288 Could It Be Love? 2 in 1 (1/2)
This was the rumor among the circle, but they could not be completely believed. At the same time, they could not be deemed as nothing more than rumor as well. For example, the Pai Hau Zi—the initial rumors shrouded them in absolute mystery. Apparently, all the human traffickers had access to this special hypnotizing technique. Many hypnotizers relied on this technique to do their work, and with this, they were allowed to put people under their control with a pat of the target's head or shoulder.
After the knowledge spread and information became more common, the public started to have their questions. Plenty of proof was explained and pointed out. This was a sign that a rumor could do a lot of harm to the public. Then it led to the state of semi believability…
Ye Shuang had no idea how other people might view this, but Ye Shuang herself was confident about the validity of this sedative. Veritaserum, also known as truth serum, was used by the American government starting from the twenties, and it was once even used by the court during the interrogation of the criminals. It was not until the fifties that its use was questioned, and the testimony provided by the criminals under the influence of this medication was put under the spotlight.
However, this did not represent thiopental's departure from the historical stage. It was merely transferred to another form of usage. It was used by the intelligence department and even criminals at certain unique stages.
After she became a middle-tier agent, due to the complicated nature of the job scope and range, Han Chu had once used a free period of his schedule to take Ye Shuang to a chemical lab. Han Chu had taken out the series of medicines and chemicals that were not that famous but were being used on the market for Ye Shuang to familiarize herself with. Among them had been this thiopental that the man had tried to use on her earlier…
”Just what is inside the phone?” If Ye Shuang had only been thirty percent intrigued before, it had now risen up to seventy or eighty percent. The man wheezed. He was about to speak when Ye Shuang interrupted him by claiming, ”Never mind, I know you will never tell me!”
After thinking about it, Ye Shuang said, ”Actually I have not seen the stuff inside the phone. Do you believe me or not?”
Of course, not! The man finally found an opening, which he filled with a cold scoff. With a twist of his wrist, he pulled out a new spray can. ”If you let me spray this on you and ask, then I'll believe you!”
”Do you think I'm stupid?” Ye Shuang looked down on him. ”Lowering the brain activity can merely lower the guard of a normal person. Even a truth serum is not one hundred percent accurate—there are people with special training who can override its effect quite easily!”
”You have a point. I actually do not plan to completely trust your words even when you are under the influence of the chemical.” To her surprise, the man agreed with her opinion.
Ye Shuang sighed. ”Furthermore, I have already seen you use this thing. I have already told you, I really do not know anything, but I am sure you will not let this go so easily. Regardless, you are not going to succeed in spraying that thing on me because I move too fast for you to keep up.”
The effect of the truth serum was actually not that different from making a person drunk. The person not only would not lose their speech, but one would have a hard time to stop talking. On top of that, the whole part of that memory would be lost when the person woke up.
In other words, if there was a bottom line for the man, or if he did not want to create a bigger trouble, after confirming that Ye Shuang was unfamiliar with the secrets, he might have just let her go.
Unfortunately for him, Ye Shuang had alien-like reflexes. With a turn of her hand, she interrupted the man's skill. When both of them calmed down and assessed the situation calmly, it was impossible to play dumb and act like nothing had happened.
The man looked so conflicted. ”You are not wrong about that either.”
Ye Shuang thought about it and then sighed with sadness. ”There are security cameras in the hospital parking lot. It would have been another story if you had succeeded inside the car, but if we get into an altercation now, even if you manage to spray me with the thing, you are not going to escape unscathed. So, what are you going to do now?”
Indeed, what do I do now? The man hugged his head and punched the top of his car for half a minute before turning around to roar, ”Wouldn't it have been so much easier if you had allowed me to succeed inside the car‽”
”Then, why don't you reflect on the sneakiness in your personality and your urgency to get things done‽” Ye Shuang also had a limit to her patience, and this unreasonable man was really testing it.
Just as the battle was about to start, the phone in the man's pocket rang at the right moment to break up the tense atmosphere. The phone belonged to the girl who was still lying in bed. The man looked at Ye Shuang with caution. He pulled out the phone and then turned his glare to it. Ye Shuang shrugged. ”Go and answer it. I promise you, I will not run away.”
If she did not settle this issue on the spot and ran away, it would only lead to more trouble. After all, when she sent the girl to the hospital the previous night, Ye Shuang had jotted down her personal information on the registration book.
After hearing what Ye Shuang had to say, the man's expression looked much better. With some anger, he answered the phone and walked to a spot further away. ”Hello!”
”I noticed you were taking a while, so I borrowed the phone from my neighbor.” The girl's slow and easy voice came out from the phone. ”From the sound of it, you do not sound so happy… Hmm, is it because you suspect that the girl has looked through our messages?”
”You were out for it the entire night. Who knows how much she has found out after such a long time?” The man did not care that Ye Shuang was just standing about two meters behind him, and he admitted his thought easily.
On the other end of the phone, the girl was not affected by the man's loud voice at all. The sound of the medical cart being pushed through the hospital corridors came through the phone. ”Have you forgotten about the fact that one needs to use a password to open my phone messages?”
The man instantly choked on his words—he had indeed forgotten all about that. He had been too focused on checking how much confidential information was inside the messages that he did not realize that he had completed the step of unlocking the messages with a password before reading the messages.
