125 The First Lesson

As he pulled up his email, his eyes were automatically drawn to the dozens of unread messages in his inbox. Scanning through the subject lines, his mouth pressed tightly into a line, eyes hardening as he saw the senders.

The emails had been sent by their so-called blood relatives. He thought he had completely given up on them, yet when he saw the emails, he couldn't help grow a seed of expectation. He couldn't resist that small strand of hope and clicked into the emails.

He clicked into the first one. The subject line said [Where Are You?]

In the body it said: [If you're alive, don't come back. If you're dead, good riddance. The family is great without you around. I hope your two twins are with you in death.

…

Since you're probably dead, I've gotten my lawyers to move all your inheritance and property to my name. See you never again.]

Light continued to open each message. As he did, his face got darker and darker. There were a wide variety of messages ranging from demands for their inheritance to orders for his and the twins to return to pure hate mail wishing them a miserable death. Not a single relative nor cousin had ever messaged them before the apocalypse, yet the first time they did was after a major outbreak and only to demand things from them or wish them death.

He completely forgot that there was a whole audience awaiting him to share his lesson plan with them. Rin and Yukio hadn't seen their brother in this state for a long time. Before the outbreak, he could be seen with this expression almost all the time but only when he thought they weren't watching. In truth, they had always known how challenging life had been for their older brother which is why they tried their best to be as obedient and accommodating as well.

Both of them quietly went over to hold his hands in support, not saying anything to interrupt his thought process. Feeling their touch, he woke up from his thoughts and smiled apologetically, "Sorry everyone, I got distracted for a bit."

Turning his attention back to the screen, his gaze had recovered it's usual calm. He selected all the emails and hit the delete button with no reservations. There was no need for him to pay any mind to those people who were worse to them than strangers. He had found a good place in life with good people. Instead of focusing on the past, it was time for him to look towards the future.

As he pulled up the lesson plans for the twins, he began speaking in a teacher-like manner, "First, let's all take an assessment. I was to see what your level of knowledge is."

Rose and the twins gulped as they heard this while Xiao Ai and Little White respectively had a happy and neutral expression.

They ran around to collect different pieces of paper and pen and sat everyone down. Light sat before the tv as the teacher as the kids gathered around and listened to him ask each question. As he did, all the kids would look down at their papers and write something down. Whenever Rin didn't know how to answer something, he would not-so-furtively peek over at the others' papers. Yukio quickly covered his answers with his arms while Rose erected an ice wall to hide her answers. Xiao Ai simply bounced around with happiness while Little White stared blankly at the paper uncomprehendingly.

Aida found it to be such a cute scene so she secretly snapped a few pictures. She also made a mental note to obtain office supplies and a whiteboard to support Light's lessons.

Light, who was watching the kids work through the problems, shook his head in dismay. He had a newfound respect for all teachers, particularly the ones teaching the lower grades. These kids were so rowdy, he had no idea how to properly corral them into focusing. He began considering ways that he could make use of his growing empathic abilities to influence their learning.

After the initial assessment was completed, he reviewed the responses that each of them provided. To no one's surprise, Xiao Ai got a perfect score with Yukio in second. Rose also got a fairly decent score as well. Due to their levels of knowledge being so different, Light decided that place Xiao Ai and Yukio in the self study group with occasional lessons, Rose and Rin in another group for more focused lessons, and Little White would begin with picture books.

For today, he started with some basic geography lessons. Even though they were all at different levels, they could still collectively learn certain pieces of knowledge with geography being one of the more relevant topics in this climate. Aida was spectating at the back, enjoying the youthful energy among the kids. Even Little White seemed somewhat intrigued by the lessons they were being taught.

At this time, Lucifer, who had been on the roof keeping Reapers away from the RV, tapped Aida's shoulders and gestured for her to follow him. They walked up to the stairs to the roof to chat so as not to disturb the kids from their learning.

Sitting up on the roof of the RV, they casually got rid of Reapers as Lucifer began to speak, "I haven't been completely honest with you."

Aida continued to throw shards of metal at the oncoming Reapers and Enraged without pause, there was no change in her expression. She seemed to have already expected this conversation when he first asked her to come up.

He continued, "I want to thank and apologize to you. Thank you for saving my life twice."

'It's actually three times now, but whatever.' thought Aida and she rolled her eyes internally.

"I also want to apologize for not sharing everything earlier on. At that time, I still wasn't clear who I could and could not trust. My team and I had originally been tasked by our government to go to City A for a secret mission. The corruption case that we were chasing after was simply a cover for our true objective. Our main mission was to obtain a secret drug that could apparently give people superpowers."

Randy laughed ironically as he continued, "At that time, I scoffed at the mission. Superpowers? Did they think this was a fantasy world or something? But now, seeing what had happened then and now seeing our Variant abilities, it seems that the intel was accurate after all."

Aida's interest peaked.