Editing The Unexplored Summon Blood Sign:Volume5 Chapter1 (section)

===Part 3===

“You really like to make things exciting, don’t you?”

Shigara Masami sighed on her stool with her long black hair held in a ponytail by a scrunchie and while wearing a dark blue tight skirt suit and a lab coat.

In addition to the living space for the developers and guards, the Outer Circle contained several research facilities of various sizes. They all took different approaches toward making the 15 into a single family.

Madam Professor of Government used a space much like a hospital examination room.

It contained a stool, a steel desk, and a simple examination table. There was a light box for viewing X-rays on the wall and a computer and flat-screen monitor on the desk. The desk also had a small bottle of sunflower seeds, so she may have been keeping some sort of pet. Or did she eat them herself? It was hard to tell.

This was likely a form of roleplaying.

The Fifteen Siblings Project was structured like a family, but the adults had each constructed their own independent worlds: a school, a corporation, an army, a prison, a passenger plane, a cooking classroom, a workshop, a fitness gym, and a hospital. They all had their own unique color, but anything worked as long as it formed a hierarchy or a society with a host.

However, this was not actually an examination room. There would be a bunch of frightening machines beyond the white cloth partition behind Shigara Masami.

“Any risks to your safety or peace are reported to us. So things are tense enough for someone to pull out their Blood-Sign? …You do understand that continuing in that way would lead to an appearance from the gods of legend or something even greater, don’t you? We manage all the Incense Grenades, but they aren’t entirely impossible to make on one’s own. Especially for kids like you who aren’t exactly normal.”

“I didn’t do it.”

“Well, they say rain hardens the ground and conflict is a form of communication. And you wouldn’t be much of a family if you never fought.”

She whispered that last comment to herself.

She also toyed with the stethoscope (which was probably a prop for her roleplaying) resting on her large chest and she glanced over at the flat-screen monitor on the desk.

It displayed a colorful line graph that changed in real time, but it did not seem to be an EKG or stock prices.

There were 15 lines in all.

That matched the number of siblings.

“This is a Relective Graph. …Of course, it’s just one of the indicators we use.”

It measured their heartrate and brainwaves to create a general approximation of them as a person.

So the closer the lines came together, the less distance there was between them as people. And they would eventually converge enough to call them a family.

There were about three main branches and Kyousuke was part of one of those.

The Hatter was wandering all alone near the very top of the graph.

It was looking difficult for them all to converge into a single main river. And even if they did, there was little data suggesting that would actually prove they were a family. The researchers had simply taken statistical data from thousands or tens of thousands of volunteer families and the majority of those sample families had converged to that extent.

(Plus, summoners and vessels disappear from all cameras and sensors while inside an Artificial Sacred Ground, so this allows them to notice right away if we try to use the Summoning ceremony in secret.)

That said, Kyousuke and the others had simply been told to “become a family”, so it was nice having some visible numbers to set as a goal.

The lab coat beauty intentionally changed the mood while crossing her legs.

“Okay, we don’t want to waste any time, so let’s get to ‘studying’, Kyousuke-kun. Thank you for choosing my basic theory again.”

To reiterate, Kyousuke and the rest of the 15 were generally free to do as they wished and they were not forced to follow anything like a school schedule or a prison work schedule.

They were free to choose if they would take lessons from the adults and which one they would choose as a teacher. Some stuck to a single individual, some stayed away from them and studied alone, and others wandered from one to another in search of one that suited them.

They were free to do as they wished, but they naturally aimed for the top.

Why? There was a simple reason.

No one wanted to be branded incompetent and mocked as an idiot. There were two ways to avoid that: trip up everyone else or outdo everyone else. For the time being, the 15 were tending toward the latter.

She placed the negative to some data in the light box meant for viewing X-rays.

“Okay, pay attention here. The framework of a ‘family’ can mean many different things, but there are a few theories as to how we define a family. Simply using blood relationships is a tad unrealistic. After all, human beings are not skilled enough to perform a blood test just by looking at someone.”

“But the closer someone’s genetics, the more similar their facial features will be. Isn’t it defined as people who look a lot like you?”

