3rd person's perspective
Everyone went and asked the two about their relationship when Senku said the word.
But (Y/n) and Gen defended him and said he needs space. The female was more gentle than the other one though, with his play on words.
===========================
Now, on to the twenty-sixth of December.
Everything was covered in snow. Chrome and the others were at the shed, discussing and working.
"Oh damn!" Chrome exclaimed over to Senku and (Y/n). "I have the most awesome idea! We can go deep in the caves, farther than we could with torches!"
"Right, with batteries and lightbulbs, we could go ten billion times deeper." Senku replied.
"Now that you mention it, with iron and lightbulbs, we can level up your mining equipment." (Y/n) said.
"I bet there are tons of rocks deep in the caves!" Chrome exclaimed.
"Like diamond or some sort!" (Y/n) exclaimed, following Chrome's idea with sparks in her eyes.
"Yeah!" He exclaimed, liking the idea of this. "Let's go science spelunkers!" Chrome turned his head towards Senku. "We're going to find some awesome mineral resources!"
"Yo, Senku!" He called. "You may be way ahead of me in science, but when it comes to exploring, I'm ten billions of times better than you!"
"I'm sure you've had years of it." Senku replied with an uninterested expression, picking his ear with his pinky.
"What do you want?" He asked. "Captain Chrome will get it for you!" He exclaimed. "There's gotta be stuff on the cellphone roadmap that we don't have, right?"
"Oh, materials we're missing?" He muttered, thrilling Chrome up. "Nothing." He said with a goofy expression.
"There's nothing?!" Chrome exclaimed.
"We technically have everything we need." (Y/n) sighed, sulking that she can't go mining with Chrome.
"Thanks to our hard work in our past missions." Senku continued her sentence.
"Then is there a reason to go exploring now, when we're short on labor?" Kohaku asked, crossing her arms.
"I bet he just wants to go exploring, now that he has some new gear." Ginro whispered in Kohaku's ear, looking at Chrome weirdly.
Chrome gulped.
Senku just chuckled, holding a basket full of empty bottles. "Well, it would be nice to have a ton of copper." Senku said, making Chrome and (Y/n)'s eyes lit up in excitement. "There's no telling how much we're going to use during our next brutal crafting session."
"That's it!" Chrome exclaimed. "I got this!"
"I'm coming with you!" (Y/n) exclaimed, running off with Chrome.
"Alright!" He replied. When they were about to go farther, Senku stopped the two.
"Hold it." He said. "Chrome, make sure she doesn't run off somewhere."
"Ehh?"
"You have my word professor!" Chrome said before taking off, dragging (Y/n) along with him.
"Come home soon you two." He said, putting his hands on his hips. "At least by New Year's next week."
===========================
"Chrome!" (Y/n) exclaimed, running off in front of him excitedly. "There's a lot over here!" She crouched down, looking at it.
"Woah, you're right." He said, approaching the female, looking at the copper ore. "Let's start mining!" He exclaimed, picking out two pickaxes, giving the other one to her and they started mining.
They were quiet for a while, mining peacefully and putting the copper in the basket Chrome carried.
"Chrome," (Y/n) called. "You're mining for ten years now, right?" She asked.
"Yeah, why?" He answered, putting the copper in the basket.
"Nothing, just curious." She smiled brightly at him.
They went deeper into the cave. (Y/n) was looking around with a mesmerized look on her face. She was holding Chrome's coat like the child she is. "How does nature craft up something like this?" She muttered happily. "It's like straight out of a Minecraft survival game."
"Minecraft?" Chrome asked, getting curious about something.
"Oh, It's a game I used to play with my brother on our phones." She answered sheepishly.
"You can play games with phones?" Chrome asked with a curious glimmer in his eyes.
"Oh, not the one we're making though. But smartphones can literally do almost anything!" She exclaimed, getting all excited with what she's telling him. "We can call people, even see their faces even if they're far away!"
"It can do that?!" Chrome exclaimed in shock.
"I know right? It's like sorcery but it's just something called radiowaves and adds the concept of light and more concept of sound and boom, Smartphone."
"So that's still science."
"Yeah."
Then, after a while, cave after cave, chatting from time to time, the two scientists were able to fill up a quarter of the basket with copper.
===========================
"It creaked at the base." Suika said.
"The wires are expanding." Senku groaned while looking at it, making everyone's attention direct towards him. "The metal line going through the glass expands just a little from the heat of the burning phosphorus. That size difference of just a few microns broke the glass."
"Is that the level of intricacy we're dealing with?" Gen exclaimed in shock. "What do we do, then?"
"Nothing ever works on the first try, does it?" Kaseki muttered.
Senku just chuckled. "It's nothing but trial and error." He said. "When is it ever anything else?"
