That's right. A person lives their whole life making choices and living with the results. How they face that relationship determines what kind of person they are."
Alexia nodded.
"And Alfred, the relationship with others, including family, that you mentioned. That's right too."
Alfred blinked.
"Family is a relationship you end up having even though you didn't choose it. But how you treat that relationship is, in the end, a choice. So it leads into the choices you make every day. And that relationship isn't limited to family; it's closely tied to many human relationships."
A brief silence fell.
Alexia looked down at her notebook, then slowly spoke.
"That feels a little unfair to me."
"How so?"
"This morning, you didn't say my answer was wrong, but you didn't say it was completely right either. You told me to think about it more. But if Alfred's answer is right too, then what exactly were you asking? That means there wasn't just one correct answer."
Alfred glanced between Alexia and me, reading the room.
Alexia continued,
"If there were multiple correct answers from the start, then there was no reason for me to keep holding onto this all night. That's not efficient."
In truth, Alexia wasn't wrong.
Well, I was the one who had led her to believe there was only one answer and then changed it to multiple answers at the last minute.
From her point of view, she had every right to complain.
"...Sometimes, the process of realizing for yourself that there can be multiple correct answers is important."
Even as I said it, I knew that was a pretty flimsy excuse, one that would never work on Alexia.
"Then couldn't you have given the hint that way from the beginning?"
"Didn't you say it yourself? The scope of today's question was very broad and vague. That means it wasn't an easy question, and sometimes there may not be just one correct answer."
"But if you had said from the beginning that there were multiple correct answers, I wouldn't have had to go this far trying to find just one answer."
"But because you tried to find that one answer in specific, you were able to reach its root. If I had said from the start that anything was correct, do you really think you would have arrived at the answer of choice and result?"
For an excuse I had made up on the spot, it wasn't bad.
Even if I didn't know how Alexia would react, all I wanted was to listen to her rebuttal as it was and have my logic win her over.
Unlike the original Alexander, who had used the authority of a father to silence Alexia's opinion by force.
Alexia fell silent.
She looked like she wanted to argue, but perhaps she couldn't come up with a suitable line of reasoning, because she muttered in a low voice.
"...That's an inefficient method."
But in her tone, I could hear more acceptance than anger.
"Still, the answer you found today was the deepest one."
At that, Alexia lowered her eyes for a moment.
She said nothing more.
But the hand that picked up her pen again seemed to move a little faster than before.
She was probably trying to accept it in her own way.
After thinking for a moment, Alfred spoke up carefully.
"Then is that why Father comes to see us every day? Because of choice?"
I looked at him for a moment.
"That's right."
"Then... can we make that kind of choice too?"
"Aren't you already doing that?"
Alfred sat quietly for a moment, as if processing the meaning of those words.
Alexia, without saying anything, began writing something in her notebook.
"Then... there's no punishment today either?"
It was Alfred's voice.
I looked at him for a moment, then gave a short answer.
"Yes. None today either."
Alfred's face brightened.
Alexia didn't say anything, but the hand moving her pen paused for a moment before starting again.
That was probably her own way of showing happiness.
I stood up.
"Now go to bed. Alfred, back to your room."
Alfred rose from his seat and said to Alexia,
"Good night, Alexia."
Alexia replied briefly without taking her eyes off the notebook.
"Mm."
Alfred left the room.
I was about to close the door when I paused for a moment.
"Good night, Alexia."
Alexia stopped her pen for a moment and looked up.
"Come to think of it, you're not checking our health tonight?"
At that, I replied as if it were nothing.
"You already know that recording it would hardly mean much, don't you?"
Then Alexia gave a small snort of laughter.
"Now you're not even hiding it. As a scientist, tampering with the records probably isn't the right 'choice.'"
"True. But as a choice made as a 'family member' and as a 'father,' it's something I can live with."
"Even if it causes you a disadvantage, Father?"
Alexia's blue eyes met mine.
What those pupils held in that gaze meant one thing: whether I could accept sacrifice for Alfred and Alexia.
"Of course."
With that one word, I stepped out of the room.
Standing in the corridor, I looked at the closed door for a moment.
'Neither of them is wrong, huh...'
Why had I suddenly changed the answer?
Originally, the intention behind this question was to make it a lesson: the choices the children made from now on could return as karma in the future, so they should be careful.
But I had suddenly changed the answer and said that the family relationship Alfred mentioned was also correct.
Was that because of the pity I had felt for these children after reading Alexander's diary, or because I truly was beginning to feel paternal affection for them?
Maybe my relationship with these children would become something beyond mere survival...
But for today, this was enough.
What mattered now was what I would do from here on out.
And so the second night of the project to make the children turn out properly was passing like this.
Around 2 p.m. on June 17, 1976, on the outskirts of Raccoon City, USA, in the Arklay Mountains.
Somewhere in this mountain range, thick with dense forest, in a remote place that seemed almost untouched by human feet, stood a mansion.
A stately old manor hidden beneath the shade of towering trees, giving off an oddly gloomy atmosphere. Beneath that mansion lay Pandora's box, containing all the darkness of Umbrella.
One of the research labs on the second basement floor of the Arklay Laboratory. There, a middle-aged man with sparse streaks of gray in his hair was conducting an experiment in a white lab coat.
"Hmm... so this sample failed too, I see."
The man set down the test tube irritably and frowned. His sharp gaze turned toward the microscope lens before cooling into indifference.
James Marcus, co-founder of Umbrella and the head of the Arklay Laboratory.
Even within Umbrella, he was a man with an unrivaled position in the field of virology.
"Dr. Marcus."
The laboratory door opened and a young researcher cautiously entered.
"Here is the report sent from the Antarctic Branch Research Institute."
Marcus took the report envelope the researcher handed him and tore it open to read the contents.
After carefully reading through the raw data report, Marcus flipped rapidly through the pages from the middle onward, then tossed it onto the desk as if it were no longer worth reading.
"Tch. Boring. It's all full of useless nonsense."
Marcus clicked his tongue and scorned Alexander.
"Lord Edward, his father, was very intelligent, but to think his son turned out like this... No wonder Spencer that slippery snake stole his position."
Marcus suddenly recalled the past with Edward.
Unlike Spencer, who had more of a businessman than a researcher in him, Edward was one of the few colleagues Marcus himself acknowledged as a rival worthy of the name.
Moreover, the financial power Edward had brought to this company was the foundation that allowed Umbrella to grow this far, so the void left when he passed away had been enormous.
'Well, no doubt Spencer was behind some scheme or other.'
After Edward's death, Marcus's distrust of Spencer had only grown.
Once, he had regarded him as an ideal colleague and a comrade who shared the same dream.
But now Spencer was using Umbrella as a tool for his own ambition.
Research into the Progenitor Virus, the T-Virus project, all of it was nothing more than a stepping stone for Spencer's own plan.
There cannot be two suns in the sky; in the end, this was a problem that would have to be settled someday.
Marcus turned his gaze back to the report he had thrown aside.
After staring at it for a while, he clicked his tongue again, still dissatisfied with something.
But then he folded his arms and sank into thought.
Being incompetent didn't mean being useless.
With that man Spencer increasingly steering the board however he pleased, it wasn't a bad thing to have even one more person on the same side.
Edward was gone, but Marcus knew one thing for certain: the Ashford family was not on Spencer's side within Umbrella.
It didn't matter if he was incompetent, so long as their intentions matched.
Marcus closed the report and muttered quietly,
"I suppose I'll need to see for myself someday, Lord Alexander Ashford."
Then he turned his gaze back to the workbench.
He still had much to do.
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