Chapter 5588 (Five Thousand Five Hundred and Eighty-Eight)

The Gray Hand Man asked, “Have you thought of anything else?”

The Brown-Handed Man said, “What I am thinking is that even if my thoughts coincide with what I cannot refuse, it does not mean that I am not passive at all.”

The Gray Hand Man said, “It seems that this matter is difficult to explain immediately?”

The brown-handed man said, “I can’t figure it out for now. Maybe I can figure it out after I learn more about it?”

“Can we really distinguish which habits are active and which are passive?” Gray Hand said, “I mean people like us in this environment.”

The Brown-Handed Man said, “I find it increasingly difficult to make a clear distinction. For example, when I say I hope to keep a certain habit in the future, it sounds like I am actively choosing it. But in this environment, why would I want to keep a certain habit in the future? Do I really have a choice? Is there a way for me to not want to keep that habit?”

The Gray Hand said, “Now that you mention it, I’ve been thinking about this, too. For people like us, what is active and what is passive? Could it be that even the things I take the initiative to do are forced upon me by some force? In other words, in this environment, there is some force driving everything, making me want this and that, but I thought that those were all my own active choices?”

The brown-handed man said, “It sounds scary.”

Gray Hand Man said: “Aren’t we always in this terrible environment? Listen to the ticking sound coming from his abdomen, which is getting louder and louder. Compared with what we are thinking, which one is more terrible?”

“How can they be compared?” said the brown-handed man. “They are both terrible, each in its own way.”

The gray-handed man said, “It’s not that I have to compare anything. In fact, I just want to say that in our current situation, there is no scariest thing, only scarier things.” The brown-handed man said, “Scary? You keep saying scary things over and over again?”

“Not like my usual self, am I?” asked the Gray Hand Man.

“Yes.” The brown-handed man said, “You usually say some things are terrible, but you don’t say them so often. You even seem unwilling to say anything terrible in front of me. Is that right?”

“Yes,” said the Gray Hand, “you noticed before that I was reluctant to say anything terrible in front of you.”

The brown-handed man said, “Although it’s not very obvious, I can still feel it a little bit. I just said I was talking about you. If you think about it carefully, I have actually said ‘terrible’ more than once! Can you usually feel that I don’t want to say anything terrible in front of you?”

Gray Hand Man said: “I usually feel something, but I don’t know if it’s my illusion, so I’m not sure. Sometimes I think it’s not an illusion.”

The brown-handed man said, “That is indeed not your illusion. I just didn’t want to say anything scary in front of you.”

“In the past, the reason why you didn’t want to do it was similar to the reason why I didn’t want to do it?” asked the man with gray hands.

The brown-handed man said, “I feel that it may be similar. My reason is this. Whoever doesn’t want to see me say something terrible, I naturally won’t say it in front of him. Sometimes when he is not present, I will worry that if I say something terrible in front of you, it will be disadvantageous to me.”

(End of this chapter)