The Creatures That We Are-Chapter 1152: To Death

“Friend?” Dr. Jia frowned. “No, Green Gram wasn’t my friend. He was my assistant, or a student.”

“No, he was your friend,” Gregor said bluntly. “You just didn’t realize it.”

Dr. Jia fell into thought and took another sip of beer. “Whatever, I’ll keep going.”

There were times when Dr. Jia wondered why Green Gram did what he did. He didn’t make a good researcher, and his Talent didn’t increase his intelligence. Why would he stay as Dr. Jia’s caretaker and endure his temper? Was he a masochist?

Once, Dr. Jia got hit with a serious flu. He ended up bedridden for three days. Green Gram personally nursed him back to health.

Mind hazy from the fever, Dr. Jia asked Green Gram, “Why don’t you leave, you idiot?”

Green Gram said while squeezing a towel dry, all smile, “Because I admire you, Teacher. You’re a genius. You know so much.”

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“Whatever I know is in my head, not yours. What does that have to do with you?”

Green Gram laid the wet towel on Dr. Jia’s forehead. “Nothing to do with me, but it makes me happy thinking about how great the study you’re doing is, and how I’m able to witness it.”

Dr. Jia didn’t understand Green Gram at all, and he paid little mind to it.

After his recovery, Dr. Jia continued with his research, and Green Gram went back to being his assistant, caretaker, and punching bag.

A year passed like that. While Green Gram was mediocre in Talent and improved slowly, he did become better. One day, in a rare stroke of inspiration, he proposed a hypothesis and experiment.

Dr. Jia found the idea interesting, so he approved.

Encouraged, Green Gram devoted himself completely to the experiment. For the half month he had been entirely focused on his own thing, Dr. Jia’s quality of life suffered substantially.

“Did he succeed?” Gregor asked.

“No, he failed,” Dr. Jia said. “Then I improved his method for him, and he succeeded.”

“That makes it worse,” Gregor said with a grimace.

“Tsk, it was just a trivial thing. It was interesting, but quite useless. It didn’t matter if it failed or succeeded.” After a few seconds, Dr. Jia continued in an uncertain tone, “I only realized now that the failure might have hit him hard.”

Since that experiment, Green Gram stayed as assistant and caretaker, but he rarely asked questions and never proposed another idea—although most of his ideas seemed stupid to Dr. Jia.

Dr. Jia was too immersed in his studies to notice Green Gram’s change.

Then Green Gram made a mistake during a project, leading to the experiment failing. Two months worth of work was wasted. Enraged, Dr. Jia scolded Green Gram.

“I said, ‘Why are you so stupid? It’s better to have a parrot than to have you around. At least the parrot won’t mess things up for me, and it’ll be seeing me off when I die. But you? You can’t wait to kill me now by making me pop a vessel.’”

Dr. Jia glanced down at the beer can in his hand. “It was a little harsh, but I was furious. I still feel furious thinking about it now. Two months. My time is too precious to waste two months.”

“Harsh isn’t the main problem. You hit a nerve.”

“That so?”

“Yes.”

Dr. Jia sighed and brushed back his thinning hair, face creased in thoughts.

Dr. Jia gave Green Gram the cold shoulders for the next few days. Even when Green Gram transformed into an animal and bothered him, he refused to open his mouth. He shut himself in the laboratory twenty-four-seven.

Green Gram still delivered him food every day on the dot.

A week passed by. Dr. Jia looked at the results of the failed experiment and improved his method, greatly decreasing the time required for the next experiment. The sense of achievement calmed him from his anger. Then he belatedly realized that Green Gram hadn’t delivered him food for two days.

He walked out of his laboratory and searched through his home. Green Gram was gone.

“I did feel a little guilty then,” Dr. Jia said. “Of course, most blame still went to him.”

Gregor didn’t comment on that. He knew there was more to the story.

“I looked for him outside for two days. I gave up after I didn’t find him.” Dr. Jia took another drink of his beer. “I thought he might have become unaffiliated or joined one of the three major organizations. Or he might have gotten eaten by a monster. Who knew?”

“I continued with my research. I hired a caretaker, who wasn’t as considerate as Green Gram, but did the job. Still, I felt a little empty inside. Sometimes I would get suddenly distracted and hear things—animals’ sounds.”

“You missed Green Gram,” Gregor said.

“Yeah, a little.” Dr. Jia was surprisingly honest this time. “Perhaps you’re right. I did think of Green Gram as a friend. But I have a problematic personality that makes me unfit to make friends.”

Gregor eyed him for a moment. As expected of the Genius; he had an accurate perception of himself.

Dr. Jia continued, “After that, I went through two assistants. You know one of them, Hyena from Tails.”

“Hyena was a good assistant. He was smart and learned quickly. I didn’t have to worry about him. But after working for me for two years and learning from me, he ran off with many of my research materials.”

“I was mad, but not sad. I never thought about tracking him down to question him.” Dr. Jia shrugged. “I never sought an assistant since then.”

He glanced at Gregor. “I’m digressing, am I not?”

“Not really,” Gregor said. “It’s common in literature to use comparisons to emphasize the main cast’s uniqueness.”

“Ah, I take back what I said then. Writing literature isn’t entirely useless.”

Gregor chuckled. “Keep going, or you really will be digressing.”

“Right. Another six months passed. One day, I woke up to find a gray parrot outside my window.”

“Green Gram?” Gregor’s eyes lit up. That would be a dramatic twist.

“That was what I thought. I thought Green Gram had returned to me, but too embarrassed to just face me. So he turned into an animal to greet me first.”

Dr. Jia rubbed his nose. “But the parrot only mimicked me when I talked to it. I couldn’t communicate with it, and it never turned into a human. When I checked with an instrument for detecting awakeners, there was no response.”

“So it was just a parrot?” Gregor asked in confusion.

Dr. Jia said after two seconds, “Animals’ transformation could be permanent if the Talent user stayed as an animal for too long. They would remain in the state until their death.”

“So I didn’t know if it was Green Gram or just a parrot.” Dr. Jia shrugged. “Since it didn’t seem ready to leave and continue to look for food and water at my place, I kept it.”

Gregor was eager for more. “That’s how the story ends?”

Dr. Jia nodded. “Yeah.”

“Aren’t you curious if the parrot is Green Gram or not?”

“I was in the beginning, but not now.”

“Why?”

“There’s no reason. It no longer matters.” Dr. Jia huffed out a silent laugh. “Either way, one of us is going to see the other to their death.”