Chapter 1050: Shocking Ordinary Person (Part 28)

Just as Eddie was fumbling with that candy wrapper with his fingers, a wisp of black slime quietly crawled up his arm. With a "whoosh," it stuck to the candy wrapper, and in an instant, the wrapper was gone.

Eddie widened his eyes, then gritted his teeth and said, "Venom! What are you doing?! This belongs to Dr. Schiller. You can't just mess with it. A person needs to have basic manners..."

"I'm not a person!" Venom chuckled twice and said, "Besides, he'll only think you took it anyway..."

"Seriously, do you recognize this thing?" Eddie asked with some suspicion, because he noticed that when he had just taken out the candy wrapper, Venom's emotions had fluctuated slightly; he clearly recognized this wrapper.

"I don't know!" Venom immediately gave a negative answer and even whistled twice inside Eddie's mind. Eddie knew he was definitely hiding something, but he couldn't be bothered to argue with him.

After spending so much time with Venom, he had already discovered that this alien symbiote with a not-quite-normal brain completely responded to soft tactics rather than hard ones. Everything had to be coaxed. If he forcefully demanded Venom hand it over, Venom would only fight him for control of his body and then run off to the convenience store downstairs to dance.

Eddie glanced at the overcoat in his hand. He was someone who had mingled in high society, and one touch of the fabric told him this garment was very expensive and could not be machine-washed.

Eddie had also heard rumors about Schiller's greedy nature. If it were in the past, if he dared to bring this thing near a washing machine, even if Schiller were dead drunk, he would definitely jump up and punch him.

Eddie could only casually drape the overcoat over the top of the washing machine, preparing to find the landlady of the convenience store tomorrow to ask where there was a dry cleaner. In a neighborhood like this, finding a dry cleaner that could handle expensive fabrics wasn't easy.

To put it nicely, this was an emerging development area in the Brooklyn region waiting to be developed; to put it bluntly, it was the edge of a slum, a place where mediocre commoners stayed. People here couldn't afford a coat like this with half a year's wages.

After putting the clothes down, Eddie walked back to Schiller's side. He lowered his head and glanced at the cigarette case on the coffee table, discovering that at least three cigarettes had disappeared from it.

And the one Schiller was holding in his hand right now was almost burned down to the filter, yet Schiller had no intention of throwing it away at all.

Eddie reached out and took the cigarette butt away. Schiller didn't react, only instinctively reaching out to touch the cigarette case on the table. Eddie reached out again and took the cigarette case away, and only then did Schiller lift his eyes to look at him.

Eddie sighed and said, "Doctor... alright, Schiller, although I don't know what happened, I feel like your mental state doesn't seem right."

At this moment, Schiller's pupils suddenly constricted, as if he had suddenly woken up. He stood up with a "whoosh," stared fixedly at Eddie's face, then stretched out both hands to press down on his shoulders, pinning him onto the sofa in one motion.

Eddie was bewildered. At this time, Schiller was trembling all over. He walked out from the gap between the coffee table and the sofa and quickly came to the cabinet next to them, starting to rummage through it.

Just as Eddie was about to stand up, Schiller immediately turned his head and said coldly, "Sit there and don't move."

Eddie opened his mouth to retort, but seeing Schiller's gaze filled with murderous intent, he closed his mouth again. After a while, he asked, "... What exactly are you looking for?"

Schiller's arms were trembling constantly, causing his movements in opening the drawers to be clumsy. When rummaging through things, he always made a mess of the contents of the drawers, yet his movements became faster and faster, and his expression became increasingly anxious.

Finally, he flung the remote control in his hand with force, turned his head to look at Eddie, gritted his teeth, and said, "Why, why don't you even have a notebook??!! Aren't you a reporter?!!"

"Uh, I do all my work on a computer, and besides, I'm not used to bringing work-related things home," Eddie, sitting in his original spot, shrugged and said.

