Defense

The next day at noon.

Valenti sat alone in the cafeteria, looking down at her phone as her thumbs tapped rapidly across the keys.

Valenti: Friend, you're finally willing to log on.

Chiba: ?

Valenti: Did you read the email I forwarded you?

Chiba: Jane's request list? I saw it. Do you want me to reimburse it on this end? The base isn't going to be that poor, surely.

Valenti: ...

Chiba: Sis, spit it out, I'm about to board a plane.

Valenti: Why would Jane want these things on her very first day at the base... Do you have any idea?

Chiba: None.

Chiba: If you want to know, you should go ask her yourself.

Valenti: Of course I'm going to talk with her, we have our first session this afternoon... but why do you seem completely unconcerned? She just went through such a tragedy, this information might be important.

Chiba: Hahahahaha

Valenti:?

Chiba: It's true she just went through a tragedy, but don't forget that before entering the abbey she grew up in Duanming Alley. What kind of storms hasn't the kid seen? Scaring yourself out of your wits just because she asked you for some furniture to fix up her room on day one... Stay calm, Valenti, the person I picked out won't have any major issues.

Valenti: ...So why did you pick Jane anyway? I've already heard several people discussing this topic today.

Chiba: Ha, I just felt her scent was a bit special.

Scent?

Valenti raised her head slightly to think, only to see Hesta standing directly across from her with a food tray, and she couldn't help jumping in a startle.

"Sorry, did I scare you?" Hesta asked softly.

"Ah, no..." Valenti came back to her senses.

Today Hesta wore the uniform she had received yesterday, a white shirt under a dark blue sweater, paired with a gray pleated skirt. On the left chest of her uniform jacket was a piece of golden embroidered insignia—the emblem of the reserve training base, a long sword piercing a pair of pliers, with the letters AHgAs underneath.

"May I sit here?" Hesta asked.

"Of course." Valenti symbolically dragged her tray closer to herself, glancing at the new message on her phone screen, where Chiba's avatar had gone gray after leaving behind the line "Boarding, bye-bye."

"Did you sleep comfortably yesterday?" Valenti put her phone away.

"Mm, I chatted with Liz for a long time yesterday, and I also saw Tulan and Ligo, though we didn't talk deeply," Hesta replied with a calm expression. "This morning I already took two hours of course-selection training, but there are still many places I don't understand. I plan to check the computer lab's course selection system after my talk with you this afternoon."

"That's good." Valenti smiled. "It looks like you've already found your rhythm for living here."

"Mm, thanks to Liz, she told me a lot about daily life."

The two ate with their heads down, and once they finished dining, Hesta followed Valenti directly toward her consultation room.

Along the way, Valenti thought of Chiba's words from a short while ago—"her scent was a bit special"—and involuntarily leaned a little closer to Hesta.

She certainly could smell some of the scent belonging to the Quicksilver Needles children on Hesta, but that was actually quite common among newcomers.

What on earth did Chiba mean by special...?

"Miss Valenti?" Hesta's voice interrupted Valenti's train of thought once more, and she snapped back to reality to find herself already standing before the door of the consultation room.

"Oh, I'm sorry..." Valenti immediately began fetching her key card. "I always drift off thinking about things and then forget what's right in front of me. Please don't mind."

"I don't mind." Hesta looked at Valenti. "On the contrary, I feel time spent with you is very relaxing."

Valenti was amused, a chuckle escaping her. "Thank you..."

The consultation room was completely empty. Against one wall stood two gray metal cabinets placed side by side, holding many thick document folders. Near the window sat two lemon-yellow single-piece armchairs angled toward each other, and close to the door was a sandalwood desk. Valenti stepped forward to turn on the computer on the desk and invited Hesta over to fill out the psychological inventory first.

Hesta followed Valenti's instructions on the operation for a moment and quickly got the hang of it.

Currently, the base used the Symptom Checklist-270, newly revised and re-normed last year. It followed the Likert Seven-Point Scale Method, setting up a total of 270 questions to examine the test-taker's current psychological state across 17 mutually exclusive dimensions such as anxiety, depression, and antisociality, boasting very high reliability and validity.

Where this newly revised scale excelled over the older version was its addition of two sections—the Vanity Scale and the Defense Scale—which together contained 30 questions specifically designed for lie detection.

Generally speaking, ordinary people scored very low on these 30 questions; however, if someone intentionally hid their true thoughts for purposes like "beautifying oneself" or "passive defense," choosing instead answers that looked more pleasant or correct, then their corresponding scores under these types of questions would become extremely high.

This meant that their entire questionnaire was untrustworthy.

These 30 lie-detection questions were scattered among the original 240 questions, greatly facilitating psychological workers like Valenti. She could easily tell through this lie-detection scale whose measurement results were untrustworthy, and understand the other party's tendency to lie to a certain extent.

About half an hour passed, and Hesta submitted the inventory.

Valenti had already adjusted the camera on the side and begun her conversation with Hesta.

Today, their topics stopped strictly at Hesta's life at the base over the past and coming days.

Hesta frequently glanced at the camera placed not far away; like all newcomers, she was unaccustomed to talking under a lens.

"Will anyone pull these video or audio recordings?" she asked softly.

"Yes, but only a very small number of people have the authority to retrieve them," Valenti replied. "Including me, there are only four people in total—oh no, five—and that includes Chiba. Most of the time no one touches them. All image materials are simply kept on file, and if your future development runs into problems, we will try to find the causes through these materials."

Hesta gazed with a complex look at the red dot on the camera. "I understand."

There was actually a great deal Valenti wanted to know about Hesta, such as the girl's early memories, her birthplace and childhood, the education she received in Duanming Alley and Saint Anne Abbey, some daily entertainment, as well as important turning points and choices in her life...

Yet Valenti also understood that these questions would have no answers right now—the time to talk about these deep topics with Hesta was still far away.

Still, she didn't need to rush, because conversations like today's would maintain a frequency of once a month from now on, increasing or decreasing later depending on the situation, until they reached adulthood.

The clock pointed to 3:50 PM. Hesta rose from her seat and bid farewell to Valenti. As she pulled the consultation room door shut behind her from the outside, Valenti finally sat back down at the computer to check Hesta's questionnaire results.

Unsurprisingly, just as she dragged the page down to the results section, she saw the red text "Invalid Measurement" displayed on the screen, accompanied by a line of black body text beneath it—

"The test-taker's score on the 'Defense Scale' is too high; the results of this questionnaire cannot be trusted."