With the silence as her answer, the girl sighed. ”That is why I said you suffer from low intelligence…”
”Even… even so, the woman might have a special technique that can allow her to hack through the password!” The man used a shrill and loud voice to try to cover up the guilt and shame in his conscience.
Ye Shuang raised her hand to place some input in the conversation. ”I have not really studied a skill like that—you are overestimating me.”
The man turned to glare at her. Ye Shuang noticed that the man did not seem interested in continuing this discussion with her, so she shrugged and made a pose that said, ”Well, your loss.”
The girl did not have Ye Shuang's super hearing, so naturally, she would not have heard the voice that came from behind the man. She continued her assessment of the man. ”Since you have admitted to making trouble for the girl, combined with the disgruntled voice that you are using now, I dare to make a prediction that you have failed to do what you planned to do.”
It is really no fun when your partner is so sharp!
The girl sighed again. ”Fine, I really should not place any expectations on your intelligence. The best outcome is for you to have not started your plan yet, and the worst outcome is that you have already made the move but failed… Hmm, to put it simply, you have been exposed, right‽”
The first half of the sentence was voiced in a question format, but when she got to the latter half of the sentence, the girl was using an affirmative tone. Since the girl was too correct with her assessment, for that moment, the man had nothing to say for himself.
”…Come and help me finish the procedure to get out from the hospital.” The girl was silent for half a second and then came to this conclusion. ”I have faith that your mess can still be fixed, but it all depends on whether the girl is willing to sit down for a negotiation or not.”
…
Ye Shuang was willing to settle this issue peacefully and very gladly accepted the invitation from the girl. After the man helped the girl finish the procedure to get out from the hospital, the three took Ye Shuang's car and left the hospital. With regard to the car that the man drove, it would probably be fine. At most, he would need to pay a little extra to the hospital for the parking fee.
Since they were only going for a negotiation, the three did not need to go through the trouble of finding some high-class location to have a sit-down. The moment that Ye Shuang's car left the perimeter of the hospital, the girl started to say slowly, ”Big sister, you are not a normal citizen, right?”
”Hmm… I suppose you can say that.” In fact, she was not even a normal human being. Ye Shuang thought about it seriously. She held the steering wheel and then glanced at the rear-view mirror. ”But I am a lawful citizen. I just have a better body reaction and good reflexes; my background is not as complicated as you think.”
”As complicated as we think?” The girl titled her head, and the curiosity in her eyes was bright as day. ”Why would you have a misunderstanding like that? We have not made any kind of assumption about you.”
”Oh, that is mainly due to your friend's reaction…” Ye Shuang tried to explain it in a more roundabout way. ”You saw it for yourself. The reaction that he had once he ran into the hospital room. And then his plan to assault me with the truth serum without understanding the situation…”
The girl's turned her accusatory gaze slowly to the man who sat beside her, who was sweating in guilt.
”What… what are you looking at‽” The man turned his shame into anger. The girl's gaze was still calm, but her expression was slowly colored with a trace of pain and sadness. ”I was merely making a prediction to see how long I would need to be bogged down by your lack of intelligence.”
The man finally lost his temper. ”Can you stop making this about my intellect?”
”Calm down!” Ye Shuang roared back. ”This car is not mine; I borrowed it from a friend! Are you going to pay me if it's scratched‽”
Counting the time that she had been awake, Ye Shuang had interacted with this duo for less than an hour, but in this short amount of time, she had already gotten a clear grasp of the duo's personality. If the two were really a pair of working partners like they said, then the one who was responsible for coming up with the plan and thinking would be the girl.
The man was an action-based person, but the girl's logical ability and emotional control were very good. Just like she said, her intelligence was much higher than the man's, so that was enough to complement the man's lack of little gray cells. She was able to deal with the mess that the man made and the daily chores.
Similarly, if they were talking about mobility and action, it was definitely the man who did most of the work. The girl loved to drag things out so much that it had become an illness, whereas the man had to be on the move constantly. This could be a good thing or a bad thing. Therefore, when the girl was feeling lazy or swamped under her work load and wanted to pretend to not notice stuff, the man would be there to pick up the workload of two people.
Since the two were paired together despite their completely opposite personalities, this could be called a tragedy. However, if one overlooked the friction that might come from their opposing personalities, this pairing was actually surprising complementary.
After five minutes of the man blaming the girl for dragging things out and being lazy and then the girl blaming the man for his lack of intellect, in the end, it was the slow-speaking but sharp-tongued girl who had the final victory. Then she abandoned her partner, who she had stepped all over, and turned her focus back to Ye Shuang.
”Big sister, listen to me, everyone has their secrets that they cannot reveal to other people.” Half of the girl's small face was buried inside her blanket, and she looked so surprisingly obedient. However, the serenity that she wrapped around her was merely a shell. ”We do not wish to find out the origin of your expertise, and I am sure that you still do not know a thing about our actual job…”
After a small pause for the girl to decide on the tone and terms that she should be using, she continued to speak slowly. ”So, if I am not mistaken, we can put things this way—other than the fact that we know that neither party is a normal citizen, there is no reason for us to be cautious of each other, right? There is definitely no reason for us to have hostility against each other, right?”