---||---
...She didn't cry when she left the cultivation pod. Instead, she coughed, expelling the residual fluid from her lungs on her own.
But just like a normal newborn, she curiously sized up the world around her. An innocent curiosity and a timidness toward the unfamiliar environment were written clearly on her face.
Could someone like this truly carry out my plan? For the first time, Otto began to doubt himself as he watched the little girl, who sat obediently on the floor with her legs tucked to her sides, her head darting around like a curious monkey.
"Hmm, the first successful subject is Test Body K-423. Is this truly a coincidence?" Otto suppressed what little pity he had and walked over to her side, diligently recording his data.
She looked from side to side, then tilted her head up at Otto, who now stood before her. She raised a finger and pointed at herself.
"K... four... two...?" she repeated, mimicking Otto's words in a voice that wasn't quite so pleasant.
Otto paused his writing for a moment, glancing up at the girl on the floor before returning his gaze to the notebook in his hand.
"An extraordinary learning ability, yet her mind is still immature and her self-awareness is undeveloped... How peculiar. Those researchers from the City of the Future, who've spent their entire lives trying to create artificial humans only to end up with imbeciles, would probably scream if they saw you."
As he spoke, Otto took out a small mirror and placed it in front of Bianka. Her attention was immediately captivated by it. Only after Otto gestured repeatedly did she begin to clumsily move her limbs.
And then, unsurprisingly, she tumbled to the floor.
The small mirror shattered on the ground. The sharp cracking sound made her body jolt violently, and she froze on the floor as if someone had hit a pause button.
Otto's brow furrowed slightly as he continued his faithful documentation. "Initial motor control is poor. It's uncertain if this can be compensated for later... Perhaps I need to add more Kaslana genes?"
"Or maybe Schariac genes? Hmm... I'm not seeing any effect from Shu's genes so far. As I thought, is [Hope] not a genetic ability, but rather an externally granted power, a unique authority exclusive to a core?" [Schariac is another major Valkyrie bloodline in Schicksal.]
Otto muttered to himself, as if the girl lying on the floor didn't even exist.
Or rather... Otto had never seen her as a living, breathing human being. To him, she was just a disposable tool, unworthy of a second glance.
She didn't spare Otto a glance either. She just lay there, her eyes fixed blankly on the shattered pieces of the mirror.
The big mirror held a big her, and the small mirror held a small her. They seemed the same, yet somehow different.
They had been torn into countless pieces, yet each piece was still whole...
Suddenly, a soft scraping sound made Otto snap his head up. All of his attention, once focused on his notes, was now on her.
On the hand that was sliding a piece of the mirror.
She carefully extended a finger, pressed down on one shard, and slowly slid it next to another.
The edges of the two pieces met perfectly. Under their combined gaze, her pale hand reached for a third shard.
Another perfect fit. Otto's breathing grew ragged. He held his breath, watching in silence as she slowly pieced the mirror back together, one shard at a time.
The completed mirror was missing a corner, but this was already enough to stun Otto. Just as he was about to write something down, he saw her glance into the newly-assembled mirror, then use its reflection to reach for and pick up the final, tiny shard—one that was completely out of her direct line of sight.
Otto was dumbfounded. Suddenly, a smile spread across his face—a laugh he couldn't suppress.
He took off his white lab coat, knelt, and gently draped it over her.
"From this day forward, you are no longer K-423," Otto said to her. "Your name is Bianka. A name that belongs only to you."
"A name..." Bianka looked up, and her crystal-clear eyes made Otto feel strangely unworthy.
"Bi... an... ka..."
---||---
That was how she got her name... from a single incident.
It was the first thing she had ever owned, and she guarded it carefully. She was terrified that someone would take her name away, so she fought and struggled desperately, trying to prove she was worthy of it.
She was tired, so very tired... Just as that voice had said, she fell so far short of the "Durandal" everyone expected her to be—so far that even she had lost hope in her own efforts.
But "Durandal" was a hard worker, so she had to be one, too.
The crushing weight of that expectation nearly suffocated her, but even so, she clung to her name and refused to let go.
Everyone is irreplaceable, but she felt she wasn't. Even if K-423 was gone, there would be a K-424, a K-425 to take her place. They would all look identical, and thanks to the experience Otto gained from her, they would be even better than she was.
She didn't know what would be left of her if she lost her name. Maybe she'd be sent back to the cultivation pod, or maybe she'd just be... disposed of.
She had heard that death was like sinking into an endless darkness... She didn't want to go back to that darkness. She had seen the light, and she didn't want to go back.
She didn't want to wake up one morning and see Rita greeting "her" as usual, Theresa continuing to complain to "her," and Quinn-senpai continuing to train with "her."
And no one would realize that the "her" they knew was no longer her at all.
After all, what everyone needed in their lives wasn't her... it was "Bianka."
If... if she had told Rita the truth about herself earlier, would Rita have remembered her? When she saw the person who replaced her, would she still think of the original?
In the end, Bianka was only a little over a month old. She wasn't even a little girl yet—she was at an age defined by insecurity.
The initial look in Otto's eyes had filled her with a profound fear.
The sound of a metal door opening jolted Bianka back to her senses. She glanced up and saw the cultivation pod in front of her was empty, save for an irregular blue crystal floating silently in the verdant liquid.
The face she had seen earlier was just her own reflection.
But Bianka's fragile heart had already been shaken. Hearing footsteps, her first instinct was to hide.
She shrank behind the cultivation pod, holding her breath and peeking cautiously at Otto as he walked through the door.
His face was as dark as a storm cloud, and he looked like a monster ready to snatch up a child and devour them whole.