"Shock. Fear. Trauma." Chanyeol mutters as he returns with a fresh, clean coat to give the smaller, who continues to summon up the remaining of his energy to push himself off the back of his chair and lean forward to accept the coat in his good hand. Then the taller, as if remembering why his student looks so weak, quickly stumbles out to buy him food, then returns with bags in his hand.

Baekhyun would usually want to reject, but this time his brain is too tired to become even the slightest rebellious. Instead, he takes it in his good hand when the older passes bread to him, and eats it obediently.

Even though energy returns to him gradually, fatigue stills cling onto him as if it will never leave. And Baekhyun remembers now what the report had said – once the rubber container merges with his skin, the stone's weight will double – Baekhyun can feel it now.

And he wants to stop eating and rest and look to see just how his arm is doing, but his professor is staring at him so intently, as if waiting for him to break.

"Little one ..." He whispers, but then his voice trails off, as if he doesn't know what to say. Baekhyun smiles gently.

"I'm okay." He replies, just as quietly. "Don't worry about me, Professor. Keep working or else you'll feel stressed again." He would want to say this smoothly, except he is cut off in the middle of longer sentences, constantly getting distracted by the pain on his arm.

"Stop thinking about others and think about yourself for once." His professor replies hotly, eyebrows twisted together and looking stressed. This is probably the first time Baekhyun has seen the older to be this aggressive, and truthfully this is not even aggressive.

"I'm sorry, Professor." Baekhyun mumbles breathlessly, trying not to show the pain on his face. It's so cold here – it's cold and yet he's sweating. Chanyeol opens his mouth, leaves it hanging open, then closes it again, as if once again at a loss on what to say.

"But ... I'm really fine. It's just a shock." This time, he pulls himself up a bit and widens his eyes, trying to make himself look more awake and energetic. "I ... I promise you twenty burgers!"

"... If you say so ..." The taller trails off once more, his youthful eyes still staring at Baekhyun intently. Even in this situation, Baekhyun can feel his cheeks reddening at the attention. If they aren't red from pain already.

"Oh yeah." His professor had turned his back, about to return to his desk, but stops and pauses. "How was Dara's experiment?"

"I don't know." Baekhyun admits quietly, quickly looking down the moment his professor turns his head, cheeks reddening this time once again from shame after his hopes have been dashed. "I'm sorry, Professor. I'll ask her next time."

"No need." By the time Baekhyun looks up again, Chanyeol had started walking back to the other side of his room. "As long as you did well."

Baekhyun spends a week without seeing the boy, because he is supposed to wait a week for the boy to adjust with the stone inside him, as it gradually becomes heavier. Then he will return, and perform tests on the boy.

At first, the stone had just been a burden inside Baekhyun, after his wound had stopped hurting. Strangely, his arm can move even though he's sure he had destroyed one of the main muscles of his arm ... Maybe he had underestimated one's healing abilities. Baekhyun would need to use a little more effort to lift up his arm and do things, but as it gradually gained weight, Baekhyun can feel his bone starting to feel a little irritated, to the point where it would send a sudden pang of pain towards his brain if he did any sudden movements, or if he lifted his arm too high.

Thankfully in this Experimenting period, there are no other examinations involved, otherwise Baekhyun's sure he will fail every single one of them. On the upside, however, Baekhyun can spend more time with Chanyeol, where his feelings for the older has become his guilty pleasure. Because now there are no more examinations for a long time, Baekhyun can relax a little, so sometimes he would sit back and find himself to be distracted by the older, and he would find himself watching Chanyeol who is forever concentrated on the paper he holds in his hands.

Many a time, he had caught his professor who had been so concentrated that when he reached out to grab his glass of water, he would tip it over somehow, being the clumsy professor he is. It's amusing and adorable, and Baekhyun ends up chuckling quietly to himself, work in his hands totally forgotten.

And then Baekhyun does what he's always been doing for the past few weeks – during a certain time, he would stop his work, walk over to the other table, and take the bottle of pills in his hands. Holding the glass of water in his left hand, he pours the water from the small kettle. However, the moment the water reaches a certain level, pangs of pain suddenly hit his heart from the bone of his arm. Yelping in shock and pain, his first instinct is to drop the glass of water to stop the pain, and the glass breaks into pieces once it hits the carpeted floor.