============================
After days of hard work on both sides, The two scientists finally came back with a basket filled with copper and other minerals (Y/n) took.
"We're back!" The two exclaimed, walking in on Senku and Kaseki discussing something with the computer eggs, the vacuum tubes. The two looked a the other two who just came back from the caves.
"We've copped up some copper!" Chrome said while holding a handful of copper in his hand, making the other two deadpan.
(Y/n) just laughed at their reactions.
"Uh, No pun intended." He clarified.
"Just the right time for copper." Senku said, approaching the two, snatching the copper from Chrome, making the two SHOOKED.
They were filling the copper sheets and made them into tubes.
Gen took one and observed it. "A copper tube?" He muttered.
"A tube will just expand inward without cracking the glass around it." Senku explained, flipping the switch on.
"Oh, so we're making vacuum tubes." (Y/n) muttered.
"Yeah."
"Finally! Man, making that vacuum tube was hard work." Kaseki cheered.
But then, the bamboo filament burnt down, making everyone shocked.
"Damn . . . The bamboo filament burnt out instantly." Chrome muttered with wide eyes.
They made hundreds of trials until the next morning came. But failure came after another, without a hint of success. Senku was on the brink of giving up. This was like the time they almost gave up on the revival formula.
"Damn it." Senku muttered, looking up in the sky, getting all frustrated. "bamboo filaments are just fundamentally too weak for vacuum tubes." He clicked his tongue.
"Damn it, it was like that time." (Y/n) muttered under her breath, cursing. "So close, yet, so far."
"I don't get science but bamboo is too weak, is that right?" Kohaku exclaimed.
"What do we need?" Chrome asked the two. "If we need something tougher, I'll go find it!" He exclaimed with a determined look on his face.
"Tungsten." (Y/n) muttered. "But that thing's hard to find." She quivered.
"There's nothing better at this age." Senku muttered under his breath.
Chrome tensed up and thought of something. He went back to the shed and grabbed the rocks he and (Y/n) got fro their previous expedition.
Some villagers rummaged through it to find some hard material.
"These are all the minerals we found lying around in the caves recently." Chrome muttered, rummaging through it. "There must be something in here that's strong enough to hold the heat."
"Damn it!" (Y/n) muttered. Her eyes were brimming with tears. "This is like last time but different. There's nothing here." She quivered, slowly going down on her knees.
"This one looks like a gem, (N/n)!" The pigtailed girl named Ruby exclaimed, showing her a shining yellow rock, trying to cheer her up.
"Sorry, Ruby, that's a jewel bug's corpse." She responded.
The female let go of it and shrieked in disgust.
"What about this rock?" Ginro exclaimed, holding a black something while smiling. "It's really dark, but light as a feather!"
"Raccoon shit." Senku responded.
"Shit!" Ginro reacted, smashing it with his palms.
Senku stood behind (Y/n), looking at her with those saddened eyes.
"Ne~ Ishigami-Sensei." (Y/n) called, turning around to face him. "Tell me we're going to make it."
"We are." Senku replied. "But we're stuck, for now."
The female scientist stood up and made her way to the basket with an expressionless face. Everyone looked at her as she rummaged down on it.
"Tungsten." She muttered. "Tungsten will do." She muttered under her breath, observing every rock in it.
==========================
That night, (Y/n) couldn't sleep. She looked beside her and saw Chrome and Senku sleeping soundly.
She crawled towards the opposite side from where they were and hugged her knees, thinking of a lot of things.
"If we can't make cellphones then we can't make them." (Y/n) muttered under her breath and buried her face on her knees.
"We don't have time to be bummed out."
(Y/n) hummed in response, knowing whose voice it belongs to. She felt arms wrapped around her shoulders, putting her head on his, making her show her sad face.
"Hey, it's okay." Senku cheered her up. "We can make it."
"Yeah, just not this time." She chuckled sadly. "I can't even find Tungsten."
"You know that mineral is very hard to find." Senku muttered with a deadpanned expression.
"I know." She closed her eyes, enjoying his company.
They were quiet for a moment. Peacefully just leaning on each other. But Gen HAD to ruin the moment by saying.
"Senku-Chan, (Y/n)-Chan, wakey-wa--- Oh, did I interrupt something?" He said with a flashlight, creepily lighting up his face. He turned the light off.
Senku just put an index finger on his mouth, silencing him.
"Oh~." Gen muttered. "But we need to wake her up."
At that moment, (Y/n) got off of Senku's shoulders. But his arms are still wrapped around her shoulder tho.
"It's the new year." Gen said in a soft manner. "We should all watch the sunrise together." He said as he went down towards the people on the ground. "It's important to have a change of pace and a fresh mindset." He said as Senku climbed down the ladder. (Y/n) just straight up jumped out of it. "That's my line of work, right?"
