The rest of the day was spent locked inside the sterile, humming environment of the laboratory. The sunlight streaming through the reinforced windows slowly shifted from bright morning yellow to the deep, muted orange of late afternoon, but neither Max nor Bellatrix paid any attention to the passage of time outside.
They were entirely focused on the lethal task at hand. Bellatrix stood by as the strict, uncompromising instructor, guiding Max through the incredibly dangerous, theoretical synthesis of Hydrogen Cyanide.
However, translating theoretical knowledge into practical, steady-handed execution was an entirely different beast. Max was a legendary assassin. His hands were perfectly steady when holding a sniper rifle from a mile away, and he could swing a heavy war mace with flawless, brutal precision. But he was not a chemist. He possessed zero foundational expertise in this delicate field. In his original life on Earth, he hadn't even bothered to listen to his basic chemistry class when he was a teenager in Senior High School, choosing to sleep in the back row instead.
That lack of foundational knowledge showed immediately.
Max, of course, failed three separate times during the intense, hours-long process.
The first failure occurred when he misjudged the delicate pressure valve on the heavy glass containment vessel. The pressure spiked rapidly, forcing Bellatrix to shove him out of the way, hit the emergency purge button on the fume hood, and seal the primary blast shield before a volatile reaction could shatter the glass.
The second failure was a matter of temperature control. Max's hands, used to gripping weapons, were too heavy on the delicate thermal dials. He overheated the initial mixture, causing the raw elements to bind incorrectly, ruining the entire batch and forcing them to safely neutralize and dispose of the ruined sludge into the hazardous waste bins.
The third failure was simply exhaustion. His focus slipped for a fraction of a second during a critical transfer phase, introducing a microscopic amount of ambient moisture into the sealed environment, instantly rendering the lethal reaction inert.
Each failure was met with a heavy sigh from Bellatrix and a low, frustrated curse from Max. The tension in the room was thick enough to cut with a knife. They were working with materials that demanded absolute perfection; a single true mistake wouldn't just result in a bad grade, it would result in a fatal, silent end.
But Max was nothing if not persistent. He had lived through three hundred million lifetimes of agonizing regressions. He knew how to learn from failure. He gritted his teeth, wiped the sweat from his forehead, and listened intently to every sharp correction Bellatrix gave him.
Finally, as the sun dipped completely below the city skyline, the rigorous process held. The temperatures stabilized perfectly. The containment trap functioned flawlessly. The lethal, invisible gas was successfully synthesized, purified, and securely transferred into a reinforced, hermetically sealed containment flask.
Max stared through the thick glass of the fume hood at the small, unassuming metal flask sitting safely on the cooling rack.
"FINALLY!" Max exclaimed, peeling off his heavy rubber safety gloves. He leaned heavily against the edge of the workbench, letting his head drop between his shoulders. "HAAH, FINALLY…"
His voice was thick with pure disbelief and overwhelming physical exhaustion.
Bellatrix walked over, a bright, deeply satisfied smile on her face. She reached out and patted his broad shoulder reassuringly.
"Congrats, Max," Bellatrix praised him, her tone shifting from a strict teacher back to a supportive friend. "Honestly, most university students, even when tasked with the easiest, most basic syntheses under perfect supervision, take many more failed attempts to perfectly execute a complex reaction like this without contaminating the lab."
She then puffed out her chest slightly, tapping her own collarbone with a proud finger.
"Though, of course, they would never succeed as fast as you did, simply because they don't have me as an instructor. I am exceptionally talented, after all," she said, shamelessly boasting about her own genius.
Max just laughed, a deep, tired rumble in his chest. He didn't even try to argue with her ego. She had earned the right to brag. She had kept them alive for the past ten hours.
He pushed himself off the workbench and stretched his aching back. "What time is it?"
Bellatrix pulled back the sleeve of her white lab coat to check her digital wristwatch.
"Ohh, wow. It's already 8:30 in the evening," Bellatrix said, her eyes widening slightly at how much time had vanished. She looked up at him. "We are officially done for the day. You can go home now and rest your brain. I can easily clean up all of this mess you made and put all of these specialized equipments and hazardous ingredients back into my secure storage lockers."
