“Haaaa…” Releasing a long and tired sigh, Murayama leaned his back on the chair he had been using to write his reports to the general in the privacy of a room in the same building as their targets were being kept. With sluggish movements, he lifted one of his hands from the table after letting the pen slip from in between his fingers and lead it towards his eyes, carefully rubbing his tired eyelids with the pads of his fingers. “I probably should go check on those guys, shouldn’t I…?”

Rotating his shoulders for a couple of seconds, Murayama stood up from his seat and dragged his body until the locked door of the room. Using the key safely being supervised at all moments on the surface of the table and after a clear clank coming from the lock’s hatch, he stepped outside and motioned downstairs to the ground floor of the building, readily motioning towards the closest division – the living room.

Um… Really, should I worry about this or not…?, inwardly inquired Murayama to himself as he spotted the TV turned on, Miue sat down on the sofa in front of the TV as M5 used his lap as a pillow. Rolling his eyes around just the slightest, he silently walked out of that division and aimed towards the following one.

In the dining room, where they had all previously enjoyed a magnanimous feast, he found both Mizusaki and M4 having a heated conversation over whether or not the super soldier was to be categorized as a tsundere or not, Mizusaki happily using his tablet to show him examples of extremely well-known characters in the anime/manga verse to get his point across.

When he took a peek inside of the kitchen, he found an extremely similar scenario to the previous two. Eki was providing M2 with an extremely detailed cooking class on some basic Japanese dishes, such as tamagoyaki and how to properly wash and cook rice.

What… exactly is going on here…?, inquired Murayama in the back of his brain once again, softly closing the kitchen door and silently walking away from it. A completely lost semblance could be found on his features due to the three scenes he had just witnessed with his own eyes. They… are all getting along? My squad members are all blending in together with the insane super soldiers we released from a secret, illegal lab and are now acting all cosy and homey with them… Am I dreaming right now or some shit like that?

“Okay, let’s just stop using my brain to rationalise what isn’t even rational in the first place and find the whereabouts of the remaining three brats,” sighed Murayama, trying to shake off his completely flabbergasted reaction to these fully unexpected events and resume with the task he had settled himself to perform by his own initiative.

After walking back and forth through the ground floor of the building, opening and closing every door to survey the insides of all the division, and having done the exact same scavenging through the two upper floors, Murayama was starting to get the terrifying bad feeling that those said three brats were nowhere to be found inside of the building and were currently waltzing around the military base as they pleased, possibly plotting the soldiers’ incoming doom.

He wouldn’t put both M1 and M3 above it, even if he felt a certain hesitation in categorizing M0 in such dangerous and scheming ways. Probably a mistake on his side seeing as it had been M0 doing the manipulation of the information spiralling around throughout their travel from the destroyed lab until Tokyo military base.

Well, the last place to take a look at is the rooftop of the building…, inwardly sighed Murayama, starting to climb the iron staircase that led to the rooftop’s access door. If they're not there, red alert it is for everyone…

“Nn… That’s right.”

“…?” As soon as Murayama softly opened the door, M0’s melodic voice immediately reached his ears. He fully opened the door and stepped outside of the warm insides of the building to be greeted by the cold, soft wind of the night. When he walked a little bit further and took a peek to the side of the rooftop, not visible when he opened the door due to its half-hidden position, he found M0 sat down on the short wall surrounding the edge of the rooftop, his legs dangling on the outside area as he had a cheerful conversation – if it could even be called such – with no one.

“They have this curious furry creature, almost as big as me in size and with a very slippery tongue, that goes by the name of ‘Shinigami’,” leisurely said M0, a soft smile on his lips as he stared absentmindedly into the distance. He chuckled. “Isn’t that a strange thing? And, it turns out that the food outside isn’t the same as what they gave us in the lab. …Yes, everyone says that it’s very delicious. Humans also have this drink called ‘iced caramel macchiato’. …I don’t know. Maybe I could try to ask the soldiers about that? …Yes, I want to try it again, if I get the chance.”

“…Who is he talking to?” softly mumbled Murayama as he carefully swept that entire area of the rooftop with his eyes in search for M0’s conversation partner. At first, he would have thought that he was talking with M1, seeing as they were always glued to one another. But the lack of M1’s presence there and the things being said made such completely impossible.

“M0 is having his usual conversation with his childhood friend,” explained M1, popping up all of a sudden right next to Murayama, whose body startled in a quite noteworthy way.

“You guys seriously need to stop doing that…!” hissed Murayama, a deep frown on his features as he turned his body around to face M1 upfront. “Wait… What do you mean by ‘childhood friend’?”

“I believe that a childhood friend is a childhood friend so I don’t understand what that question is for,” pointed out M1, giving a quick sideways glance at the soldier before he returned his eyes to M0’s location.

“Ah… No, it’s just…” hesitantly started Murayama, scratching the back of his head as an eyebrow became slightly arched on his brows. Taking the information he had on their lives and childhoods into consideration, there was a big, gaping hole in that childhood friend theory. “Can you also hear what M0’s childhood friend is saying?”

“I can’t,” shortly answered M1 with a quick shrug of his shoulders.

“I thought all six of you had super hearing or something along those li— …Oh…” started teasing Murayama but when he saw the blank stare he was being subjected to by M1, he finally understood what was their misguided interpretation of ‘childhood friends’. It’s not a childhood friend but an imaginary friend who takes on the role of a childhood friend…

Human beings, whether purely as what they were born as or later on modified to become something more, are social beings. Lack of personal interaction and isolation more often than not led the brain into creating a persona that could make up for such lack – another lonesome being that could quench the thirst for companionship.

After being kept closed inside of a basement for 18 years, solely interacting with scientists that viewed him as nothing more than a mass murder human weapon and continuously separated from those that were the same as him, it wouldn’t be that unusual for M0’s brain to have modified itself in unconventional ways to sooth down his earning for someone to talk with, share his opinions and discoveries. Someone who could stay by his side even while in the isolation of his pitch dark cell.

“Do you find it ‘weird’?” inquired M1, a soft smile on his lips as he continued observing the talkative M0, who was sharing everything that had went around them in the last 48 hours with his conversation partner.

“…” Hesitantly, Murayama switched his gaze from M1 back to M0, who featured a gorgeous smile on his features as he explained to his imaginary friend all the delicious things that he had gotten to try and taste during their dinner. “…No, he’s adorable. …!”

When Murayama noticed what he had accidentally blurted out in a completely unconscious level, he immediately whipped his head around and looked over to M1. Frighteningly enough, he saw M1’s facial expression undergo three different phases as he peered over at him, one after the other.

A curious tilt of his head. An eyebrow softly arched on his creased brows. A deadly glare with the ‘light bulbs’ of his grey eyes illuminating the dark of the night with a red hue.

“Back off! I’ll kill you!” hissed M1, wrathfully glaring at Murayama as he turned around on his heels and started walking towards M0, readily sitting down on the short wall right by his side as soon as he got there.

“Geez… Talk about possessive…” grumbled Murayama, still trying to suppress the shuddering that M1’s malicious glare had caused in him. Twisting his nose just the slightest at the sight of M0 leisurely leaning his head on M1’s shoulder, who reciprocated the action with a loving peck to the top of his head, he took the very same action as M1 and started walking back to the place where he had come from, quickly returning to the insides of the building.

He had yet to know about M3’s whereabouts but… in all honesty, he couldn’t quite bring himself to witness more growing closeness between their targets and his squad members. At least, not at the moment.