Kikyo Yoshikawa knew she was a naive and unkind person; she understood this better than anyone else.

The Absolute Ability User Evolution Experiment, sacrificing the lives of twenty thousand Sisters to promote Accelerator to Level 6, held an immense allure for the higher-ups in Academy City. The Sisters were cheap lives—one cost 180,000 yen, reproducible with the push of a button, and requiring only two weeks of nurturing. For the entirety of Academy City, they were less than a drop in the ocean, yet a Level 6 Absolute Ability User was a legend.

To trade such a meager price for the advent of a legend seemed incredibly worthwhile to almost anyone.

But that was only based on the interests of certain individuals. If one considered humanity—no, if one considered it from any angle whatsoever—an experiment costing twenty thousand lives was something that any normal person would deem utterly twisted.

As clones, no matter how inexpensive the Sisters were, no matter how convenient their creation, whether they possessed their own emotions or the consciousness of a human being… from the very moment they were born, they were human!

This was an undeniable fact!

An experiment costing the lives of twenty thousand humans—unless one was a madman obsessed only with research, any person harboring even a sliver of good intent would find this not an experiment, but a massacre that utterly distorted humanity.

Kikyo Yoshikawa was not the type to discard everything for the sake of research. Unlike most other researchers, she possessed a naive side. For the Sisters, whom she couldn't tell apart due to their identical genes, she struggled to memorize each face and, beyond their numbers, had tried to give them human-sounding names.

However, this was naivety, not kindness. A truly kind person would have stood up to resist the experiment!

Kikyo Yoshikawa knew this clearly; she lacked the courage for kindness, the fortitude required to shoulder a heavy burden. It was just like her youthful dream—she had wanted to be a teacher, not a stuffy professor or academic, but a gentle teacher who could listen to her students' worries, working selflessly for every single one… but in the end, she never took that step, just as the boy before her had said—because she lacked the courage to take that step!

She didn't know how Lin Luo had learned this secret of hers, but it didn't matter. She was shaken by his words; the courage radiating from them was blindingly brilliant. Even if such brilliance might instantly consume him, leaving nothing behind, she found herself yearning for that radiance right now…

The thing she had always wanted but never dared to pursue—Kikyo Yoshikawa hated this version of herself but felt powerless to change anything. If only…

Kikyo Yoshikawa wearily closed her eyes. Her mind was in utter chaos. She hoped to become a truly kind person while simultaneously fearing the consequences of acting on it. She had no idea which path to choose. But regardless of her choice, she knew she was powerless to stop these two people, and deep down, a faint sense of hope lingered.

"Humans don't live by calculation. If you constantly weigh risk and opportunity on a scale, what difference is there between you and a machine…" Looking at the lost Kikyo Yoshikawa, Lin Luo continued, "Naturally, a life without risk or suffering is easier. But such a life only spans a few short decades. So, rather than living like a machine, why not choose a more vibrant life and move forward to embrace hardship? Moving forward means accepting greater risks, but what of it? A life like that is certainly more meaningful than a machine's existence. What is truly worth obtaining lies on the other side of that risk!"

"What is truly worth obtaining…" Kikyo Yoshikawa opened her eyes, savoring the boy's words. It felt as if a fog inside her heart had finally cleared.

At that moment, Azuma, who had remained silent, stepped in front of her. "From the moment this experiment began, our hands have been stained with sin. Though attempting to atone now might be too late, if we change nothing, how will we face our present selves in the future? We must remove the shackles of a doomed fate from the Sisters and give them a new future. The sins we created must be shouldered by us!"

With that, Azuma extended a hand toward Kikyo Yoshikawa.

"...Hahaha! Honestly, your eloquence is incredible; you could be professional orators." Kikyo Yoshikawa suddenly burst into loud laughter, a hint of sarcasm playing on her lips. "But I am not that kind of person. Risking everything to save others is something I could never do. It seems I must destroy myself then…"

Slap! Gripping the hand before her firmly, Kikyo Yoshikawa declared with resolve, "Then count me in. I'll gamble on the one moment of true kindness in my entire life!"

…

"Speaking of which, what are your plans? Are you really going to input the emotional data of #20001 into all Misaka Sisters?"

"What? Is that not allowed?"

"The self-awareness of #20001 is far higher than that of the ordinary Misaka Sisters; she might even possess emotions we are unaware of. If ordinary Misaka Sisters could also gain those, and interact with the outside world, it’s possible they could develop genuine feelings and resist the experiment. I believe this method has high feasibility."

"Theoretically, your method is sound, but have you considered whether the emotional data from the higher-tier individual, #20001, can actually be uploaded to all the Sisters' minds?"

"What do you mean?!"

Inside the incubator, the small girl remained suspended in the nutrient fluid, her eyes closed, only her chest rising and falling faintly. Standing beside the incubator were Lin Luo, Azuma, and Kikyo Yoshikawa, though their faces were etched with worry.

Lin Luo's initial idea was to use the emotional data obtained by Azuma to grant the Sisters self-awareness, but now this approach seemed to have encountered a subtle deviation.

Kikyo Yoshikawa explained, "#20001, while originating from the same system as the ordinary Sisters, possesses an absolute fundamental difference. We designed #20001 to function as a fail-safe—yes, that’s the intent—so the personality we input into her is the inverse of that given to the ordinary Sisters. If you were to input #20001's emotional data into the standard Sisters, what do you think would happen when the two opposing personalities conflict?"

"This…"

Lin Luo was completely stunned. Although he understood nothing about "emotional data," Kikyo Yoshikawa’s explanation was starkly clear: what happens when two personalities are forcefully squeezed into one body?

Dual personality?

No! It would be the collapse of the Sisters' core personalities!

He glanced over at Azuma, noticing her equally shocked expression. Since she only possessed partial data on #20001, it was understandable she hadn't grasped this point.

"So, this method won't work?"

"Not exactly," Yoshikawa shook her head. "The Sisters’ emotional data was, after all, input artificially, so it can be deleted. To use your proposed method, their original data would first need to be erased, leaving them a blank slate. But if we do that…"

"The Misaka Sisters will cease to be Misaka Sisters!"

Lin Luo’s expression shifted. This was absolutely unacceptable. His goal was to save the Sisters and allow them to live normal lives, not to alter their personalities. If he followed Kikyo Yoshikawa’s path, what was the difference between that and erasing them?!

"That is impossible!" Lin Luo stated gravely.

"Therefore, your method is unworkable for now."

"Is there truly no other way to make them gain self-awareness?"

"There is…" Hearing this, Lin Luo’s eyes lit up. He listened as Kikyo continued, "I have actually thought about how the Sisters could acquire their own emotions before. Of course, I wasn't doing this to stop the experiment; you know I’m just rather naive. Later, I realized something: since communication between people can generate feeling, what if someone could enter the Misaka Network internally and gently guide them, rather than brainwashing them? Couldn't that allow them to develop their own consciousness?"

"Indeed, this method is viable, but…" Azuma frowned, pondering. "It would require a very long time, not something achievable overnight."

Kikyo glanced at Lin Luo and continued, "Furthermore, entering the Misaka Network is no simple feat. The network links individuals with the same brainwave frequency. If someone with a different frequency tries to force entry, their brain will instantly burn out. That is the biggest obstacle."

Lin Luo remained silent. He looked at #20001 in the incubator, then, after a long pause, asked Kikyo Yoshikawa, "When is the next experiment?"

"Tomorrow night at eight. Experiment 10030."