Chapter 5

Eden Academy's family interviews are underway, and they are brutal: an earlier applicant leaves in tears after interviewer Murdoch Swan bullies the child into silence. Outwardly composed, Loid is privately anxious, and Anya, hearing those thoughts, absorbs the nerves right along with him as the Forgers are summoned inside.

Walter Evans opens by asking how the couple met. Loid spins a romanticized version of the tailor shop encounter that leaves Yor blushing, and she answers her own turn by listing his good qualities. Swan crudely demands to know why a woman would marry a man saddled with a child, drawing a rebuke from Henry Henderson. Loid, who has been eavesdropping on prior interviews through a bug planted under the table, has already profiled Swan as a spiteful man fresh off a divorce who enjoys humiliating applicants.

The questioning proceeds through rehearsed territory. Asked why they chose Eden, Loid credits the faculty while concealing his real objective of reaching Donovan Desmond, which pleases Henderson. He describes Anya as curious, wise, and intuitive, picky about food; Henderson silently recalls her rock-bottom entrance score, and Anya flinches at hearing it. Yor handles the parenting questions until a follow-up about her cooking blindsides her; Loid steps in, admitting he handles most meals, and when Swan sneers at a wife who cannot cook, Loid praises her housekeeping and mothering, nearly boiling over before Yor calms him.

Anya's solo round is a tightrope. She garbles her surname and address, recovers through the prepared questions, then blanks on what she wants to do at Eden and copies the answer straight out of Loid's head, announcing that her goal is to dig up the secrets of the organization's boss. Loid scrambles to reframe it. She names the headmaster by mind-reading, mangles the pronunciation, describes his life's efforts by recycling a training montage from her spy cartoon, nearly says "spy" when asked about Loid's job before landing on psychiatrist, and rates her parents a perfect hundred because she loves her family and hopes they never part.

Swan then goes for blood, ordering Anya to score her dead mother against her new one. Evans objects, Loid requests a different question, and Swan refuses to budge. Hearing Loid's thoughts about her real parents, Anya breaks down sobbing for her mama. Yor rushes to hold her and protests, Swan mocks the tears, and Loid, at his limit, rises with a raised fist, then drives it into the table instead, splitting his knuckles and blaming a mosquito. He excuses his family, declaring himself disappointed in a school that tramples children's feelings. Henderson, his educator's pride cut deep, answers Swan's threats about his powerful father by punching him in the face.

That evening the family sits deflated at home, expecting rejection. Anya apologizes for her performance, and when Loid suggests she never wanted school anyway, she clings to him and insists she does, understanding that a failed mission would dissolve the family. Yor, making tea, arrives at the same realization and talks herself out of it. Choosing hope over his own worst-case instincts, Loid proposes a toast to their future, and as the teacups rise, the family photo topples over, an omen none of them wanted.

The Forgers survive most of the Eden interview through preparation and improvisation: Loid's fabricated romance, Yor's rehearsed answers, and Anya's telepathy-assisted responses, including her accidental near-exposure of Operation Strix.

Murdoch Swan's demand that Anya choose between her late mother and Yor reduces the girl to tears and provokes Loid's table punch and walkout. Henry Henderson strikes Swan to defend Eden's honor. At home, Anya voices her wish to attend school so the family can stay together, and the celebratory toast is undercut by the falling family photo.

This chapter formally introduces Henry Henderson's interviewer role alongside the debuts of Walter Evans and Murdoch Swan. Evans was initially written as 52 years old, an age revised to 59 for the Volume 1 release.

The volume printing also nudged two pieces of thought dialogue, Henderson's on page 12 and Yor's on page 23, slightly left of their positions in the original digital release. The chapter is adapted in Episode 4 of the anime.