Baekhyun curls into himself a little, still having the consciousness to set the kettle down before his right hand reaches to hold his left arm, as if to comfort it. He sinks low until he's squatting, forehead resting against his knee as he pants slowly, shutting his eyes tightly as he waits for the stabbing pain to go away.

He knows now – that little weight of the glass of water is his limit.

The next time the stone gains weight, the pain will be constant.

"What happened?" His professor's voice floats over from above him, and suddenly he feels warm hands circling his back. Baekhyun is too pained to speak for a while, and he remains curled into himself, feeling the pain throb with his heartbeat. Then, when it fades to a duller sort of pain, Baekhyun dares to lift up his head.

"Nothing." He replies shakily. "I accidentally dropped the glass. I'm sorry."

"That's not important." Chanyeol sighs, and large hands pull him upwards, almost hugging him. Baekhyun would like to think Chanyeol is hugging him, at least, because it gives him extreme comfort, especially now. "Are you hurt?"

"No." The smaller whispers, letting out his breath slowly. "I'm sure I'd be unable to hide it if I was."

"Good point." Chanyeol chuckles. Baekhyun's eyes follow the older as he crouches down to pick up the glass, and immediately Baekhyun's instinct is to reach out to touch his professor lightly on the shoulder.

"It's all right, Professor. I'll clean it up." When Chanyeol looks as if he's not about to budge, Baekhyun adds: "It was my mistake and therefore my responsibility."

"Mm." Chanyeol nods in approval and then returns to his chair. "Just don't cut yourself, or else I'll get angry."

Baekhyun chuckles breathlessly as he flattens out his left hand and carefully picks the pieces of glass off the floor. He had always been a meticulous person, so he finishes without hurting himself.

By the next day, his arm, like he had predicted, is hurting constantly, but thankfully dully. As long as he doesn't lift his arm up too long, it isn't an unbearable sort of pain, and Baekhyun motivates himself to endure it longer.

"You can do it!" This time, his fight song is much weaker, and he can only stare in the mirror and pretend that he doesn't see his tired eyes and dark eye circles. His voice of determination comes out as weak and faint, and this time he can only lift up his right arm.

Still, despite this, his inner self is stronger than ever, and much more determined to see this through. Especially since he can feel every inch of pain that every Experiment feels, he's sure now he feels more deserving to become a member of a group that advocates for peace.

Mother ... Father ... He thinks. I'm going to achieve my dream and make you proud!

Feeling highly spirited, Baekhyun heads over to Room 530 after breakfast and quickly sits down on his desk, flipping over the book as he begins reading. Maybe this "self-sacrifice" to empathize with the Monsters had flipped a switch on him, because despite the fact that his arm hurts, his mind is alive and he learns easier because of that.

But soon after, his professor speaks to him, asking him to move himself over to the older's desk. Immediately Baekhyun does, shouldering his chair as he shuffles eagerly over to Chanyeol's desk, unaware that he's smiling happily.

"Get me the research book that we've been using for the past few days, please. It should be on the shelf." Chanyeol says as he continues writing onto his paper, as if attempting to finish what he had started before starting something else. "Thank you."

"Okay, Professor!" Baekhyun replies eagerly as he moves over to the shelf. He finds it sitting, very inconveniently, on the highest row of the shelf. Yet, Baekhyun doesn't want to ask help of his professor because of this one small thing – after all, he must show he's capable in the eyes of the older.

Instinctively, he reaches up to grab a hold of the book, but in the process, the book next to it slides out, about to fall. Immediately, Baekhyun lifts up his other hand in order to prevent the books from falling, but then a sudden pain springs from the bone of his arm, a pain so deep and unbearable that Baekhyun's body jerks as a reaction. The shelf wobbles and Baekhyun has the time and the energy to reach out his right arm to balance it, but the books fall out of the shelf anyway. Including the huge books at the top shelf.

The last thing he remembers is that when he looked up, the biggest book on the shelf is falling down on him.

