Chapter 186: Arkham Daily Life (Part 1)

"Name?"

"Philip Best."

"Alright, Jack."

The Joker lay on the hospital bed, and Shiler stood by the bedside holding a medical chart. He said, "You'd better call out that psychologist personality of yours quickly and describe your symptoms, otherwise I'm just going to write nonsense."

"Untie my right hand; I want a smoke," Jack said, flicking his hair. Shiler walked up and untied his right hand from the bed rail. Jack made a gun gesture with his hand and aimed it at Shiler.

Shiler went to fetch a chair, sat down next to the hospital bed, and pulled a tape recorder and a blank cassette from the cabinet. He inserted the tape into the recorder and pressed the record button.

"Alright, tell me about your life."

Jack curled his lip, glanced at the recorder, then looked at Shiler and said, "My name is Philip Best, and I'm a truck driver working for the Anta Gang..."

Jack rambled on about a long list of things, such as his mortgage and car payments, his weekend trips to the supermarket to stock up on supplies, and his neighbor's house catching fire.

Shiler pressed the recorder and said, "Fine, next."

Jack looked at him, and he looked at Jack. The two stared at each other for a long time. Shiler said to him, "What are you looking at me for? Hurry up and make up another one; I have a use for it."

Jack tilted his head back, shook it, rolled his eyes, mimicked Shiler's tone for a few sentences, and then made up another origin story for himself.

Just like that, after Shiler had the Joker make up over a dozen origin stories, he took the tape off the recorder with satisfaction.

It was the same old saying: trash is just a resource in the wrong place. The origin stories the Joker crafted for himself were not only realistic and logical but also rich in detail and quite vivid. As long as the historical background was changed, they could perfectly serve as fake identities with rich character settings.

Shiler hadn't forgotten that he still had quite a few agents planted in the Arkham Asylum in the Marvel universe; these fake identities would come in handy.

Jack turned his body to the side, stretched his head to look at Shiler, his eyes wide open. He said, "You know what? I hate two types of people the most: those who are too ordinary, and those who are too much like me."

"And you, you are clearly someone who is very much like me, yet you pursue being an ordinary person. But Jack, the world's most professional master of psychology, tells you that you can't do it. Hahahahahaha!"

Before he could finish laughing, Shiler struck his injured hand with the spine of the notebook. Jack let out a cry of pain, then emitted a series of even crazier laughs. He said, "You were hit by what I said! You were poked in the sore spot! You will never be able to be an ordinary person, hahahahahaha!"

Shiler took a deep breath and said, "After today's consultation, you can get yourself to the general ward. Do you know how precious the beds here are? Stop wasting my time making money."

"Money? Hahahahahaha!" Jack laughed even harder, the hospital bed beginning to tremble from his laughter. After a while, he choked and began to cough violently, then reached out to Shiler and said, "Water, please."

Shiler didn't hand it to him, and he didn't mind. Instead, he stopped laughing and lay limp on the bed, panting. He said, "That joke was funny, right? If there were a movie theater where you could really buy tickets with popcorn, I would definitely buy tickets for a whole week straight and finish all the movies I haven't seen."

Suddenly, he became profound again, sighed, and said, "They pursue money; it's ridiculous, right? What's even more ridiculous is that the money they pursue is no different from popcorn..."

"And the most ridiculous thing is, hahaha..." He started laughing again, shaking his whole body. "The most ridiculous thing is that there's a madman who knows that money is just popcorn, yet he still pursues it, hahahahaha..."

"Why? Because he's crazy! He thinks... he actually thinks that as long as he pursues fame and fortune like an ordinary person, he can become an ordinary person, hahahahahaha..."

He noticed Shiler watching him in silence. Jack curled his lips and said, "Why so serious? Back at the theater, didn't you laugh quite happily?"

"Because, the reason hell jokes are funny is that it's someone else's hell." Shiler stood up again and said, "Watching Batman's fun is certainly very interesting, and you think so too, right?"

Jack wiped away the tears of laughter with his freed hand. He didn't appear as crazy as he did in the theater; instead, he seemed quite normal, yet even more eerie.

"Seriously, I didn't expect you all to be so supportive. I really love this place!"

"You should thank the Court of Owls. The continuous heavy rain they brought has more or less affected the residents here, and that includes all the residents. Even if they don't get rained on, they inevitably inhale the moisture in the air when they breathe, so everyone is a bit crazy."

"I know, of course I know... otherwise why would I announce my plan on television? I knew someone would come, a group of annoying people..." Jack was gnashing his teeth one second, and the next, he used a humble tone: "Oh, no, it's the noble audience members. Someone will surely grace us with their presence to watch the comedy performance brought by this poor Joker..."

"Except for Batman. He didn't want to come; I was the one who insisted on bringing him there."

"This is exactly what I hate most about the Court of Owls. They created a kind of rain that makes people crazy, but this rain is uniquely ineffective against Batman. They are a bunch of idiots," Jack said viciously.

"You're lying again. If this rain were truly effective against Batman, the Court of Owls would be a thousand times more miserable than they are now."