Max immediately shook his head side to side, rejecting the offer.
"Nahh, let me help you with the cleanup," Max replied firmly. "Also, you are literally teaching me highly classified, life-saving skills for entirely free. The least I can do is scrub a few counters. This is the only small thing I could possibly do to pay you back for your massive help today."
Bellatrix smiled warmly at what he said, her gray eyes softening. She appreciated that he didn't just use her and leave the dirty work behind.
"Sure," Bellatrix responded, grabbing a specialized cleaning spray. "Thanks anyway, Max. I appreciate the extra hands."
Max waved his hand dismissively. "No, I should be the one to thank you for giving up your entire day and helping me to learn this. Sigh. If I had just bothered to actually listen to that boring science class back in the day, maybe I would have just wasted a single hour to make a perfect toxic gas instead of ten."
Bellatrix didn't reply to his self-deprecating joke, only offering a small, knowing nod as she began to organize her notes.
For the next half hour, the laboratory was filled with the quiet, methodical sounds of cleaning. Max took his task very seriously. He grabbed a heavy-duty mop and began to thoroughly clean the reinforced floor, carefully wiping up any microscopic excess liquid or chemical residue caused by his earlier three failures.
As Max worked, bending and moving with the fluid grace of a trained athlete, Bellatrix found her focus slipping away from the storage inventory.
She stood by the main sink, holding a bundle of glass stirring rods, but her gray eyes were entirely focused on him. The intense heat of the laboratory and the heavy protective gear they had worn all day had taken a toll. Max's gray t-shirt was clinging tightly to his back, outlining the heavy, defined muscles of his shoulders and the rigid structure of his spine.
As he stood up from wiping the floor, he used the back of his forearm to wipe a heavy bead of sweat from his forehead. The movement caused the muscles in his arms to flex sharply under the bright laboratory lights.
Bellatrix gulped audibly. The sound seemed deafening to her own ears.
A sudden, intense wave of heat rushed to her cheeks. She looked down at his sweat dripping onto the pristine floor, and a highly unscientific, primal reaction seized her brain. She unconsciously touched her own stomach, pressing her hand flat against her lab coat.
She stood there, completely frozen, as she unconsciously began to rub her thighs together. Swish, swish, swish. The soft sound of the friction echoed faintly in the quiet room as she shifted her weight nervously from side to side.
Max's highly trained ears caught the repetitive sound instantly. He stopped mopping, leaning on the metal handle, and looked over at her with genuine concern.
"Are you alright, Bell?" Max asked, raising an eyebrow at her strange, restless shifting. "If you urgently need to pee, you can just go use the bathroom outside. Don't worry about me being in here alone. I promise I will not steal your expensive things, since I don't even have a personal lab to put them in anyway."
The sheer, innocent practicality of his question acted like a bucket of ice water dumped over her head.
"Wha—what are you saying right now?!" Bellatrix sputtered, her face turning an impossible shade of dark crimson. She gripped the glass rods so tightly they nearly snapped. "Also, I am not in need to pee! You—you shouldn't just casually say something like that to a woman! Hmph!"
She forcefully shifted her head away, glaring at the blank wall to hide her deeply compromised state.
Max blinked his amber eyes slowly. He let out a long, deeply confused sigh. He simply could not read her unpredictable mood swings. One second she was a brilliant, commanding teacher, and the next she was acting highly offended over a basic biological question.
"Alright, alright. My bad," Max muttered under his breath.
He decided to just continue doing what he was doing. He had already exerted enough mental energy trying to understand chemical bonds today; he didn't have the stamina left to try and understand the chaotic inner workings of her mind.
He turned his back to her and continued to carefully carry the heavy items back to the secure storage cabinets.
As soon as his back was turned, Bellatrix squeezed her eyes shut. She bit her lower lip hard. Her legs betrayed her again. Swish, swish, swish. She shifted her stance again, fighting a losing battle against her own surging hormones. It felt exactly like the urgent need to use the restroom, but in truth, it was something entirely different.
She was starting to get incredibly horny.