When Baekhyun wakes up, he is lying on the couch of room 530. Mind blank for a moment, Baekhyun blinks and reaches up to touch his head where he's sure something bad happened to it before. Oh yeah, he was knocked unconscious by books. Yet, as he attempts to find the place that he's sure the book would've hit, he can't. There is no part of his head, nor his face, that hurts.

"How are you feeling?" A new voice cuts through the silence and Baekhyun turns his head to find his gentle professor bringing over a glass of water. Still a little dazed, Baekhyun nods dumbly in reply, staring at how big his professor's hands are.

"That was my fault, for putting you in danger like that." Chanyeol mumbles, this time sounding a little guilty. "I'm sorry."

"That was my job." Baekhyun replies just as quickly. "I didn't do it well. I'm sorry -"

The older sighs and then ruffles his hair. Baekhyun closes his eyes, feeling his heart flutter at the action.

"You're heavier than I thought." The older perks up suddenly, almost startling Baekhyun.

"Huh?" Baekhyun blurts out, confused.

"When I carried you. You're much, much heavier than you look." The older says, and Baekhyun almost gasps aloud, right hand immediately reaching up to clutch his left arm, and only noticing the pain now. "I almost couldn't lift you up."

Baekhyun, feeling like a deer caught in the headlights (plus the thought that he had been carried by his professor is ...), can only stare down and flush.

"Um, sorry." Baekhyun apologizes awkwardly.

"It's all right. Don't apologize for such a silly thing." The older smiles warmly. "Everyone's body is different."

That's not what I meant. Baekhyun thinks to himself silently.

"Are you fine to learn now?" Chanyeol asks, smiling encouraging as his hand brushes across the smaller's arm and holds it. Baekhyun's heart skips, and he nods immediately, entranced.

The next day, Baekhyun wakes up much earlier than normal, reaching into his drawer to take out the experiment report. Carefully, he reads the instructions to test his bodily reactions, and thankfully for him, no equipment is needed to examine the results so far, otherwise Baekhyun will never know how to test himself in front of a camera.

The testing, to say the least, is painful. But he does it with determination and persistence, and records down every little detail of his own reaction, and when he's done, he's finally confident enough to face the Experiment that he hadn't seen in a week.

He walks inside room EX19, surprised at how he's able to keep his cool even though he's probably the biggest liar and cheater out there. The boy is uncuffed this time, and clutching his arm as if he had really been experimented on, and Baekhyun is grateful that the younger can act so well. The boy can blink so innocently, looking as if he would never hurt anyone.

"Hey." Baekhyun whispers, smiling gently as he closes the door behind him and moves the chair over to the boy's bed. "Doing well."

The boy doesn't reply, just stares down at Baekhyun's right arm that he's attempting to hide behind his body.

"Is it heavy?" The boy mutters, for the first time lifting his eyes to meet Baekhyun's. The worry and concern and guilt in the boy's eyes send waves of warmth straight into the older, and if he had any regrets replacing the boy with himself, it had been thoroughly extinguished and crushed.

"A little." Baekhyun admits. "But it's pretty fun – it feels like you're always working out wherever you go. I feel like I've gained a lot of muscle on this arm. It's going to be a little unbalanced." He chuckles to himself, but even then, the boy remains solemn and silent.

"Okay, let's start our examinations then." His voice drops now as he sits down on the chair into a comfortable position. "I'm going to whisper to you how to react, and you'll do just that. Okay?" At that, the boy nods. Finally some response. Baekhyun thinks to himself.

The examination goes smoothly, because the boy is obedient and clever. Briefly Baekhyun questions the reliability of the fact that Monsters are supposedly slow and not as bright, but then maybe the boy's environmental surroundings had influenced his intellectual ability.

"So are you going to tell me who gave you the painkillers?" Baekhyun asks, in the middle of the testing. This is something that he had been curious of for a long, long time. At first, the boy doesn't speak, as if unsure who to side with, but in the end he opens his mouth.

"He never told me who he was ..." The boy says softly. "But his name tag said 'Zhang Yixing'."

Baekhyun stills.

Zhang Yixing? What is his intention? Why would he give painkillers to Monsters? The last time Baekhyun checked, everyone here hated the Monsters to the gut.

A little stumped, but deciding to push the thought away until his examinations are done, Baekhyun shakes his head and continues his work.