"Mentalists are such a pain." Senku said as they all walked towards a cliff.
"I'm coming too!" Suika exclaimed, running to all of them.
(Y/n) noticed her coming and offered her arms for upsies.
Suika complied and jumped up.
"Wait, Suika." Chrome called, catching the little girl in the scientist's arms' attention. "Were you going through rocks all night?"
"That's right." Suika said.
"New year huh?" Gen muttered. "Our internal clocks are messed up from the petrification, though." He sighed. "I don't even know how old I am anymore."
Senku yawned. "Think about how many days you've been alive." Senku replied.
"Why would we remember that?" Kohaku remarked, looking at the three.
"What about you, Senku?" Gen asked.
"Six thousand two hundred sixty-eight days." He replied without hesitation.
Kohaku and Gen laughed nervously
"We're almost there." Ruri's voice was heard when they're already walking up to a large hill.
When they arrived, Kokuyo announced. "The sun's rising."
(Y/n) put Suika down at this point. The small female ran towards the edge of the cliff just in front of her.
Then the sun began to rise. The stone in Suika's hand started glowing a bright blue color.
Suika noticed this and looked at it.
Senku's eyes widened. (Y/n)'s glimmer in her eyes finally came back.
'Blue.' Senku thought while looking at the glowing gemstone on Suika's hand.
"So pretty." Ruri muttered with widened eyes.
"Why is it glowing?" Suika asked
(Y/n) knelt in front of her and gently took it from her hands. "Scheelite." (Y/n) muttered in an excited tone.
"It glows blue when exposed to ultraviolet light." Senku explained, looking at it with a satisfied grin on his face. "Reactions to ultraviolet lights are especially visible right before the sun rises."
"In other words, like right now!" (Y/n) exclaimed, standing up, giving the stone back to Suika.
Gen smiled, looking far back to the horizon being displayed before them. "A magic stone that glows just for this moment . . ." Gen trailed off.
"I've never seen anything like it." Chrome said, kneeling in front of Suika, observing the stone. "I've never seen anything like it." He muttered softly.
"Me neither." Senku said with a wide smile. "It's an ultra-rare gem."
"Atomic number seventy-four, Tungsten!" (Y/n) exclaimed. "This is used in modern filaments."
"Heat's got nothing on it." Senku exclaimed. "It's the strongest metal in the universe!"
===========================
When morning came, The two male scientists were wearing the mining gear they made.
Chrome looked at the ore in his hand. "This small chunk won't be enough, but it came down the stream in the cave." He smiled, looking at Senku. "There must be tons, further inside. Tons of this heat-resistant treasure called tungsten!"
"We only have one set of lights left." Senku exclaimed. "The last member of the exploration team will be . . ." He trailed off. Then, he smirked. "Magma."
That made everyone shocked.
"Tungsten's tough as hell." He said, pointing at him. "We're going to need brute force to collect it." He chuckled. "Let's go cave diving. We're a trio of spelunking buddies."
"Buddies?!" Magma and (Y/n) exclaimed at the same time.
"Whoa whoa, what?"
"Senku, Chrome, and Magma?!" Kohaku exclaimed shock was written over her face.
"I've never heard of such a risky group." Suika muttered.
"I-I-Is that even safe?" Ginro stuttered. "He might be like 'I'm the chief!' and attack you, Senku!"
"Come on, let's get going." He said, ignoring Ginro's warning. "The three of us." He smirked. "We're after the magic stone that we'll need for making vacuum tube filaments: Scheelite, which glows blue under ultraviolet light. The most he's resistant thing in the world, Tungsten!" Senku looked at the other male scientist. "I'm counting on you to take us to the cave, Chrome."
"Got it!"
'They'll be okay, they'll be okay, they'll be okay!' (Y/n) reassured herself over and over again until Senku held her shoulder.
"We're gonna be fine, don't worry." Senku reassured her, patting her shoulder.
She just gave him that kind of look.
Senku just chuckled and kissed her on the forehead. "Look, I promise. It'll just take us a few days."
"Fine." She gave him a nervous smile, finally giving in.
She went over to Magma and Gen who were discussing something. "Listen up, asshat." (Y/n) whispered in an intimidating way, causing Gen to flinch. "If I don't see the two by three days, you're as good as dead, got that?"
"Yeah, sure whatever." He complied in a casual manner, but (Y/n) took it.
Then, they went on their merry way towards the caves.
When they bid them goodbye, Gen had this really sketchy face. That made everyone look at him. "he's finally gone." He said. "Senku-Chan's gone from Ishigami Village."
"Gen-San, your face." (Y/n) muttered with a nervous smile.