Jack pursed his lips and whistled twice, as if to cover up his lying behavior. He shifted his body to lean against the pillow and said, as if he had found a kindred spirit, "Look, you think so too, right? Batman is actually a madman by nature, but he won't admit it. If there were some external factor that made him crazy, it would be too boring."

"Tell me, during yesterday's performance, did he really want to laugh?" Jack blinked, his somewhat murky eyes filled with longing, his tone becoming excited again. "I've hidden in the alleys and secretly watched him several times, watching him break the limbs of those robbers."

"But he is just too serious," Jack complained. "Can't he be a little happier? Listening to the wails of those robbers, listening to the criminals he hates and despises most begging for mercy in his hands, how could he not be happy? Since he's happy, why doesn't he laugh?"

Whenever Batman was mentioned, Jack would go on and on. Shiler had no interest in listening to his crazy talk. He tapped the side of his notebook with his pen and said, "I also have two types of people I hate most: those who cause me trouble, and those who are self-righteous after causing trouble."

Before Jack could say anything, Shiler continued, "It seems we are exactly the type of people the other hates most. Since we are both sick of looking at each other, let's have less contact. Tomorrow, you move to the next ward and live with Cobblepot."

Jack let out a snort from his nose and said, "You copycat."

The next day at noon, just after Shiler returned from lunch at the cafeteria, he found Jack squatting at the door of the ward, crying. He was leaning against the door frame, covering his face, crying very sadly.

Shiler walked past him without looking sideways. Jack grabbed his white coat and said, "My God! How can there be such a boring person in this world? How could you arrange for me to be in the same ward as him?"

He grabbed Shiler's white coat with one hand and wouldn't let go, while wiping away non-existent tears with the other, saying, "He just told me a joke, but even that joke was extremely boring."

"He actually said he wanted to open a restaurant, you know? And then he actually wanted to put an iceberg in the restaurant. My God..."

"I always thought dressing up as a bat was perverted enough, but someone actually wants to dress up as a penguin. A penguin, hahahahahaha!"

"Doctor, they are all crazy. You have to save me!" Jack began to tremble all over. "I don't want to stay with this bunch of lunatics!"

Shiler bent down, grabbed his wrist, and pulled his hand off his clothes. He bent over and said to Jack, "First of all, this is a psychiatric hospital. If either you or he weren't crazy, you wouldn't be here."

"Secondly, this is not recreation time. If you dare to run out of the ward again, I will have Batman expelled from Gotham University and let him go to Metropolis to study, and you will never see him again."

Jack scrambled up nimbly and slid into the hospital bed to lie down, covering himself with the quilt by the way. He hummed a song and said, "Little Jack is going to sleep obediently, hum hum hum... sing a lullaby..."

He closed one eye while pretending to be asleep, while the other eye secretly opened to peek at Shiler's reaction.

Cobblepot, next to him, sighed deeply. He looked at Shiler at the door and said, "Doctor, I suggest you move him to the next ward."

He pointed to the wall behind him with his thumb and said, "Yin Wensi must have a lot in common with him."

"More importantly, if this madman stays any longer, I will definitely beat him up."

"Fine, tomorrow he can go live with Yin Wensi."

The next day, Shiler returned from lunch again at noon and found that Jack had somehow climbed onto the observation window high up on the wall. He was straddling the observation window, moving his body clumsily, as if trying to climb out.

Before Shiler could ask what was going on, Yin Wensi's roar came from inside: "You actually like those musical comedies!! And you actually insult classicism!! I really misjudged you. Those new operas are a complete desecration of opera!!"

"You're the one who's crazy!" Jack, straddling the observation window, waved his fists and shouted: "Those Baroque operas are old-fashioned junk! Monteverdi is complete trash! They don't understand humor at all!"

As he spoke, he shook his head and mimicked a few singing styles. That dry voice combined with the strange singing method was all emotion and not a bit of technique.

High up in the observation window, he sprayed saliva everywhere as he berated the masters of Baroque opera and classical opera, making Yin Wensi so angry that he threw a pillow at him.

If nothing else, Yin Wensi's strength was quite good. He stood below and slammed a pillow hard into Jack's face. Jack already had an injured arm and couldn't hold onto the wall, so he fell directly outside the ward and landed in front of Shiler.

He was still very angry and wanted to climb up to rush back into the ward to continue arguing with Yin Wensi. Shiler grabbed his clothes and said, "Do you want to go back and get beaten up? You don't really think you can beat him, do you?"

Jack was furious. He said loudly, "He doesn't understand music at all, that idiot! Classical opera is just moaning without an illness. Can you imagine? There are still old fogies who like those things now. Only comic opera and musicals are interesting!"

Yin Wensi leaned his upper body out of the door frame and said loudly, "The one without taste is you! You damn madman!"

"You're the madman!"

Shiler stood by, speechless. One reason was that he didn't understand opera very well, and the other was that he didn't understand madmen very well either. ===== CHAPTER 187 =====