Schiller, squatting in place, sighed, but soon stood up again and walked back to the sofa to sit down. Eddie stood up and said, "I'll go pour you a glass of water."

"Come back and sit down," Schiller said without lifting his head. "Alright, let's just pretend there's a medical record book here... How have you been lately?"

"I've been doing quite well," Eddie nodded and said, "What exactly is wrong with you? Do you want me to call someone?"

"No... no..." Schiller immediately denied it. "Put your phone away... put it away immediately! Don't call anyone. If you receive a certain call in a moment, whatever nonsense he says to you, don't believe it at all! That's a scammer!"

Eddie frowned in great confusion. Venom said sarcastically in his mind, "Oh, oh! Our little baby Eddie is going to become a test subject!"

Just as he finished saying this, Schiller looked into Eddie's eyes and said, "Where's Venom? Call him out!"

Venom immediately gasped in Eddie's mind, then roared, "No! Tell him I'm not here!!!"

"I know you're there," Schiller said, looking into Eddie's eyes. "If you don't come out, don't blame me for turning the speakers to the maximum volume in a moment, and we'll go down together."

"Oh, damn it, you lunatic!" Venom had no choice but to crawl out of Eddie's body.

The moment he came out, his head hit the ceiling, and he let out another "ow" of miserable pain, then complained, "I said it long ago, you should rent a house with higher ceilings!"

"That's because you've eaten too fat!" Eddie retorted.

"What did you say?!!" Venom roared with his bloody mouth wide open, "Apologize! Apologize quickly!!!"

"Don't be like this, there are outsiders watching..." Eddie coughed twice and said.

Schiller tilted his head high, looking at Venom, who was at least three times larger than in the comics and movies, and said, "You've eaten a bit too fat. What is the reason that led to your binge eating?... Anxiety?"

Venom revealed a rare human-like expression. He pulled one corner of his mouth back hard, made a "chi" sound, and then said, "It's fine if Eddie, that idiot, doesn't understand, but you don't know either? For a symbiote, more is good, big is beautiful!"

"If I went back to Klyntar now, I would definitely win the championship of the Symbiote Beauty Pageant in one fell swoop!"

"Look at my symbiote factors with such rich reserves, look at my densely arranged mental pathways, and look at my excellent extensibility and solid structural arrangement..."

After finishing, Venom began to laugh wildly, but in the next second, his bright red tongue was grabbed by a hand.

Schiller tugged on Venom's tongue, stretching it downward with force. Venom let out an "ah" sound and then began to wave his arms wildly.

Schiller let go, and Venom leaned backward, his occiput hitting the wall again. He touched his slightly dizzy head and roared at Schiller, "What are you doing?!"

"Has anyone ever told you that narcissism is also a disease?" Schiller sat back down. He fell back into a delirious state and subconsciously reached out to touch a cigarette.

Venom grinned, hands on his hips, looked down at Schiller, and said to Eddie in his mind, "You say... what kind of disease is he having? Could it be that he's here to stage a fake accident to extort money?"

"You even know about staging fake accidents?" Eddie replied.

In an instant, the Venom factors retracted into his body. He shook his arms and looked at Schiller, whose hands were shaking so much that cigarette ash was scattered all over the floor, and said:

"How about this, Schiller, if you don't want to go back to your own sanatorium and clinic, and don't want to go to the hospital, I can take you to wherever you want to go. Where do you want to go?"

"... I'm not going anywhere." Schiller shook his head, his breathing becoming short. Even speaking was a bit laborious, and there were always some vague saliva sounds between his words, just like a child learning to talk.

"Schiller's state like this reminds me of those children with autism we saw when we went to the special education school before," Eddie said to Venom in his mind. "Do you remember? Talking to themselves, answering questions irrelevantly, suddenly excited, suddenly depressed..."

"You didn't just realize he has autism, did you?" Venom's mocking voice rang in Eddie's mind. "It seems that's all the level you have."