Before he leaves, Baekhyun once again whispers reminders to the boy on how to act, how to treat his arm, and to just pretend that there is constantly something heavy tied do his forearm. Then he leaves the room and hands in his report.

Almost immediately after the report leaves his hands, thoughts of Zhang Yixing float into his mind.

I wonder ... Baekhyun thinks to himself as he walks back to room 530. If he's softhearted like me?

Deep in his thoughts, he doesn't see it coming when someone bumps into him. Baekhyun loses his balance immediately because one arm is much heavier than the other, and he falls to the ground.

"Sorry." He mutters, picking up his left arm that had hit the floor too hard. Moving to a sitting position, he rubs at his wrist, then picks himself off the floor carefully. He blinks when a shadow falls over him and flinches in his spot as he turns around and finds Zhang Yixing staring at him.

"D-Doctor." Baekhyun greets, feeling a little flustered. He notices the way the older is staring at the skin of his wrist that his right hand is rubbing against, and he sees it coming when Zhang Yixing reaches out his hand to grab Baekhyun's. Baekhyun is faster and he pulls away.

"Gotta go now, doctor, see you around!" He calls hurriedly and runs off, afraid that if he stays a moment longer the older will grab his wrist and notice how heavy it is.

The man always bears such cold eyes, yet does he really possess a soft heart?

The man is mysterious and intelligent, both of which shields his true intentions from everyone's eyes.

Baekhyun doesn't even know if he trusts this man.

But he can't think about that now, because his waist is hurting really bad because of the imbalance of his body. He thought that maybe as the weight increased, his arm would hurt the most, but because of his constant need to balance himself, his waist is taking all the weight, and it's only now does he feel the pain hit him hard.

The pain in his arm is like a constant dull ringing.

Baekhyun finally enters room 530 and his professor isn't there. Taking advantage of that, he lies down on the ground – the only time where he can rest his muscles and they won't hurt as much.

His chest heaves up and down because the pain is making it hard for him. Sweat sticks to his forehead like he had run a mile, when in truth it's a battle between gravity and himself.

His body is so sore and tired that he curls into himself and closes his eyes, wanting to fall asleep. He doesn't realise that he really does fall asleep, until he wakes up again on the floor feeling cold.

Not wanting to move an inch, Baekhyun stays there, blinking at the legs of his table and wondering to himself just how the hell he's going to take out the stone in his arm once the experiment is over. What if it's so heavy he can't move his arm at all? What if he's too pained to move? What if he's too heavy to move?

What did I just put myself into ... Baekhyun thinks to himself, sighing as he draws circles on the floor with his right index finger. Then he wonders to himself whether he should do his fight song.

'Fighting.' He writes on the floor, adding exclamation marks after it.

"You can do this." Baekhyun whispers to himself. "Hah!"

"Little one?" The voice scares him and he lifts his head to see Chanyeol standing by an open door, blinking at him with curiosity and then amusement. Immediately Baekhyun rolls over and pushes himself up by his arm.

"Professor ..." Baekhyun mumbles, cheeks pinking in embarrassment and fatigue.

"Feel free to lie there as long as you like. Don't let my presence disturb your meditation." The taller chuckles.

"It's not that ..." Baekhyun mutters as he gets up from the floor cautiously. He loses balance and stumbles a little, and then a hand is catching his right arm, holding him steady. "I'm just going to do work now." Flustered, he stares at the hand that's holding onto him, not realizing how intensely he's staring until his professor lets go and holds up his hands in surrender.

Not knowing what to say because all he's thinking about is how fast his heart is racing, Baekhyun shakes his head slightly and then turns the other way to walk towards his table.

For the rest of the week, his professor constantly teases him about that matter, until a point where the older is forced to stop because Baekhyun had started ignoring him.

Baekhyun experiments himself this week, just like he had done the last week. And like last week, he pretends to examine the boy who continues to act perfectly.

The third week into being his own Experiment, Baekhyun's shoulder begins to hurt.

It feels as if his bones are rubbing up against each other in the wrong way ... Baekhyun can't explain it. All he knows is that the weight is taking a toll on his entire arm and his backside.

