Kisaragi Station || Apocalypse Paradise #3

257: Silvan's Discovery

"What? How do you know?" The siblings were shocked and couldn't help asking Lin Sanjiu the same question at the same time, almost inaudibly.

Lin Sanjiu steadied herself but couldn't help peering out from the gaps between the bookshelves. White smoke rose from the previous attack and slowly spread before Siri's work desk. Lin Sanjiu could see the shallow dent in the ground through the white smoke. Her gaze swept past the dent, landing on the multimedia section. She eyed the same spot for a few full seconds.

"Because... It was too illogical for them to risk coming to the central hall just to ask that useless question. I couldn't help myself, so I tested my conjecture," she replied softly.

—

Lin Sanjiu already had an idea in the beginning. The first two questions she asked were what the people from the north, west, and south wings wanted. From Siri's answer, there was no problem with those questions. She also planned to speak softly and get Siri to reply with the microphone. She wanted to create a false association for the teams from the four wings: "The skinless human doesn't have a microphone, so we can't hear her. But we can hear Siri because Siri has a microphone, so we can hear Siri's answer."

Once people had a false association, it would become a cognitive blind spot. They wouldn't even consider that posthumans could speak very loudly if they wanted to. Lin Sanjiu had learned this tactic from Hannie.

It was useful to exploit humans' natural cognitive biases.

When the woman from the south wing requested Lin Sanjiu to ask Siri if the people from the east wing only posed one question, the situation changed.

After the woman from the south wing finished her sentence, Lin Sanjiu looked at Siri. This time, however, she did not parrot the question as per the audience's expectations. Instead, she asked softly and quickly, "You can hear me, right? Please do not use the microphone to answer. Please only provide your next answer to me."

Lin Sanjiu's non-existent heart thumped loudly. Siri stared at her expressionlessly and pushed away the microphone. Lin Sanjiu felt her heart settling back in its place.

"No," Siri said as if she understood Lin Sanjiu's intentions, "The east wing team did not only ask one question. They asked me another question."

Lin Sanjiu was so tense that her fingers started feeling numb. It had only been two to three seconds since the woman from the south wing had asked her question. From an outsider's perspective, it looked as though Lin Sanjiu had just finished asking her question. That meant that Lin Sanjiu had the time to cover up her actions. A person can easily twist their question to receive a predetermined answer. "The team from the south wing only wanted me to ask that one question, right? Please use the microphone to answer me."

"That's right. That's the only question," Siri answered with a voice almost pre-programmed. Her voice rang out clearly from the speakers and caused a commotion. Admittedly, Lin Sanjiu managed her timing very well, so everyone believed that the answer was directed to the question posed by the woman from the south wing.

"Now, without using the microphone, please tell me the answer to the second question they posed." Lin Sanjiu had never spoken so fast in her life. She was so nervous that her blood vessels were on fire. This was the main aim of her actions.

"I told them that the book, The Blooming Dawn, can be found in C section Bookshelf 76, 4th shelf, 7th book."

When Lin Sanjiu heard Siri's answers, she immediately realized she had been standing in the same spot for too long. Before saying another word to Siri, she turned and rushed toward the bookshelves. She had just taken her second step when some unknown person from one of the teams had destroyed the spot she was at.

—

After hearing Lin Sanjiu's account, the siblings were stunned. However, they still couldn't determine how she concluded that Silvan had found a book.

"You have the story's beginning and end; you just miss the clue in the middle. Come on, it's not that hard," Lin Sanjiu said. She didn't spell things out for the siblings; she just gave them a vague hint. As the kids were still young, she felt that it was a crime to just spoon-feed them without allowing them to think.

Rena held the spine of a book unconsciously. She repeated softly, "The Blooming Dawn... The Blooming Dawn... It isn't one of the target books. Oh! Ohh! Oh! I know!"

She suddenly cried out, and her face turned red with excitement. At the same time, Reno quickly jumped up and pulled his sister, "No, let me explain!"

The siblings had figured out the intricacies within the answers at the same time.

"We were searching in the wrong place!" Reno muttered, his eyes fleeting across the rows of bookshelves, and he fixed his gaze on the multimedia section. "Siri doesn't know where the target books are, but she knows the location of every book on these bookshelves. That's to say..."

"The target books are simply not on the bookshelves!" Rena could hold herself back and blurted out her conclusion.

Her brother could only swallow back his words, feeling a little disgruntled.

"That's right," Lin Sanjiu smiled. Even though her smile was a little scary, the kids seemed very encouraged by her reaction. "Silvan came to the same conclusion. He must have found a target book in one of the non-book sections in the east wing, but we just don't know which book it is."

"That's not it... Did you guys notice which direction the thing that attacked me came from?" me came from?" she asked coolly.

"No... That thing did not travel in a straight trajectory. Instead, something like an explosion target suddenly appeared..." Reno said as he recalled what had happened, "It is impossible to know who attacked you."

"I am about 80% confident that the person who tried to attack me was Silvan," Lin Sanjiu said mildly. "When I was with Siri, I spent about three seconds longer than average to ask that additional question. Considering his ability to think, he must have noticed something was amiss. He wanted to scare me away but was a step too late."

The two kids looked at each other and couldn't help feeling tongue-tied.

"Not only is he handsome, but he is a little difficult to deal with," Reno said with almost a sigh.

"Let's ignore him. Anyway, he missed! There is no time to lose. Let's start searching in the non-books section," Rena gestured happily. "Isn't the multimedia section the best place to start!"

She was right. The central hall had many non-book sections: the entrance, Siri's work desk, the multimedia section, and the reading area with tables and chairs. The multimedia section was the closest to the bookshelves. They could reach that area after walking past bookshelf 100. However, the multimedia section was directly under the second floor of the west wing.