The adrenaline of the dangerous chemistry lesson, combined with the raw physical proximity to him all day, was short-circuiting her rational thoughts. She was getting uncomfortably wet as she shamelessly looked at the heavy drops of sweat from Max dripping down toward the floor, tracing the lines of his forearms.
'I—I want to lick them….' Bellatrix said inwardly, her internal monologue fully abandoning all pretense of scientific professionalism.
After thirty long minutes of agonizing internal struggle for Bellatrix, Max finally finished the heavy lifting. He had thoroughly cleaned the floor, neutralized the disposal bins, and securely locked all the volatile items and the expensive equipment back into their respective storage vaults.
He didn't just clean; he organized. In his past, Max rigidly believed in following the established '6S' methodology—Sort, Set in order, Shine, Standardize, Sustain, and Safety. He believed that meticulous organization was always important, and it almost always saved your life in high-stress situations.
He remembered a specific contract from years ago. To get close to a heavily guarded target, he had to go deep undercover and act the part of a factory worker in an industrial manufacturing plant. To maintain his cover flawlessly, he had rigorously studied the 5S and 6S industrial efficiency models and learned exactly why they were so important to operational safety. He was deeply used to doing this kind of methodical cleanup when handling dangerous materials.
Max turned away from the final locked cabinet. He forcefully clapped his hands together, brushing off the invisible dust with a sharp swish, swish, swish of his palms.
He walked over to Bellatrix, who was still standing rigidly by the sink, and told her he was officially finished.
"I'm fully done," Max reported, checking his mental list. "I cleaned the floor, wiped down the primary workspace, and put all the raw items and the heavy equipment back into their respective storages. So, do you still need some help with anything else? Are there any small things left I need to do before I head out?"
Bellatrix stared at his handsome, tired face. Her brain, completely fried by the long day and her own intense physical attraction, bypassed her internal filter entirely.
Bellatrix then murmured, her voice dropping into a breathless, barely audible whisper.
"Yeah, you can help me by masturbating in front of me and lick my pussy…"
Max froze. His amber eyes narrowed slightly in sheer confusion. He tilted his head, leaning an inch closer.
"Huh?" Max asked her, his brow furrowed. "I didn't catch that. What did you say?"
He truly couldn't hear what she had mumbled; the low hum of the fume hood had masked the deeply explicit words.
Bellatrix widened her eyes in stark, screaming terror as she realized she had actually spoken her dirty thoughts out loud. The heat in her face reached critical mass, turning her entire neck and cheeks a blazing, furious red. She desperately scrambled to gather herself.
"I—I said absolutely nothing!" Bellatrix practically shouted, her voice cracking under the intense panic. "Hehehehe…. yeah, I said nothing at all! Just mumbling about chemical equations! You're good to go!"
Max stared at her manic, forced laughter for a second. He decided it was best not to push it.
"Ahh, I see. Then I'll go now, Bell," Max said, taking a step backward toward the exit. He offered a polite, friendly wave of his hand. "Bye. Get some rest, and I will see you tomorrow for the next stage of the lesson."
He turned around, walked swiftly toward the exit of the lab room, and stepped out into her main hallway. A moment later, with a heavy, solid bang, he firmly closed Bellatrix's apartment door behind him.
The sudden silence in the apartment felt deafening.
"Sigh…"
Bellatrix let out a long, deeply pathetic sigh. The manic energy drained from her body, leaving her feeling weak in the knees. She slumped forward, resting her forehead against the cool edge of the metal sink. She was profoundly disappointed in her own lack of self-control.
"Why did I even say it out loud!" she groaned into the empty room. "Arggh, Lauren, why are you even doing this to yourself?!"
She pushed herself off the sink, pacing aimlessly around the pristine laboratory.
"I don't even know myself anymore," Bellatrix muttered, rubbing her face with her hands. "It's just that... because some handsome, dangerous guy gave me two chocolate bars, I am now officially simping and falling completely head over heels for him. I am a highly educated scientist acting like a desperate teenager."
She stopped pacing and aggressively ran a hand through her messy blonde hair.