He had talked to Dara last week, and she had talked about her Experiment which had been showing signs of imbalance when walking and a pained reaction during one of her examinations.

My results are the same. He had said, but had omitted the part where he had been feeling more pain in more examinations, and had other factors that Dara didn't mention. Maybe it's because he's a Lucky One, so his body structure is bound to be weaker. Honestly, he's surprised he can survive this long without showing any obvious symptoms.

And then when he had walked away from her, she had said "Baekhyun, don't do that."

"Do what?"

"Copy how our Experiments walked ..." She replied. "It's funny but ... still kinda creepy."

Then he had to laugh it off, straighten his back completely no matter how much it hurts his backside, and shuffle away until he was out of her sight.

Of course, by the end of the week, he conducts examinations on himself and pretends to do the same to the rainbow-haired boy. Then when he discussed results with Dara, Dara had mentioned her Experiment had begun to show signs of a sore waist and a slightly more acute pain along its arm, something Baekhyun had begun experiencing two weeks earlier.

By the fourth week, his body is riding at its limit.

Baekhyun can hardly walk without sweat breaking out onto his skin. Every part of his body hurts except his neck, and especially his back. It's up to a point where he can't move without constantly concentrating on trying to look normal, and even then he's only able to do that because he's gotten used to being in pain constantly.

"You look sick, Baekhyun." Dara observes. "Are you sure you still want to meet up with oppa?"

"Yeah." Baekhyun's eyelashes flitter with pain for a moment but he recovers and smiles. In the midst of constant pain, he is grateful when Dara's concerned face flits across his vision and something dry and soft touches his forehead, wiping away the sweat that's making him feel hot and cold at the same time.

"Need me to -"

"No, I'm fine. See you later." Baekhyun lifts his right arm up briefly to wave then puts it down again to cup his left arm that's making every step heavy and slow.

He arrives at his desk and immediately sits down, placing his arms across the table and lying his face down, feeling the coolness of the wood touch his heated, exhausted face. Yes, he's stupid for not considering just how unsustainable this is to his body – just how is he ever going to get out of this situation without getting kicked out?

He's too exhausted to even feel the pang of heartache that used to come when he thought of parting with his dream and parting with his professor.

But if he has to be honest with himself, what worries him more than anything is the boy. Will they punish the poor boy for Baekhyun's reckless actions? Baekhyun hopes and prays not – he'd rather face the punishment a hundred times if it means the boy is unharmed and unpunished.

Nowadays he leaves early and enters early, all because he hopes not to show his professor the way he walks. Nowadays, his professor enters late and leaves late, mostly because his burdens have lessened now that the Experimenters are focusing on the trainees. But, being the hardworking professor he is, he still stays back a little later to do extra work, something Baekhyun admires a lot.

Still, Baekhyun leaves quietly during times when he knows his professor is most immersed in his work, so that way, the older will never be able to see the recent way he's been showing signs of fatigue and pain.

The pain and the heaviness that being an Experiment brings is preventing him from getting his own food, until it's such a hassle that he gives up completely the next day.

Sitting up, Baekhyun pants softly, waiting for his body to rest a little before he decides to move again. Eventually he stands, clutching his left arm with his right hand as he moves towards the bathroom, head dizzy. The world before him blacks out for a single moment and he stumbles a little, and then his shoulder is hitting the wall accidentally when he attempts to walk in the bathroom. It's a small action – that little action – that changes everything.

Suddenly an excruciating pain fires up from his shoulder and when he turns to stare down at his arm, he realizes that his arm is completely limp and detached from his shoulder – he had dislocated his shoulder.

He wants to scream in pain, but instead he crumples, clutching his arm and trying not to let the weight instilled inside his forearm make the dislocation worse. His mouth is open in silent screams, and tears fall out of his eyes like waterfalls.

This time, the pain is so in his face that he loses control for a moment, unsure and unable to remember what happened for the next few moments, but thankfully when he recovers, he's on the floor by himself.

I'll just get some of those pills off Doctor Yixing. Baekhyun thinks to himself desperately, gasping, because after all, only one or two pills is enough to last him an entire mealtime, sometimes an entire day. Baekhyun doesn't know how such a pill exists, but he's willing to take it at any cost, as long as he can still function as normal, at least, until the experiment is over.

