Chapter 373.


    <strong>Chapter 373. Operation: Brainjack, Phase 1; War of Attrition Day 1 (5/6)</strong>


    <span style="font-weight:400">At the start of my shift, I boldly walked into the store with my hair dyed brown beside Rosa. They couldn’t tell it was dyed from a distance, but my figure at least matched who they were looking for. Malory would thus be lured out. She’d enter the store to try and confirm whether it was me.


    <span style="font-weight:400">By not talking to her at any point, her suspicions would be raised. She would wait until I left the convenience store. Using this opportunity, I’d prove that the person who was seen entering earlier today waspletely different and not the person she was after.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Hey Ran, did she show up today as you predicted?” When the two of us had finished changing, he suddenly asked me that.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Yeah. She did appear. So make sure you wear these.” I pulled out a pair of shades I’d borrowed from Irene that I came to work wearing before I also… removed my blue colored contacts.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Right.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">I cleaned out the colored contacts before I passed them over to Jass to put in. After he put in his contacts, he put the shades on.


    <span style="font-weight:400">He had dark brown eyes, and at night, dark brown eyes would pass for ck. Meaning, my ck eyes could pass for his brown eyes whenever I exit the store at night time. Nobody would ever notice.


    <span style="font-weight:400">Thest thing I needed Jass to do now was… style his hair. I took out a bottle of mousse I’d also borrowed from Irene and told him, “You’ve still got to style your hair back.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Haaaaah. Can I not? It’s so cheesy man.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“You’ve got to. This is how I came looking earlier when I first entered the store at the start of my shift.” It was the same way I had it styled on Sunday.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“I get it, I get it. It’s all in the name of somehow bringing down Swastika. I still don’t get how all this is supposed to achieve that though.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“I can’t reveal that. It’s better for you to not know so you don’t give anything away to them without realizing it. Your behavior could potentially tip them off to something being off.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Yeah. Yeah. Whatever man. I’m trusting you here. I’m only doing this because I had those Swastika bastards. If they were gone, the city would be a much better ce. I’m sure a lot more hot foreign chicks would start moving into the city as you said.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">Haha… that was the sort of bullshit I made up on the spot to trick him into helping mest night after I exined part of the n to him. I’d tried using stuff like his sister and mother to scare him by saying he could avoid a situation in the far-off future where they end up being potential victims of Swastika, but he was still reluctant. When I pulled some nonsense statistic about the hot girl poption being inversely proportional to the number of rapists and murderers in a city out of my ass, he was all ears and ready to risk his life to eliminate Swastika even if he had to put his life on the line.


    <span style="font-weight:400">To change the topic I asked him, “By the way, where’d you park my motorcycle?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Your motorcycle’s parked right in front of the exit. You’ll see it as soon as you step outside.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Good.” Last night, when exining Jass’s role and what I was hoping to achieve, he’d actually made a suggestion. A slight modification to the n I hadn’t considered at all that would increase my safety. It was a surprisingly good one, far better than he even realized since he didn’t know all the details of my n. In all honesty, I knew he was just hung up on taking it for a ride. It was pretty obvious that his random suggestion was just an excuse for him to ride it.


    <span style="font-weight:400">Since I had two keys, I was able to give him one. His suggestion was pretty simple. Park my motorcycle away from the store out of sight and he would pick it up, drive it to the store, and park it at the store for me when he got here to swap out with me. The location I chose was the closest mall where the parking was open, filled with many cars, but had plentiful stalls to park all around it throughout the day. After I parked it at the mall for Jass, I power walked for half an hour to get to work. It was exhausting and my feet were killing me by the time I got here, but I sucked it up.


    <span style="font-weight:400">He had his ss 5L license so he at least knew the basics of driving. Sost night before we split up, I taught him how to ride it safely. Just enough for him to get from the mall it was parked at, to here.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Alright, I’m done. How’s it look?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“It looks fine. Rosa, did you bring your hairdryer in the duffle bag like I asked you to?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Yeah. I did.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">She picked up her duffle bag and dug through the stuff she had inside it. It wasn’t filled with anything out of the ordinary. Just normal things a girl might carry around if she went to the gym. That was what I instructed her to keep in it today at least. Tomorrow would be different.


