District 42-Chapter 162: Getting back to routine

After Casper arrived at his home, he could calm himself down after a cold bath. He was still a bit disturbed inside because of the past events, but nothing like when he was talking with the Princess.

He noticed how hungry he was since he couldn’t get to eat throughout the day, so he decided to have dinner earlier that day.

During his meal, he was thinking about his behavior, and the more he rambled about it, the more frustrated the soldier became.

"Damn it! Why did I do such a thing!? That way of action, those words, my looks... Everything was out of what I usually am!" That side Casper had shown to the Princess was his weakest one.

That was the part of Casper’s personality that he reserved just for his frustrations and traumas. Show it to Vick wasn’t the better move to do.

"I am glad I could hold myself to not say something too revealing, but still..." He was with his fingers sunk in his hair, rubbing it viciously. He barely could find time to eat, and just stared at his meal (that wasn’t the most luxurious meal in the world, by the way).

"Man... Why on this day? Why mourn today of all days? Why did I break like that just today? I could keep it hidden for so long..."

Casper wanted to shut his eyes tightly, but he knew that he would start to remember their faces...

He would remember Ana, and how similar she was with Vick, and how it moved Casper in many ways.

A message suddenly popped up on the screen of his cellphone. Casper delayed for a long time to take a look at it.

"Speaking of the devil..." There was a message of Vick there.

"Tomorrow you can go to the laboratory, but meet me again after your shift, please."

He sighed, turning off his cellphone, and finally starting to eat.

...

The other day, Casper had done everything he needed to do inside the apartment as soon as possible. He wore the white lab coat of the Main Lab, which was getting dust inside his closet for a long while.

Casper now was finding the sight of a lab coat nearly unbearable. It was hard to prevent his mind to dye that coat in green and then remember that last week of suffering in Halden, being brought to the depths of pain and agony, his mind sinking each day more, his body seeming to be made of glass...

Before getting out of the apartment, he needed to sit in a chair for a long time to recover and put that thing on as quickly as possible. Even the smell of it made him get nauseous.

It was a tough experience, but Casper knew that it was something normal for a human. After an experience like that, the soldier still needed to work on his traumas. It wasn’t something that would disappear so quickly. Even trained soldiers would need some time to recover their minds after something like that.

"Don’t worry. You passed for a lot of traumatic experiences before, that’s just another one that you need to overcome..." He breathed in and out, regaining composure. He was facing the apartment’s front door, and ready to leave. "Less than two days, Casper. In less than two days, working on it every day, and sticking to your routine... that’s how you will pull through it."

With that last quote, he opened the door and left the building.

Before he forgot to do it, he also sent a message to Vick while he was going out, answering what she texted on the previous day.

Now that Casper could use the Teleporting pads without the need to do it in secret, he was going to the laboratory straight.

It was the first time he didn’t do it with Adam, and it made him relieved to be able to walk and just focus on his own thoughts.

It didn’t take too much time for him to arrive there. The longest part was always the trip until the Teleporting pad.

"Ok, here we are... I was missing this place, I need to admit." Casper was kind of relieved to get back to his previous work.

He messed with things just when his projects and efforts were paying off. He finally could get a desk to work on his IA project on the section led by MMA, he was seeing Astrid doing something incredible closely, and his research with Adam about particle transmigration was going really well.

If anything, he was in his gold times.

"I nearly regret to have messed up with everything because of some information, but it was needed, anyway. With the knowledge I have now, it will be easier to get things done with my projects and define a course where I need to go."

Casper entered the Main Lab after identify himself with the Ridires guarding the place. They barely looked to his credential, since everyone could recognize the White warrior from far away. Just his hair color stood out from the usual blond hair of the district’s residents.

Casper was a bit reluctant inside the laboratory. His first steps there made all his body shiver.

The facade of the Main Lab was entirely different from the Third Lab, but the inside was roughly the same as before.

It remembered Casper from the white walls stained with blood, or then marked with shoots.

Also, every time he looked to a wall beside him, he feared that it would break again, like an explosion, and that hellish escape would start again.

He didn’t feel too secure there.

"Bear it! Bear it! Bear it! Just go to your section and greet everyone as always!" He prompted himself, walking hastily through the corridors.

Casper got into his section, and finally, he could breathe at ease when he saw everyone from his search group there, working as restlessly as always, with the same mess as it was before.

"For Odin’s sake... That was hard..." He sighed, a heavy and long sigh that made everyone there turn their heads towards him.

A sigh was a taboo inside his section. A sigh was the synonym of exhaustion, and exhaustion was the opposite of productivity.

Whenever someone sighed there, all the search group would stare murderously at them.

Once all of them turned to Casper prepared to rip his head off and then realized that it was him, everyone paralyzed, even the ones that were carrying heavy things stopped for a while.

"Hey, everyone." Casper greeted as per usual, entering slowly in the section as if it was nothing much.

"Hi..." The only one to greet him normally was Adam, who, besides the fact of knowing that he was out of the prison, probably wouldn’t be too shocked by his presence, anyway.

Once his coworkers came back to reality, they began to surround Casper and throw a lot of questions at him.

The funny thing was that he was expecting to be looked down on because he committed a crime, but that was not the case. Instead, they were excited by the fact that he had destroyed and reconstructed an entire laboratory, and even made it better than the previous one.

Also, a lot of patents were given back to the Main Lab after the Third Lab was reformed, so they were glad about it.

"Hey, you sloths! Come back to work before I make you guys clean the bathroom with your tongues!" A manly voice echoed from behind then, and immediately the group moved to their places and returned to the exhaustive everyday work.

The person who yelled, though, wasn’t a man, but Katarina.

"Don’t think that because you just got out of the prison you will be slacking around. Go help Adam, and if he doesn’t want help, ask for every single human being in this place. Got it?"

"Yes! I was not counting on slack, though." Casper smiled. That was the type of energy he was needing. Something to push him and make him forget about the past events.

The White warrior came closer to Adam, patting him on the shoulder while he sat on a chair beside him.

"So, what are you working on today, Adam?"

The man looked to him with dumbfounded eyes, a very quick glance, then returned to his work.

"Ah, hi, Casper." He greeted him again as if it was the first time.

"H-hey... Don’t tell me that you... That you didn’t see me entering and just..."

"Oh, yeah, I didn’t realize. Someone greeted and I just answered automatically, I guess..." His voice was as slow as always. Looking at his eyes, Casper could even guess for how many days he didn’t sleep.

"You are doing it for 5 days straight, don’t you?"

"One week. I smoked a lot."

"Hehe, makes sense. I was missing to work with you, man..."

"And I am missing my herb. Do you have some?"

Casper giggled, pulling his chair closer to the desk and trying to sort out what the man was doing, helping him with what he could.

"You are the man, Adam... You are the man..."

This way, his day at the laboratory started.