He knows, at this rate, he'll never be able to get breakfast. Without food, he will be unable to function, and then everything is all over. At least, after he replenishes his energy, he'll think of a way to solve his injury.

"Ah ..." Baekhyun whispers to himself, wanting to curse yet somehow holding enough control not to. Instead, he forces himself up, nearly collapsing again because of the excruciating pain, and doing everything in his power to keep his arm upright so as to not let it fall further and hurt himself even more. Taking a deep breath, Baekhyun runs (or at least he hopes he's running) towards the door, wrenches it open, clutches his arm again, and runs out to find the doctor.

As he's nearing the corner, he rests against the wall, staring at the door that's so close yet so far away. Sweat is matting his forehead in such a way that it seems as if he's run through the entire building of EX'ACT.

When he next opens his eyes, he sees a shadow slipping away from the door that he's about to enter in.

Even better. He thinks to himself. I'll just take some pills and leave before he comes back.

Taking a deep breath for the nth time, Baekhyun charges one last time towards his destination and finally arrives.

Leaning against the desk after shutting the door, Baekhyun pants as he rests his arm on the table and reaches out to grab all types of pills on the doctor's desk. To his relief, Zhang Yixing keeps a bottle of pills that look like the ones he ate the last time he needed to replenish his energy. Without waiting any further, he grabs two pills out of the bottle then places the entire bottle into his pocket, knowing he might desperately need it later. Popping both pills in his mouth (with extreme difficulty, of course), Baekhyun then grabs a glass of half-filled water sitting conveniently next to the bottles of pills, and dunks it down his throat.

The effects come almost immediately. At first, he feels bouts of energy enter him as if he's being fed it, or that he's being charged by a system of unlimited power. But then something happens to him that has never happened to him previously before.

Blinding pain shoots up his back, his shoulder, and his left forearm. Baekhyun yelps out and crumples to the floor, curling up into himself. Yes, he's being charged with energy, but at the same time he's being charged with pain.

And if the past few weeks have been filled with pain, then this is unendurable pain. It's nothing like he has ever experienced before, because so many more layers of pain now adds onto all the pain he had been feeling. It's so painful he loses sight of the world, loses sight of who he is, where he is, what he's doing. And when he opens his eyes, his left arm is disfigured, in such a way that it takes a long time before his brain registers that the radius and ulna of his left arm had snapped, and now the bone cuts through his muscle and skin and pokes out.

In his dazed mind, he notices the blood, he notices the disfiguration, and he feels the fire-like feeling that the pain is leaving a trail of, but he doesn't know he's screaming and crying until someone appears in front of him and moves his lips, as if speaking – but no sounds comes out because Baekhyun can't hear it.

And then the pain of his back intensifies to a level that he can't reach, and now that he's aware of it, he can feel the bone cracking more and more as time goes by – and time goes by fast – until it's so painful that he blacks out into a world of pain.

Before he wakes up, his world was filled with a soft, white mist that looked like clouds. He felt as if he was floating above the skies that he had never seen, so light that he could fly to the blue skies that he longs to see and touch the sun that he longs to feel.

But when he opens his eyes, he's once again met with familiar surroundings.

Even though his body isn't in pain anymore – in fact ... he realizes with disbelief, it's not in pain at all – he can't move any part of his body even if he tries to. Now he's like a doll, numb yet unmoving.

And then someone appears in his vision – it's the man he last saw, trying to speak to him when he had been screaming. Baekhyun realizes later that it's Zhang Yixing – how could he have forgotten?

He looks exhausted from all the other times Baekhyun had seen him. Yes, Baekhyun remembers now: he has a memory.

Zhang Yixing had always seemed so sharp and alert with his cold eyes, that now when his expression is less intimidating, Baekhyun feels lost.

"You have no more injuries – I have tended to all of them." Zhang Yixing speaks with that same distance and coldness. "But despite that, you have no energy, so don't think you'll move for a few days."

"In the meantime, I've postponed your Experiment proceedings until next week." Without another word, Zhang Yixing leaves the room and Baekhyun hears the door closing. He doesn't think any more, because when he closes his eyes, he falls asleep.