"But the real question is," Bellatrix whispered to the silent room, a pang of genuine insecurity hitting her chest. "Does he even have any romantic feelings for me at all? Or am I just a convenient tool to help him survive?"
She stood there, analyzing his actions. He was polite. He was protective. But he was also a legendary hitman fighting for his life. Romance was probably the furthest thing from his mind.
The frustration of not knowing boiled over.
"ARRGGGHH!!! I don't even know anything anymore!" Bellatrix yelled at the ceiling in defeat. "Let's just go masturbate and fry my brain so I can sleep!"
She aggressively marched out of the laboratory room, locking the heavy door behind her. She walked into her bedroom and violently shrugged off her white lab coat, tossing it into a separate, specialized laundry basket designated for potential chemical exposure. She quickly changed out of her sweaty clothes, throwing on a set of loose, casual homewear.
She climbed onto her bed, grabbed her laptop from the nightstand, and flipped it open. The screen glowed brightly in the dark room. With practiced speed, she opened a secure, private incognito tab.
She rested her fingers on the keyboard, ready to type in the URL of the adult porn website she frequented.
But then, she stopped. Her fingers hovered over the keys. She couldn't bring herself to click and hit enter.
"Sigh… this is what happens when you are still chronically single," she said sadly, the hollow feeling in her chest overriding her physical desires. Watching a fake, generated video wouldn't fix the crushing loneliness she felt right now.
She slowly closed the laptop, the screen going black. She pushed it aside and laid flat on her back, staring blankly up at the dark ceiling of her bedroom.
She asked herself inwardly, her thoughts drifting right back to the man next door.
'What is he doing right now in his room?' she wondered silently. 'Is he currently taking a hot bath to wash off all that sweat?'
Her vivid imagination immediately conjured the image of him stepping under the water, the water tracing the scars on his chest.
'I—I wonder...' Bellatrix thought, her face flushing warmly in the dark. 'If I was actually there with him right now, would he take dominant advantage of me? Would he just take control and fuck me so hard against the tiles that my legs would go completely sore for days?'
She let out a quiet, breathless laugh at the sheer intensity of the fantasy.
"Hehehe… I honestly wouldn't mind it, though," she whispered into the empty room.
The moment the words left her mouth, her rational brain violently rebelled against her rampant hormones.
She raised her hands and delivered a sharp, stinging slap to both of her own cheeks.
"ARGGGHH!!! Lauren, what the hell are you even thinking right now?!" she scolded herself harshly, rubbing her stinging face. "He is your idol! He is a legendary vigilante! And he is a fundamentally good person too! He wouldn't even do something non-consensual or predatory like that to a neighbor who is helping him!"
She rolled over onto her side, pulling the heavy blankets up to her chin to hide from her own thoughts. She let out one final, exhausted sigh. Her brain was completely fried, and she had a long day of teaching chemical warfare ahead of her tomorrow.
"Sigh, let's just go to sleep. Just sleep, Lauren."
***
Meanwhile, Max was walking down the quiet, carpeted hallway of the fifth floor, the physical exhaustion of the day settling deep into his bones.
He reached the front of Room 53. He reached into his pocket to grab his keys, but as his eyes landed on the doorknob, he froze.
The heavy metal deadbolt was not engaged. The door was slightly ajar.
Max widened his amber eyes. The exhausted neighbor vanished in a microsecond, instantly replaced by the cold, calculating Reaper. His heart rate slowed. His breathing became completely silent.
He didn't reach for the handle immediately. He assessed the situation. Was it the green-eyed stalker? Had the killer bypassed the building's security and set up an ambush inside?
Max slowly, meticulously placed his hand on the wood. Applying perfect, even pressure, he slowly and silently pushed the door open, ensuring the hinges didn't make a single sound.
He slipped into the dark entryway, his body coiled like a loaded spring. He dropped into a low, silent crouch, using the shadows of the hallway to mask his silhouette. He moved forward, ready to strike a lethal blow to whoever was waiting in the dark.
But before he could lunge into the living room, the main overhead lights suddenly flicked on, blinding him for a fraction of a second.
