4226 The Other Side 195

After the vacation in Saipan, Alice returned to the Hurricane Group to complete some paperwork. She was expecting to travel back and forth between the mainland and the Hurricane Group for some time afterwards, so that she could monitor the stability of Natalia's condition.

Alice settled into the villa that Gong Jie had purchased for Hua Jin and Natalia. After a few days of monitoring, however, Alice discovered something of relative importance. And that was… Natalia's particular restlessness in the absence of the crystal ball.

At night, the girl had great difficulty falling asleep. Often, even after she had fallen asleep, she would be plagued by nightmares, as revealed by quality-of-sleep tests. Continuous nightmares had a serious impact on the quality of her sleep, and this indirectly led to her fretful mood.

That meant… The crystal ball had some sort of mysterious effect on Natalia.

Alice hesitated for some time before she finally decided to return the crystal ball to Natalia. Before doing so, she deliberately installed hidden security cameras in the room. The recorded footage would be transmitted directly to Alice's phone and would be monitored 24/7.

Initially, Hua Jin objected to this. He didn't feel that Alice had the right to put Natalia under such surveillance, even though she had a condition. Even split personality patients had an absolute right to privacy.

However, Alice did not buy into that. She felt that the priority was to decipher the connection and bond between the crystal ball and Natalia. The actor thus went along with it and did not interfere too much.

Hence, having found an opportunity, using the excuse that the airport had located the crystal ball, Hua Jin then returned it to Natalia. The girl cradled the crystal ball lovingly. Even her mental state seemed much improved. Hua Jin was curious when he noticed her holding the crystal ball as if she'd found a new lease of life. Hence he asked her secretly why she thought that the crystal ball was so important to her.

The girl replied, "At night, there'll be a fairy in the crystal ball, singing me to sleep."

"How is that possible?" Hua Jin kept staring into the crystal ball, but he couldn't make any sense of it. "Where's the fairy? Why can't I see her?"

"Hmph, only I can see her. No one else can see her at all! This is a secret between her and me! A secret only the two of us know!" She clutched the crystal ball protectively to her chest and refused to let him look at it again.

The day Hua Jin returned the crystal ball to Natalia, Alice activated the surveillance. It was also this surveillance that led Alice to discover a serious problem.

She realized, through the surveillance camera, that Natalia would hug the crystal ball and stare into space for a long time before she went to bed. It was as if she could see something in the crystal ball. However, immediately afterward… Her state would undergo a clear change. This state was not unfamiliar. Alice knew very well that in such a state, Natalia had accepted hypnosis.

How did that happen? This was somewhat beyond what Alice knew. Logically speaking, even in hypnosis, there had to be two parties, the hypnotist and the person being hypnotized. It wouldn't work if one party were to be missing.

The crystal ball was just an auxiliary prop. Without a hypnotist, no matter how many crystal balls there were, they could not result in hypnosis.