Soon, Gua returned to the research institute with Orochimaru.
Not long ago, Gua had just left this place with a bag of eggs.
Now, he was back again.
This time, though, everyone who had come to collect eggs had dispersed. Only Orochimaru and Gua stood before the laboratory's Alloy Gate.
Orochimaru manually pulled open the heavy Alloy Gate and walked inside.
Gua followed close behind.
Orochimaru doubled back to shut the heavy Alloy Gate.
Gua: ...
"Why don't you install..."
Forget it.
Gua stopped halfway through and gave up.
An automatic what? Who knew whether the Shinobi World even had such things?
Technology in the Shinobi World sprouted in utterly random directions. Some places had electricity, while others still used fire starters. Some places could hang incandescent bulbs, while others still lit candles. Some places had airplanes, while others didn't even have bicycles...
What could he say? Even Gua, a half-native himself, found it absurd.
"Gua, what were you going to say?"
Orochimaru keenly picked up on Gua's hesitation and pressed him.
Gua said, "Nothing."
Orochimaru refused to let it go. "Gua-kun, I want to know!"
Gua: ...
Seeing Orochimaru's serious expression, Gua stopped brushing him off and repeated what he had been about to say.
"I said, why don't you install an automatic one? It's so heavy. Don't you get tired?"
Orochimaru narrowed his long, slender eyes slightly. "Automatic? What do you mean?"
Gua said, "...Nothing."
Orochimaru said, "Gua-kun, I want to know!"
Gua: ...
"You could fit your door with a mechanism that opens and closes it automatically in response to specific commands. Wouldn't that be much more convenient?"
Orochimaru froze.
"A puppeteer?"
"No!"
Realization suddenly struck Orochimaru.
"Gua! I think I'm starting to understand what you mean!"
He didn't need such a thing himself. The Alloy Gate was heavy, but opening and closing it was still effortless for Orochimaru. It posed no problem. He could tell, however, that the other people using the laboratory found it far less convenient.
Where there was a need, there was a place for technology to shine!
"I see! I see!"
Orochimaru nodded repeatedly as he led Gua farther inside.
"Gua-kun, look, everything around you has been completely revamped. This workbench is absolutely clean. And this microscope—I've added both concave and convex lenses, making it easy to adjust the brightness. And this distillation apparatus, its purification efficiency has improved considerably since I added a matching condenser. And this, and this, and this..."
Orochimaru introduced the features of his laboratory to Gua one after another.
Anyone who didn't know better would have thought Gua had come for an inspection.
Gua took in all the changes to Orochimaru's laboratory. It really was nothing like the filthy, chaotic mess it had been before. Everything looked brand-new.
Orochimaru kept explaining as they walked, while Gua remained silent the whole way.
He hadn't said another word since commenting on the door when they came in.
This made Orochimaru rather anxious.
Please, my little lord, say something.
What's unsuitable? What's wrong? What needs improvement? Just tell me! Don't go silent on me now, all right?
The two had reached the very back of the laboratory.
A girl was leaning over Orochimaru's homemade microscope, examining something.
"Anko, stop looking for a moment. Let me introduce you."
Anko immediately stood and turned toward Orochimaru. Only then did she notice the child beside her teacher.
"Is this... Gua?"
Anko actually recognized Gua.
Even Orochimaru was a little surprised.
"You know Gua?"
Gua was baffled too.
Wait, we've never met, have we?
You dug up my personal details before we even met?
This Anko is pretty sneaky too.
"Of course. Gua is really famous among the girls. Even I hear rumors about him now and then."
Gua: ...
The Anko standing before him looked at least five or six years older than him.
You've already graduated, haven't you?
Am I really that famous?
First Kakashi had sought him out because of his reputation. Now, without him even leaving home, Anko already knew his name.
"Oh? You've never mentioned him to me."
Orochimaru watched Anko with a smile.
Anko smiled bashfully. "It's girl talk~ How could I tell my teacher about that~?"
Gua: ...
Got it!
It's just like boys talking about some girl in their dorm...
Gua only hoped they would go easy on him and not spread false rumors.
"Oh, right, Teacher! Your experiment turned out differently from before again!"
Anko suddenly remembered something and pointed at the microscope she had just been using.
Orochimaru's expression stiffened. "It failed again?"
"Yes. Those plant tissues of yours suddenly died again while they were growing. I wanted to see what was going on inside them, but I couldn't make anything out."
Anko explained.
Orochimaru sighed. "It's all right. We'll try again next time. Perhaps it'll succeed then."
None of his experiments were reproducible. Fifty attempts could yield ten or twenty different results.
Orochimaru called this science's unobservable phenomenon!
Before an experiment began, its results existed in a state of superposition. Once the experiment started, the result became fixed!
Gua had no idea what Orochimaru was thinking. If he had known, he would definitely have given Orochimaru an enormous eye roll.
Your theory is so far off base it's left the planet!
"Gua, why do you think the results are different every time?"
Orochimaru asked sincerely.
Gua wanted to keep silent, but after asking, Orochimaru kept staring at him, waiting for an answer.
Anko stared straight at him too.
Even Teacher asks Gua questions?
Anko wouldn't dare question her teacher, so she concluded that Gua must be an incredibly accomplished scientist!
Unable to withstand their thirst for knowledge, Gua finally forced out a response after a long silence.
"Could it possibly be because your experimental conditions are different?"
Orochimaru said, "Impossible! I conduct every experiment in the same place!"
Gua: ...
He actually found this version of Orochimaru a little adorably stupid.
Orochimaru was a pioneer of technology in the Shinobi World. Precisely because of that, however, he couldn't stand on the shoulders of giants. He could only feel his way forward, bit by bit.
That was why he ran into so many problems Gua couldn't even fathom.
"Why did that experiment just fail?"
Gua wasn't going to try explaining it to Orochimaru. Mostly because, as a high school student with only a shaky grasp of things himself, what the hell could he explain properly? He could only see whether he could spot flaws for Orochimaru.
"I don't know. If I knew, I wouldn't be asking you, Gua."
Orochimaru answered with complete sincerity, without the slightest airs of a chief scientist.
Gua said, "Hmm... Do you have any experimental records, then?"
"I do!"
Orochimaru immediately had Anko bring over the experimental records.
All they recorded was the date and whether the experiment had failed or succeeded.
Gua scratched his head as he read. You call these records?
Suddenly.
Something clicked for Gua. He studied those dates, then, after a long while, turned to stare blankly at Orochimaru.
Gua pointed at the days marked as failures.
"Were these days when it failed all relatively hot?"
Orochimaru thought back, then nodded.
Gua pointed again. "And were these days when it succeeded all relatively cold?"
Orochimaru nodded again.
Gua: ...
"I see!" Orochimaru's eyes shone. "So that's it. Then what... what should I do if my experiments fail whenever it gets hot?"
Orochimaru was hungry for knowledge.
Gua said, "Then why not just do them when it's cold?"
Orochimaru said, "Hmm?"
Before you continue