Signs of the past - Ash Lynx x Reader

Chapter 26

Your POV:
Eventually, Ash came back from prostituting. He must've had some reason for going. So I assumed it was for information. Though, he came back quite late at night. I obviously didn't comment since I had a bad habit of being out late as well. To be honest, when Ash actually came home and fell asleep, I snuck out.

I'd been out gathering information in the local library on whatever I could in terms of drug synthesis and what makes banana fish so potent. I sat down at one of the desks in the library and began browsing the computer for anything on inert alkaloids as well as drug synthesis.

Scrolling through the internet, I found an article that piqued my interest on inert alkaloids.

Alkaloids are a class of basic, naturally occurring organic compounds that contain at least one nitrogen atom. This group also includes some related compounds with neutral and even weakly acidic properties. Some synthetic compounds of similar structure may also be termed alkaloids. In addition to carbon, hydrogen and nitrogen, alkaloids may also contain oxygen, sulphur and, more rarely, other elements such as chlorine, bromine and phosphorous.

Alkaloids are produced by a large variety of organisms including bacteria, fungi, plants and animals. They can be purified from crude extracts of these organisms by acid-base extraction, or solvent extractions followed by silica-gel column chromatography.

So this goes way deeper than we thought. Whoever synthesised the drug, knew what they were doing. The part that didn't make sense was the acid-base extraction. Since it confused me, I went on to google what that meant. And what it entailed.

Acid-base extraction is a procedure using sequential liquid-liquid extractions to purify acids and bases from mixtures based on their chemical properties.

Acid-base extraction is routinely performed during the work-up after chemical syntheses and for the isolation of compounds and natural products like alkaloids and crude extracts. The product is largely free of natural and acidic or basic impurities. It is not possible to separate chemically similar acids or bases using this simple method.

So, if I read that correctly, then banana fish was synthesised using a basic method? So the people really didn't know what they were doing. Being somewhat glad about the information I had found out, I headed back to the apartment with my research in hands. When I got there, Ash had come out of the bathroom drying his hair and him and Eiji were bickering.

"Finally." Eiji said.

I couldn't tell if that was aimed at me for finally being home or aimed at Ash for finally waking up.

"When did you get up?" Ash asked Eiji.

"8:30." He replied.

"Low blood pressure? You're like a frail little girl." Eiji commented.

"The elderly get up early. Why don't you start early morning croquet?" Ash remarked.

"Avocado shrimp salad, huh?" Ash said, sitting down.

"Never tried it." I said, sitting down.

"Huh?! Where have you been?" Eiji asked.

"Out." I said.

I got a judgemental look from Eiji, so I sighed and explained.

"Out researching. I was in the library." I added.

"Somebody ate some." Ash commented, changing the topic back to his salad.

"Yeah, it was you." Eiji remarked.

"This is good. You'd make a good wife." Ash said, eating the salad.

"I agree." I add on.

"I've never heard of an American who hates hamburgers." Eiji says, turning sideways to read the paper.