"When it came to earning other people's trust, people often made one mistake." Nick held up a finger and said, "Novices always liked to add more, thinking that the more they explained, the more trust they would gain."
"But in reality, there weren't many empathetic people in this world. People couldn't, nor was it useful for them, to spend their energy understanding someone else's circumstances. Usually, people had the strongest empathy when meeting a stranger for the first time."
"Driven by wariness and curiosity toward unfamiliar people, the instincts of social animals made them try their best to understand what kind of person the other party was and judge how to get along with them. But once they became even slightly familiar, that instinct no longer kicked in."
"Therefore, there was a saying in the agent profession called the Golden Thirty Seconds. It meant that if you failed to earn someone's trust within the first thirty seconds of meeting them, it would be difficult to ever gain their complete trust afterward."
"Coulson was especially good at this." Natasha said, "Despite not being particularly strong in a fight, he became a senior S.H.I.E.L.D. agent all the way through because of his special talent. He was an agent who didn't look like an agent."
"He could be anyone: the neighbor taking out the trash, the cop putting up parking tickets, the social worker trimming flowers and shrubs, or simply a passerby walking a dog. When he greeted strangers, almost no one suspected him. But I can't do that."
Natasha shrugged. "The more skilled an agent is at confrontation, the more they carry an impossible-to-ignore tension, like the one meerkat in a group assigned to stand watch. We react too sharply to every little disturbance. It's hard for us to have an ordinary