Max's eyes widened, and he let out a sharp gasp, halting his forward momentum just in time to stop himself from tackling the intruder to the floor.
He quickly stood up straight, letting out a heavy breath, and called out to the person casually standing in the middle of his living room holding a clipboard.
"Hey, Lady Irmela," Max said, his voice tight with lingering adrenaline. "Why are you inside my room at this hour?"
The one who had bypassed his locks and walked freely into his secure apartment was none other than Irmela, the slightly eccentric landlady of the building.
Irmela turned around, a bright, completely unbothered smile on her face.
"Ohh, Max! There you are!" Irmela greeted him cheerfully. "I was just checking your room since today is the official bi-annual room inspection day."
Irmela looked at Max's tense posture and his empty hands. She realized that he looked genuinely confused, as if he had no idea why she was there or had simply forgotten the mandatory schedule she had posted in the lobby weeks ago.
"Wait, did you really forget the inspection schedule?" Irmela asked, placing her hands on her hips. She let out a fond, motherly sigh. "Sigh, Max. You really don't change, do you?"
She shook her head side to side, amused by his apparent forgetfulness.
Max quickly dropped the tense assassin posture, relaxing his shoulders and offering an embarrassed, sheepish smile. He reached up and scratched the back of his head awkwardly.
"Yeah, sorry about that, Miss Irmela," Max apologized smoothly. "It seems it completely slipped my mind. I've been really busy lately."
Irmela nodded her head in understanding, tapping her pen against the clipboard.
"I see, I see. Well, you keep your place relatively clean, so it's fine. Though, next time, please try not to forget it, alright? I hate startling my tenants."
Max nodded respectfully at her. He waited for her to step toward the door so he could finally collapse onto his bed. But she didn't move.
Max raised an eyebrow and asked her cautiously, "Are you fully done checking my room now? I thought you were already finished and just waiting to leave."
Irmela slowly nodded her head, but a highly mischievous, knowing glint appeared in her mismatched eyes.
"Ohh boy, I am definitely done inspecting your room, Max. And as I see…"
Irmela slowly raised her pen and pointed it directly at the wall behind the television. She pointed squarely at the massive, glossy posters of the bikini models and the red-haired woman in the scandalous black lingerie.
"…You have some highly interesting posters hanging up here, mister," Irmela said, her tone teasing but firm. "Though, for the next inspection, can you please remove them? This is a respectable building. Also, the only reason why I'm actually still standing here is because I was politely waiting for you to arrive so I could formally inform you that I'm done inspecting your room, and to tell you to take those down."
Max felt a sudden, intense rush of heat flood his face. The legendary assassin, the Dark Lord who had slaughtered millions, blushed deeply from sheer, mundane embarrassment. He nodded his head rapidly.
"Yeah, yeah, of course. I'm sorry, Lady Irmela…" Max stammered, wanting the floor to open up and swallow him.
Irmela let out a soft sigh, highly amused by his red face, and finally walked past him, stepping out of his apartment into the hallway.
Max quickly pushed the door shut behind her, throwing the heavy deadbolt into place with a loud click. He leaned his back against the solid wood and let out a long, long sigh.
"Sigh…"
He pushed himself off the door and walked slowly into the center of the living room. He looked up at the glossy posters on the wall. The models smiled back at him, entirely unbothered by the awkward situation they had just caused.
"…I guess I really need to remove you girls now, huh?" Max said quietly to the posters. "Goodbye, my beloved companions."
He said it with a heavy heart, because those specific posters had hung on the walls of his room for three long years before his transmigration. They were a strange, tacky anchor to his past life as a lonely hitman. But now, it seemed he really needed to remove them permanently, because he had been caught red-handed by the landlady, and he didn't want to explain them to Bellatrix again.
"Sigh. This is exactly what happens when you are forgetful and leave your flank exposed, Max," he said, shaking his head at his own lack of situational awareness.
He spent the next twenty minutes of his night carefully peeling the tape off the walls. He took the posters down, rolled them up gently, and placed them deep into the bottom of an old cardboard box hidden in his closet—his sacred box of past memories, where no one else could ever find them.