What It's Like Being a Vampire

Chapter 56: Coffee Shop Training (Part 2)

Girl 5’s eyes were like crescent moons, squinting into a thin line at the slightest contraction. While her eyes were small, they complemented her other features well, making her quite attractive. Her appearance gave a distinct, refreshing impression, like suddenly coming across a bamboo forest full of bird song after pushing through a concrete jungle.

Girl 5 wore no makeup, and she also had dark circles under her eyes. But despite that, she looked much healthier than Girls 1, 2, and 3.

All ten of her fingernails were neatly trimmed, without any manicure or nail polish. There was a noticeable callus on the left side of the middle finger on her right hand, suggesting that she frequently wrote with a pen.

There was no scent of perfume on her, but a hint of shampoo. Considering that and the discernible smell of alcohol and disinfectant, is it possible that she is a doctor?

Xiang Kun’s gaze returned to the books on her table. Among the several books, the thickest one looked as heavy as a brick, thick enough to potentially block a knife.

From Xiang Kun’s angle, he could only see a portion of the cover.

The first character looked like either ‘lift” or “%C”, and the last two characters of

the second row were .

Xiang Kun picked up his phone to search, and found a matching book: the “Shen Yucun Psychopathology”.

It appeared that she might be a psychiatrist?

Xiang Kun searched for nearby hospitals on his phone, narrowing his search to psychiatric departments. He knew that resident doctors of the three top-tier hospitals in the city had their profiles and photographs online.

However, he couldn’t find Girl 5’s photo in any of these three local psychiatric departments.

Could it be that she isn’t a doctor in one of these three hospitals?

Or maybe she traveled from a further hospital?

Or perhaps she wasn’t even a psychiatrist?

Indeed, she looked young, perhaps only around twenty-three to twenty-six years old.

Could she actually be a medical student interning at a hospital?

Were there any medical universities nearby?

Xiang Kun pondered on his phone for a while, finding his line of thought blocked.

Therefore, he turned his attention back to Girl 5. Somehow, they made eye contact once again. He didn’t notice when she had lifted her head to look at him.

The two locked eyes for two seconds, this time Xiang Kun casually averted his gaze, pretending to be occupied with his phone.

When he looked up again, Girl 5 had returned to her book.

Xiang Kun’s gaze once again swept over Girl 5. She was dressing casually in a simple light grey, loose-fitting, plain T-shirt and a pair of jeans with a hole in the knee. To Xiang Kun’s eye, he could not discern any upscale brands or prices in her outfit. However, his intuition told him that her clothes were likely not expensive.

She wore a black, unremarkable G- SHOCK watch on her left wrist, which surprisingly suited her.

Her iPhone XR was black and laid on the table without a protective case or any decorative stickers common to women’s phones. The corners were dented and warped, and the phone looked like it had been dropped multiple times. It looked more like a phone that a rough-and-tumble man might use.

From the moment she sat down until current, she was entirely absorbed in her book, constantly jotting down notes, and haven’t picked up her phone even once in the sixteen minutes that passed. This was a typical straight-A student behavior!

Xiang Kun took another quick glance under the pretense of picking something up. The bag Girl 5 had by her side was a tote bag with a Nike logo. It wasn’t a fancy retail bag, but a shopping bag. It was from this bag that she had taken out her books.

Xiang Kun also noticed her shoes, which were a pair of basketball sneakers. The sneakers looked brand new, as if she had just bought them.

Although Xiang Kun wasn’t well-versed in sneakers and rarely watched basketball, he immediately recognized the logo on girl 5’s shoe tongue—it was the logo of NBA star LeBron James.

His university roommate, Chang Bin, was a fan of James. During university, on average, Chang Bin bought a pair of James’s signature shoes every year, along with a variety of related merchandise, like T-shirts, jerseys, caps, etc. Xiang Kun had seen this logo too many times in his dorm.

He pulled out his phone for a quick search and found out that the pair girl 5 was wearing was the newly released LEBRON17. She must have participated in the pre-order or got the sneakers through internal Nike channels.

Based on this, could girl 5 be a basketball fan just like Chang Bin, and a fan of James too?

However, knowing this didn’t seem to help much, he couldn’t possibly try to trace the buyer by accessing Nike’s sales records, it would be too difficult.

However, pretty girls usually stand out in any group; if Girl 5 also participates in fan groups, maybe he can find pictures online, or even ask Chang Bin?

But this would inevitably consume a lot of time and energy. It didn’t align with his training goals, he wasn’t really trying to figure out Girl 5’s real identity out of any motive, but merely practicing skills of making quick identity and behavior judgments through visual, auditory, olfactory, and other sensory abilities. Any direct conversation or inquiries from others, or post hoc investigations, would be outside his scope of training.

Xiang Kun, paying close attention to the trembling pen in Girl 5’s hand, relied on dynamic vision to keenly capture the movement trajectory of the pen. His right hand mimicked a pen-holding gesture, moving along his thigh as if trying to “read” the content written by Girl 5.

But very quickly, he realized it was impossible. Girl 5 wrote too fast, with lots of strokes connected in her writing instead of standard single strokes. The pen’s movements were very minimal, and from his perspective, replicating it couldn’t be done in a short time.

Until girl 5 finished her tuna sandwich and coffee. packed up and prepared to

leave, Xiang Kun couldn’t determine her exact identity and profession based on the gathered information.

Seeing girl 5 walk out the door, Xiang Kun even subconsciously wanted to stand up and follow.

He knew he had a bit of an obsessive-compulsive tendency. Faced with problems or uncertainties, he would feel uncomfortable if he couldn’t understand them.

Fortunately, he wasn’t that far gone, he could still control himself with reason, so he didn’t rashly follow.

Figuring out Girl 5’s identity wouldn’t help him improve his abilities, and it didn’t have any significance to him personally. Furthermore, it might bring unnecessary trouble and attract unwanted attention.

So, in the end, Xiang Kun’s conclusion on Girl 5 was:

A good -looking academic girl, dressed practically and simply without pursuing brands or appearances. She probably comes from a wealthy background. Likely to be a doctor or medical student, currently studying psychiatry, possibly on an internship, and is a basketball and James fan.

Xiang Kun stayed in the cafe until four o’ clock in the afternoon, observing girl 1 to girl 23, child 1 to child 7, and man 1 to man 9 – a total of 39 targets.

Out of these 39 targets, relying on observation of their whole body, collection of their body scent, and the sound of their conversations or calls with other people, he identified the identity and profession of 31 targets, and even knew the names of 14 targets – it actually was not difficult, as people often called out each other’s names, or they would announce their own name during a phone call.

Among the remaining 8 people whose professions he couldn’t ascertain, Xiang Kun was most obsessed with girl 5 and was somewhat unwilling to admit that he couldn’t determine her profession and other identity information.

Well, definitely not because she was the prettiest.

Definitely not…

Today, Xiang Kun used almost five hours to “observe” all 39 targets, “observing” not every customer entering the café because sometimes the customers left before he had a chance to “observe”.

The results of the “observation” were not satisfying. There was too much unnecessary redundant information, and the efficiency was too low.

However, he believed that through long-term training and summary improvements, added by his enhanced abilities post drinks, he could improve quickly.

At that time, perhaps he could walk into a place with dozens of people and complete his observations in a few minutes or even tens of seconds, making a preliminary judgment about everyone.

He would also be able to find people of a specific profession or those posing a threat to him in a crowd of dozens or even hundreds in a short amount of time. That would be the time when he could fully utilize his sensory abilities..