    <span style="font-weight:400">Once Jass’s hair was dry, I sized him up as I handed him my backpack and he put it on.


    <span style="font-weight:400">Brown hair, check.


    <span style="font-weight:400">Hair styled back with mousse, check.


    <span style="font-weight:400">Blue eyes under his shades, check.


    <span style="font-weight:400">About six feet tall, check.


    <span style="font-weight:400">Simr physique with clothes on, check.


    <span style="font-weight:400">Same clothes I wore when I entered the store, check.


    <span style="font-weight:400">My backpack on his back, check.


    <span style="font-weight:400">I was confident, for the time being, there was no chance they would see through this. The description was identical. Unless they saw us side by side or were familiar with us and very ustomed to both of our facial features, it’d be hard to tell us apart.


    <span style="font-weight:400">But for Malory who’d seen my face up close, she could at least tell for certain we’re not the same person.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“We should hurry up and get going otherwise they may get suspicious that something’s up.” Jass looked a bit nervous when he said that.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Rx. Before you can go I need to recount what happened earlier when Malory came in. It’s important. Also, take this.


    <span style="font-weight:400">I retrieved the sucker Malory left behind with me from the mascot’s pouch and handed it over to Jass.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“What’s this? A sucker? What’re you giving me this for?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">I recounted the entire sequence of events. What she said, how I responded, and also both of our actions down to the finest detail. This was so he could prove he was the one inside the costume in case Malory tested him.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Dude… you pat her on the head? What’s wrong with you?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“She reminded me of a child offering her sucker to an adult. I couldn’t help it.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“You have some balls of steel to go and do that. She’s the Swastika gang leader’s girl man. But damn it, how the hell did you resist her? I’d have given in and gone off with her without any hesitation to my grave.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“If you’d like to get raped by some creepy dudes go ahead and follow her. The one you’ll have a good time with definitely wouldn’t be her.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“... seriously?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Yeah, it’s a don’t drop the soap moment.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">Jass’s back unconsciously straightened up when he heard that.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“I’d… definitely not want that.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Then don’t go and fall for it. She’ll make you suffer something worse than death. Her hatred for men knows no limits. Just remember your cover story if you really are confronted by her tonight when walking with Rosa.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Right, I’m Rosa’s brother, not her boyfriend. I was the one in the mascot costume and she’s free to interpret the part about me being the one in the mascot costume, but I’m not to outright admit to that. I was offered a position by the Owner after my sister rmended me when her coworker quit on short notice.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Yes. That’s right. You can let slip by ‘ident’ some of the things that happened between you and her today. For the rest, you y dumb like you don’t know what she’s talking about. The point is to not be fully cooperative and to not give her the answers she wants, but to feed her the answers we want her to hear. The one who controls the flow of information will win this war of attrition.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Alright, can we go now?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Yeah. You’re free to go. I’ll be sticking around in the store for a little while longer.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Rosa, can you give me your phone? It’s better if you don’t have it. They’re going to search your duffle bag and if you have your phone, they’ll want to go through it as well. Just say you don’t have a phone.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Won’t that make them suspicious?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Precisely. We want to keep them suspicious, but unable to act as they wish. They’ll think you’re hiding it for a rted reason and from then on, they’ll wait for you to slip up. If they see you using your phone, they’ll confirm that you’ve lied. That would give them the confidence they need to act. They could nab your phone and try to get information rted to Yuna and me out of it or you. But you’ll never have your phone with you from now on. I’ll be keeping it.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“I see. That idea doesn’t sound too bad.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Jass, you left your phone where I told you to, right?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Yeah. I did.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Alright, good.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“But… what if something happens and we need to call the police?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Don’t worry, nothing will happen.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“How can you say that with certainty?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“It’s all part of the n.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“The mystery n you won’t tell me anything about?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Yeah.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“How am I supposed to trust you?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Just trust me.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“I only trust my friends.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“.... that’s... not going to happen.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“If you won’t agree to be friends, I’m not going to help you.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Alright then. I suppose I’ll just have to die then.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">I took off the wig and headed to the door.