Eddie sighed, having no time to bicker with Venom. He thought for a moment and then said, "I remember the teacher engaged in special education told me at the time that when talking to autistic patients, don't make overly rigid demands, don't break their inherent habits, otherwise it's possible to make them lose control."

Eddie pursed his lips, sat back down, and shouted at Schiller, "Schiller? Schiller? Schiller, look at me, Schiller!"

Eddie called out about thirty times before Schiller finally lifted his head to look at him. So Eddie said, "Alright, I know you're very uncomfortable right now. Can you listen to me? I'll just pretend you heard me..."

"I'm not a professional doctor, but if you don't want to go anywhere right now, you can stay here. There happens to be a guest room over there, but I must go and fetch your daily necessities."

Eddie kept staring into Schiller's eyes and said, "If you want to stay here, then give me the keys to your clinic, and I'll go help you pack your things."

Eddie slowed his speech as much as possible and repeated, "If you want to stay here, give me the keys..."

Schiller leaned backward somewhat sluggishly until his back was completely pressed against the back of the sofa. After about five minutes, he finally used his arm to feel toward his coat pocket.

However, inside his overcoat, he was only wearing a black turtleneck sweater and had no pockets.

He stood up slowly again and walked toward the overcoat placed on top of the washing machine. Eddie didn't block his movements at all, until he heard a sudden loud "thud" sound coming from the washing machine.

He walked over and saw Schiller punching the cabinet and looking at Eddie, asking, "Where's the candy wrapper?!"

Eddie said somewhat awkwardly, "Uh, it was snatched away by Venom. Wait a moment, I'll make him spit it out right now!"

"Venom! Venom! Spit out his candy wrapper quickly! Didn't you see his gaze that looks like he wants to kill someone? Do you want to get both of us killed?"

"That's not his candy wrapper!" Venom shouted very aggrievedly. "That was clearly mine! It was given to me by someone else!"

Eddie froze there. He thought about it with his logical thinking. Between a normal Schiller and Venom, it was obviously more likely that Venom would eat the candy. Anyway, he couldn't imagine a professional and rigorous psychologist wanting a chocolate candy in the middle of treating a patient.

But just as Eddie was thinking, Schiller was already a bit out of control. He kept punching the same spot, muttering the same sentence quickly in his mouth. That sentence had no logic, just constant repetition.

At the same time, because his teeth were chattering, the words were bitten very brokenly, sounding like he was muttering some strange incantations.

On some words and stresses that others couldn't understand, he would also grit his teeth viciously while sniffing, just like he was scolding someone.

He kept slapping the same spot on the cabinet with his palm, the frequency and force completely unchanged, and then began to rock his body back and forth, nodding forward, as if he were about to fall over.

Eddie rushed over to support him. After a while, a candy wrapper finally appeared in the palm of Eddie's hand. He handed the candy wrapper to Schiller, and Schiller immediately became much quieter, withdrawing the hand that was punching the cabinet.

He held the candy wrapper with both hands and then began to flatten the candy wrapper bit by bit, using his fingers to crush every thread of texture until it was smooth, and then pinched the two corners of the candy wrapper to fold it in half.

He folded the square candy wrapper into a rectangle, then changed direction and continued folding until a cross appeared in the middle, then unfolded it, and folded the four corners toward the center of the cross.

Eddie squinted his eyes, watching Schiller's movements. Soon, he discovered that the creases on the candy wrapper must have been folded countless times, and every movement of Schiller's was like it had been practiced a thousand times—crisp, neat, accurate, like an instinct, completely without the need for thinking.

After about tens of seconds, a strange origami object appeared in Schiller's hand.

It looked like one large umbrella, and also like four small umbrellas combined together.

If Eddie were Chinese, he would know that this kind of origami toy played an important role in every Chinese person's childhood. Most regions call it—"East, West, South, North." ===== CHAPTER 1051 =====