...
My mother's features are as beautiful as I remember from my childhood. I have inherited her beauty in appearance, and my eyes are especially like hers.
My mother lay there, seemingly asleep, with long eyelashes above her eyelids and smooth skin. I don't know how many times I remember those eyes gazing at me with such tenderness.
Chen Xiao knelt before the bed, reached out and touched his mother's cheek, then his expression suddenly changed, and he turned his head: "She...she...why..."
He didn't utter the word "death" at the last minute, but hesitated for a moment: "...Why are there no signs of life!"
Yes, there was no heartbeat, no breathing, and not even any fluctuation of mental consciousness.
The woman lying on the bed looked as if she were dead.
JOKER stood at the door, a hint of sadness in his expression: "This... was her own decision."
Chen Xiao frowned: "What are you talking about?"
JOKER's expression was slightly gloomy: "Don't you understand? She asked to 'die,' she doesn't want to 'come back to life'!"
He was smiling, but the smile was bitter: "After she first burned down the entire lab, I quickly brought her back to life. I even made her look younger and more beautiful through material restoration, but when she woke up, she had already changed..."
"How has it changed?" Chen Xiao asked anxiously.
“Child, your mother…she hates me.”
When JOKER uttered the word "hate," even Chen Xiao could feel the deep sorrow in his tone.
“When she woke up, I told her that I had saved her life and that no matter how she died, I had a way to bring her back to life. Her reaction surprised me. She didn’t seem very excited, didn’t shout or yell, didn’t even scold me, and didn’t shed tears. Instead, her eyes were filled with deep despair. She only asked me one question: ‘Why did you save me?’”
JOKRE looked at Chen Xiao, his tone strained: "How do you think I should answer? Should I, like all husbands in the world, say to your mother, my wife, 'Because I love you, I want to save you!'"
Then she glanced at me, and the look in her eyes made me feel as if she were already dead.
She looked at me and said, "But I don't love you anymore, I hate you!"
There was no commotion, just a calm, quiet sentence.
As JOKER said this, a smile suddenly appeared on his face, but it was a smile full of sorrow.
“I can bring her back to life, no matter how she died, even if she was shattered to pieces, I have a way to restore her to her original state. I can even make her look like she was at the most beautiful and youngest age of eighteen. I can do it all!! But after she comes back to life, she doesn’t love me anymore, she hates me! That… I can’t do anything about it.”
JOKER's eyes gradually turned cruel: "Remember just now, outside, Prince mocked me, saying, 'Isn't God omnipotent?' What was my answer?"
Yes, that's right. God isn't omnipotent either. At least, I can't make your mother love me again, and I can't make her stop hating me.
I... can control my life! But I can't control my emotions!!
JOKER's breathing suddenly became rapid. At this moment, he looked somewhat weak. He gently pressed his heart, as if he were laughing or crying at the same time.
"You know what the most absurd thing is? I can't make her love me, and what's even more painful is that I can't even stop loving her myself!!! If I could stop loving her, then I wouldn't be in pain! But that's exactly what I can't do either!!"
And so, I, a god! I cannot make the woman I love love me back!! Hahahaha, my child, don't you think that's a brilliant irony?
His smile grew increasingly cruel and bizarre. Finally, this "god" reached out and leaned against the wall, looking at Chen Xiao with a cruel glint in his eyes:
"Now, let's go back to the first question I asked you when we entered 'home,' my child—what do you think love is?"
“If there is a mountain in front of me, I can wave at it and shout ‘Go away!’ and then I can easily move it away; if there is a sea, I can raise my arms at it and shout ‘Part!’ and then I can make the seawater part, just like Moses parted the Red Sea when he crossed Egypt in the legend.”
However, when facing someone, you can't just shout "I love you" to her and expect her to love you back—I can't do that. I can't cut out her heart and carve my name on it.
Even when I'm in pain, I can't make myself happy—I can control my heartbeat, its frequency and speed, I can even control my breathing and blood flow, but I can't control my feelings. Happy? Or unhappy? How can I control that?!
Let me tell you what love is, Chen Xiao!
I once mocked a certain phrase. Back then, when I let Mingyue down, Lao Tian came knocking on my door, brandishing a knife, staring at me with such hatred and malice, questioning me. I once laughed at him, and I once didn't take him seriously.
When Lao Tian took Mingyue to various places to relax and spent several years by her side with a devoted heart, I couldn't understand it at first.
I work in research—biology, genes, heredity…and so on. I used to think that so-called 'love' was nothing more than 'dopamine' secreted in the brain, a chemical that helps cells transmit impulses. This neurotransmitter is mainly responsible for the brain's desires and feelings, transmitting information about excitement and happiness. Love is actually the result of a large amount of dopamine being produced in the brain.
I used to think that all I needed to feel was a dose of dopamine—trying to explain everything with simple, cold logic or technical terms. I didn't feel any sense of sacred reverence for the word 'love'.
But later, I realized I was wrong—it started when my mother was completely disappointed in me, stopped loving me, and even began to hate me.
When I saved your mother's life, she looked at me with such indifferent and cold eyes, so quiet it was almost cruel. She said she didn't love me, she hated me.
Do you know what I did?
I'm trying to make her love me!
Yes, so-called 'love' is just a chemical component secreted by the human brain. Besides, I can control everything now—time, space, matter—everything is under my control.
I could easily manipulate her body, even interfere with her brain signals to stimulate her brain to secrete a certain amount of dopamine, stimulate her lust, stimulate her excitement, stimulate her emotions. I once thought this was love. But for a scientist and a chemist, the essence of love is nothing more than this pale and pitiful.
But I was wrong.
I did everything I could, injecting what I thought was a 'love chemistry' into your mother. But after I finished, she still looked at me coldly and told me, 'Do you really think you're a god? You can't control my heart, no, you can't control anyone's heart, not even your own!'
At that time, I was very angry, very frustrated, and in my emotional state, I became increasingly extreme.
But later, or rather now, I finally understand that your mother was absolutely right.
I can control everything, but I can't control people's hearts! Neither other people's hearts nor my own. I can't command your mother to love me, I can't even command my own heart not to ache.
Not only that, I can't even control my own desires and my own obsessions!
My ridiculous sense of mission, my ridiculous attempt to guide humanity's 'great mission,' my ridiculous ambition—aren't these exactly what's in my heart? I can't even control these things, I can't control my ambition and aspirations, which lead me to do one thing after another.