Chapter 54: Morning Affair and Alchemy
The next day...
When Alex was still sleeping peacefully on the bed, he heard a loud knock from outside.
"Wake up, Alex, it's time for homework!"
Sophia's loud voice echoed throughout the room, waking Alex up from the bed as he slowly rubbed his eyes.
"Okay, I'm getting up. Just give me a few minutes."
Slowly, as Alex got up from the bed, he suddenly felt a little leg cramp down below.
"Crap... How did I forget this again?"
Thankfully, there were only small red spots near his underwear, so he quickly removed it along with his pajamas.
Moving his leg in between a pair of panties, he quickly attached his pad before pulling it all the way up.
Even though he had been having periods for almost half a year now, or six times to be exact, he still couldn't get used to it.
"Being a woman is so annoying," Alex murmured as he changed into his normal clothes.
After brushing his teeth and washing his face in the bathroom, he quickly headed outside where Sophia had been waiting.
"You okay?" Sophia asked, noticing the grumpy mood on his face.
"I'm fine..."
Despite Alex's reassurance, Sophia soon realized why Alex was so grumpy, as she quickly remembered that his period timing was the same as hers.
"You need me to carry you?" Sophia asked softly.
"I'm good... Sophia, why are you so happy today? Don't you have the same thing as me?"
Alex questioned as the two of them headed down the hall to Mary's room.
"I'm happy because Mom told me earlier what we are going to do later. Also, I had gotten used to this already."
As Sophia answered Alex, she began to knock on the door to Mary's room.
"Wake up. It's time to do homework."
Hearing no response from the inside, Sophia knocked on the door again.
"Mary, wake up! It's time for breakfast! Luqing made so many delicious dishes for us."
"Okay, I'm coming!"
The two could hear the scrambling steps inside as if she was trying to be in a rush.
But hearing something falling, the two immediately opened the door and rushed in.
"You okay?"
Sophia worryingly asked as the two of them helped her get back up from the ground.
"I-I'm fine."
"How did you trip on a flat surface?" Alex curiously asked, noticing the little bruises on her knee.
"My leg just feels a little uncomfortable today——"
"Ahem, Mary, you might want to change first."
Sophia interrupted as she noticed Mary's panties were tainted red around the front area.
"Oh snap. Why did my period come early!"
Mary quickly took her pajama pants, then began taking off her panties right in front of the two.
Just as Alex was about to turn his head around, Sophia suddenly moved over to cover his eyes.
"Stop looking at your sister, you pervert."
"I was just about to look away if it wasn't for your hand stopping me," Alex argued.
"Sophia, I-I don't mind brother seeing me naked——"
"He's your brother. You can't have men see your body naked. Just change into your clothes."
After Mary put on the pad and changed into a fresh pair of clothes, she finally let go of Alex.
"Geez, it's not like we haven't seen each other's bodies before," Alex complained, as he had no intent to look in the first place.
Especially considering that both Sophia and Mary were practically as flat as cardboard and that they were his sisters.
"Unless you said you want to be our sister one day, you are always going to be a man," Sophia argued, not taking Alex's bait.
"That's never going to happen... Damn Evelyn and Damn Luna."
Alex murmured the last part to himself, knowing the two had been constantly bombarding Sophia with nonsense like privacy.
Even though it was Katherine who ultimately decided to split the three into their own bedroom, they had exacerbated Sophia's sense of decency.
He still remembers the day he came back home with the two of them, with Sophia distancing him away from Mary and herself.
It was only after Camille accidentally slipped up after one of their meditation session together that he learned why.
"Ahem, can you two wait outside? I'll be back out later."
Sophia and Alex quickly stepped out of the hallway as Mary headed to the bathroom to freshen up.
---
When the three were in the living room with all the empty plates, their belly was full of food.
"That was so delicious," Mary murmured as she wiped her mouth with a tissue.
The other two agreed as well, with Katherine thanking Luqing as she began to clean up the table.
With the table cleaned up, Katherine suddenly pulled a blackboard out of nowhere before standing up next to it.
The three immediately took out their notebook and pencils, getting ready to take notes for the Alchemy lessons.
A few hours later...
"So all of you got that?"
As Katherine put the chalk down, all three of the kids had already written several pages of notes nonstop.
All of them nodded, but their brain was still a little too overloaded with so much information at once.
"Good. Now, you guys can do your homework."
"Lady Katherine, lunch is ready," Luqing stated just as they were about to take out their homework.
"Oh, let's all go eat first."
As the four of them headed to the other living room's dining area, Amelia was already there.
"Good afternoon, Auntie."
"Good afternoon... Luqing, I'm not going to eat dinner today. Tell Mom and Dad that I'm busy with my experiment."
As Amelia left the dining area, the three quickly took their seat before they started eating.
"You guys, stop eating so fast. Have some manner." Katherine warned as she took a seat herself.
"Grandpa and Grandma aren't here. Luqing isn't going to tell them this, right?"
Sophia asked as they began shoving as much food down as possible, not caring how messy they looked.
Luqing shook her head and smiled, standing on the side as Katherine began gently cutting up the pieces of meat.
"You guys..."
Katherine didn't comment any further, letting the three go free as they had been listening to her lecture the whole time.
A few minutes later...
After the lunch break, the three were led back to the other living room, where they began working on the first page of the homework.
Katherine sat and watched the three slowly solve the problems one by one, with occasional help from both of the girls.
Meanwhile, Alex was once again going from a few problems ahead to an entire page ahead of them.
"This is so easy..." Alex thought to himself as he continued to fill in the blanks.
Most of the questions involved plugging in the unknown element, with hints right below that stated the element's properties or reactions with others.
Knowing all of the name made it extremely easy to match, with notes to double-check if he did it correctly.
When he got to the third page, the question was shifted to a combination instead.
He couldn't help but think of the lab experiment he used to conduct in his chemistry class.
But rather than conducting it, he simply matched the combination that made the reaction rather than a single element.
"No Actinides..." Alex murmured as he began to realize which elements on the table were completely missing.
Most of the Transitional metals were recorded, but many of the other categories had many holes within them.
It was clear the chemistry on this planet was following the same function as the one back on Earth.
However, with the mana and Qi existing, he couldn't help but feel he was learning the opposite of scientific knowledge.
Especially after he asked Katherine during the lecture about if mana was an element.
When she answered no, it just caused more confusion as he expected the element to be the fabric of everything.
More importantly, when she talked about how alchemy is the basis for potions that can be ingested, it just made absolutely no sense to him.
Even though medicine back on earth was made with 'elements' like ferrous gluconate to treat Amenia, this world have different options.
Instead of using iron Fe2+ and gluconic acid, which is made up of C6H12O7, iron can be replaced with nickel.
The only logical reasoning she provided was that 'mana' interaction changes the property of elements.
Despite some of the alchemy formulas being the flat-out poison that he had experimented with in a control setting back in school.
From formulas involving Mercuric Chloride to Mercury Sulfide, just hearing the word mercury was enough to trigger his bad memories.
Yet, things like healing potions and mana potions are made with it, which sounded ridiculous yet logical for this world.
As he continued with his homework, he practically discarded all of his old knowledge and adopted the new ones as replacements.
After what felt like forever, Alex finally finished the seven-page chemistry homework just as the clock hit three.