Subconscious

Early the next morning, someone from Blanche Company came to the small inn where Jing Yang was staying and delivered the latest Elf Phone.

The local big shots sure had well-connected sources. Jing Yang weighed the box in his hand and watched the staff member head next door, where he soon knocked on the door.

"What phone?" Shizuku's voice came from the neighboring doorway. "Impossible. There's no such thing."

"There really is." Jing Yang walked over, tossed the brand-new box in his hand, and gestured to Shizuku.

Only then did Shizuku, question marks practically floating over her head, accept the box from the Blanche Company deliveryman.

Jing Yang found it funny. "Even if you forgot, why not accept it first when someone's giving you a phone for free?"

Holding the box, Shizuku asked doubtfully, "What if there's a bomb inside?"

...That made sense!

Jing Yang had to admit it. Though they were both reasonably capable Nen Users, if they were caught entirely unprepared at such close range and could not release their Aura in time to defend themselves, even a small bomb could probably injure them.

Jing Yang entered Shizuku's room and asked with interest, "Then let's assume there might be a bomb inside. How do we confirm it?"

Shizuku closed the door and followed him in. After thinking for a moment, she tore a slit in the plastic wrapping around the latest Elf Phone's box, so it was no longer sealed.

Then she beckoned with one hand, materializing a strange vacuum cleaner with a huge grinning mouth and a long lolling tongue, rendered in an especially Lovecraftian style.

"Blobfish, suck up the bomb." Holding the vacuum cleaner's handle, Shizuku gave the command and flipped the switch to ON.

The vacuum cleaner's "head" opened its huge mouth and began sucking.

Hiss, hiss, hiss!

After sucking for quite a while, nothing changed. The phone box with its wrapping torn open still lay motionless on the bedsheet.

Shizuku said, "Ah. Looks like it isn't a bomb."

"Your ability can be used like that? You could work security screening!"

Jing Yang was genuinely surprised. He had only known that Shizuku's ability could suck things up and function as storage. He had not known it could be used this way too.

Carrying the vacuum cleaner, Shizuku said, "Blobfish can suck up anything I consider not to be a living creature."

"You consider?" Jing Yang sat cross-legged on the edge of the bed. "So it's judged subjectively? If you believed a living person wasn't a living creature, could you suck them into Blobfish too?"

Shizuku looked puzzled. "How could a person not be a living creature?"

"I see." Jing Yang nodded.

If he remembered correctly, after the manga's Chairman Election arc ended, in the lead-up to the Dark Continent arc, one of the Hunter Association's Zodiacs, the "Ox," invited Kurapika, the number two man in the mafia, to help him. When Kurapika used the lie-detecting function of his Index Finger Soul Tracking Chain to catch a mole, he had mentioned a concept: the subconscious...

According to Kurapika himself in the manga, his Index Finger Soul Chasing Chain could only detect lies when he was face-to-face with the target.

But after he activated his Scarlet Eyes and entered Absolute Time, strengthening his Nen Abilities, the Index Finger Soul Chasing Chain seemed able to transcend his own self-awareness, sensing subtle changes that normally could not be expressed and transmitting them to the chain. That allowed it to detect lies successfully... even through a surveillance screen, even if he had only met the other person once, even if that person had undergone deliberate training.

Nen had the character for "heart" at its base. At least, that was how Jing Yang saw it.

The school headed by Hunter Association Chairman Netero was directly called Shingen-ryu.

The subconscious did not lie, and people could not deceive their own subconscious.

Shizuku's subconscious regarded living people as living creatures as a matter of course. Therefore, there was no possibility of her pretending that a living person was not a living creature in order to "trick" her own ability into sucking that person into Blobfish.

In the manga, to deal with the Phantom Troupe, Kurapika had imposed a Vow and Restriction on his Middle Finger Binding Chain: "The middle finger chain may only be used on the Phantom Troupe. If I use it on anyone else, my heart will be pierced and I will die."

It was easy to imagine that the core of this vow—the judgment of whether someone was a Phantom Troupe member—rested on Kurapika's own subconscious: I believe he is a Phantom Troupe member. Precisely because it was the subconscious, there was absolutely no possibility of, I'll pretend you're a Phantom Troupe member, so I can use this ability on you.

That was why people said that Vows and Restrictions were an extremely dangerous double-edged sword.

Without unwavering Willpower and profound resolve, it was best not to walk this crooked path. If someone muddleheaded by nature, someone who changed their mind two or three times in a single second, were put in Kurapika's position, making such a harsh vow would only get them killed.

While Jing Yang was still sitting on the bed, playing with his new phone as his thoughts drifted elsewhere, Shizuku had already pressed the vacuum cleaner's switch.

"Blobfish, suck up all the dust in the room."

Hiss, hiss, hiss!

The vacuum cleaner opened its huge mouth and drew in every speck of dust in the room, swallowing it into what seemed like a bottomless void.

Jing Yang clicked his tongue in amazement. "No wonder your room is cleaner than mine."

"It can suck up anything, but what about spitting things out?" He smiled. "Don't tell me it only takes things in and never lets them out."

Shizuku said, "Blobfish can spit out everything it sucked up last time."

Jing Yang asked doubtfully, "It can only spit out the last thing it sucked up?"

"Yeah."

Jing Yang thought, That's not right. I clearly saw you hold out your hand and ask for mineral water, and the vacuum cleaner spat out a bottle of mineral water. Then you held out your hand again and asked for bread, and it spat out a bag of bread...

Still, it was possible that the bread and mineral water Shizuku had the vacuum cleaner spit out that time really had been the things Blobfish had sucked up "last," before she entered the forest. She had merely taken them out one item at a time.

But there was another possibility...

Jing Yang smiled. "I think Blobfish might be able to spit out anything it has sucked up. It's just that your memory is bad, so you can only take out the last things it sucked in."

Unexpectedly, Shizuku did not refute his assessment of her "bad memory" with, "Impossible. There's no such thing."

"That's possible too," she said.

Just as Kurapika did not fully understand his chain abilities, each person's Nen Abilities came into being, developed, and matured through different circumstances and processes. Jing Yang himself had gone through a period of exploring his Star Mark ability. It was entirely possible that Shizuku did not fully understand Blobfish either.

Even if Blobfish truly could only spit out the things it had sucked up last, Nen Abilities were not set in stone. In the manga, to deal with Hisoka, Chrollo had directly evolved a bookmark for Master of Stealth, that book which could steal other people's Nen Abilities. Who could even argue with that?

Jing Yang smiled. "If you remember the things Blobfish has already sucked up, you can take them out again. As long as you keep believing that, maybe Blobfish will respond to your thoughts and change in that direction."

"Mm." Shizuku nodded and dispersed the vacuum cleaner in her hand into a mass of Aura, drawing it back in.

Jing Yang sighed. "Whenever I ask about the details of your ability, you tell me everything. It feels like I'm bullying you!"

Shizuku looked puzzled. "You're the boss, aren't you? The first rule of the Akatsuki: listen to the boss."

Jing Yang said nothing for a moment, only nodded.

After a while, he jumped off the bed, went to the open window, and looked outside.

"What is it?" Shizuku asked.

"We need to wait a little longer." Jing Yang turned back and sat at the table. "Let's arm-wrestle one more time."