“In that case, you can never grow any closer to your wife or your step sister.”

“So a family is defined by something that happens in life, not by your birth? Like the imprinting of a chick?”

“This would be a lot easier if it was that simple. I think the life cycle – especially what you eat – is important.”

“So you’ve gone back to the basics of building a nest?”

“People’s scent is influenced by what they eat. If you live in the same house and pick up the same cycle, you will naturally smell a lot alike. And one of the most well-known signs of future family troubles is when someone stops showing up for meals. That shift in the cycle alters their scent, so the two of them will stop viewing each other as part of the same group. If a large enough gap forms, they might as well be strangers.”

“That would explain why a new member can join a family, but isn’t it a little forceful? By that logic, someone who ‘leaves’ to live on their own or to marry into another family would no longer be seen as part of the family.”

“Oh? It isn’t unusual for distance to grow between family members when one begins a new life. When that family member returns for the Bon festival or New Year’s, don’t people find them to be ‘nostalgic’? Although I will admit that genetically similar people will emit similar hormones, so they gain a similar scent more easily when eating the same food.”

“But wouldn’t that mean you temporarily lose the ability to recognize your family when you have a cold or allergies?”

“In all seriousness, I think the tendency of people to act rudely while sick may be key to this. Oh, if only we could investigate the corpses of the medieval nobility whose bloodline morality completely collapsed. There’s a chance that attempted poisonings and rampant venereal disease had dulled their senses…”

“I really think you’re going a bit far to suggest stuffing some balled up tissues in your nose will break down the bonds of family.”

“Ah! You’re using that example to make fun of me, aren’t you!?”

The adult woman started pouting, but stuffing tissues in her nose was unfortunately not going to fix it.

This was the theory held by Shigara Masami, one of the developers who managed the Miniature Garden.

It was but one of dozens, if not hundreds, of theories.

Learning about these things would not help them in society, nor would it lead to any special qualifications or skills. But if the 15 absorbed these, they would be able to share in the values of this Miniature Garden. It was like a guidebook with a valuable coupon in the back. Learning it came with a variety of privileges and enriched their lives. They would no longer carelessly stumble.

At a college-prep school, the students were taught the importance of educational history. At a technical school, they were taught the value of unique skills and qualifications. The upperclassman/underclassman hierarchy and the relationship between classes and years were all built on that basis. Just as a dumb upperclassman would not be viewed with respect at a college-prep school, an egghead upperclassman would be left behind at a sports school. There might be another path for them, but that possibility was rejected. Once they strayed from the path set up by the school, they might consider themselves a dropout and even consider suicide.

“But why bring the Blood-Signs and Summoning Ceremony into this?”

“That would be more about a form of proof and testing than it is the thesis. Not only are Materials a threat to a pure family, they will crush the established theories even when they have been gathered into a system of religious morals. Can a small moral overcome a large one? No, even if it can, it would not bring us all together once it was spread through the world.”

“You’ve mentioned this before,” cut in Kyousuke in his surgical gown and pants. He spoke slowly as if speaking to a small child. “Do you have any evidence suggesting you can safely control ''that'' once you summon it?”

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Shigara Masami maintained her smile.

Ignoring someone’s seniority was a simple way of igniting their anger, but this ponytail beauty was not bothered.

“If that is all it takes to crush this, then it is meaningless. If that is all it takes to crush this, it is not worth continuing. Even if we are talking about a tornado we have only received sporadic glimpses of…even if we are talking about the White.”

It was the perfect answer.

But as Kyousuke faced her, that perfection seemed to grow brittle.

Not that he was one to talk.

“Now, Kyousuke-kun, did you understand everything I told you?”

“I suppose.”

“''Then can you repeat it back to me verbatim, starting from the very first word'?”

Those piercing words were the polar opposite of her smile.

That request might normally have elicited shock or a gasp, but Kyousuke was different.

“Starting from, ‘You really like to make things exciting, don’t you’? Or from, ‘Okay, we don’t want to waste any time, so let’s get to “studying”, Kyousuke-kun’?”

Shigara Masami laughed.

Shiroyama Kyousuke rattled off her own words with machine-like accuracy…