Chapter 181 Arkham Daily Life (Part 1)

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"Name?"

"Philip Best."

"Okay, Jack."

The Joker lay on the hospital bed, while Schiller stood beside the bed with the medical record in his hand. He said, "You better hurry up and bring out your psychologist persona, describe your symptoms, otherwise, I will just make something up."

"Untie my right hand, I want a cigarette." Jack shook his hair and said, Schiller walked over and untied Jack's right hand that was tied to the side of the bed. Jack made a gun gesture with his hand and aimed at Schiller.

Schiller went to get a chair and sat down beside his bed. Then he took out a tape recorder and a blank cassette from the cabinet. He put the cassette into the tape recorder and pressed the record button.

"Okay, tell me about your life."

Jack sneered and glanced at the tape recorder, then at Schiller. He said, "My name is Philip Best, I am a truck driver who works for the Anta gang..."

Jack rambled on about his mortgage, car loan, weekend grocery shopping, and his neighbor's house catching fire, and so on.

Schiller pressed the pause button on the tape recorder and said, "Okay, next."

Jack looked at him, and they stared at each other for a while. Schiller said, "What are you looking at me for? Hurry up and make up another story, I need it."

Jack tilted his head and rolled his eyes, imitating Schiller's tone of voice and muttered a few words. Then he made up another origin story for himself.

After Schiller let the Joker make up more than ten origin stories, he took the cassette off the tape recorder, satisfied. As the saying goes, garbage is a resource in the wrong place. The origin stories that Joker created for himself were not only realistic and reasonable, but also rich in details and vivid. As long as the background was changed a bit, it could be used as a richly-designed fake identity.

However, Schiller did not forget that he was at the Marvel's Arkham Sanatorium, where there were also many agents he had planted. This fake identity would come in handy.

Jack turned his body to look at Schiller and stared at him with wide eyes. He said, "You know, I hate two kinds of people the most, one is too ordinary, the other is someone who looks like me."

"And you, you are obviously someone who looks like me, but you strive to be an ordinary person. But the most professional psychology master, Jack, tells you that you can't do it, hahaha!"

After he finished laughing, Schiller hit Jack's injured hand with the spine of the notebook. Jack screamed in pain, then burst into a series of even more insane laughter. He said, "You got me! You hit a nerve! You can never be an ordinary person, hahaha!"

Schiller took a deep breath and said, "After today's consultation is over, you will go to a normal hospital room. Do you know how precious the beds here are? Don't waste my time and money."

"Money? Hahaha!" Jack laughed even harder, causing the hospital bed to tremble. After a while, he choked on his laughter and started coughing frantically. Then he reached out to Schiller and said, "Water, please."

Schiller didn't give him any, and he didn't mind. Instead, he stopped laughing and lay on the bed panting. He said, "That joke was funny, right? If there was a movie theater where you could actually buy tickets with popcorn, I would buy a whole week's worth of tickets and watch all the movies I haven't finished."

Suddenly, he became profound again and sighed, "It's ridiculous that people pursue money, isn't it? 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 all over. "The most ridiculous thing is that a madman knows that money is popcorn, but he still pursues it, hahaha..."

"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, hahaha..."

He noticed that Schiller was looking at him in silence. Jack grinned and said, "Why so serious? You were laughing so happily before in the theater, weren't you?"

"Because the reason why hell jokes are funny is because it's someone else's hell." Schiller stood up again and said, "Watching Batman is certainly fun, don't you think?"

Jack wiped away his tears with the hand that was released, acting less crazy than he was in the theater, but even more bizarre.

"To be honest, I didn't expect you guys to be so enthusiastic. I really love it here!"

"You should thank the Court of Owls. Their continuous rain has influenced the residents here, even if they didn't get wet, they still breathe in the moisture in the air, so everyone is a bit crazy."

"I know, of course I know... why else would I reveal my plan on TV? I know there will be people coming, a group of annoying people..." Jack was gritting his teeth one second and then speaking in a humble tone the next. "Oh, no, I mean, the esteemed audience, who will certainly come to see the comedy show brought by this poor clown..."

"Except for Batman, he doesn't want to come, but I forced him to come."

"That's what I hate about the Court of Owls. They created a rain that can drive people crazy, but it only has no effect on Batman. Those fools." Jack said fiercely.

"You're lying again. If that rain really worked on Batman, the Court of Owls would be a thousand times worse off than they are now." He said.

Jack puckered his lips and whistled a few times, as if to cover up his lie. He shifted his body and leaned against the pillow, saying as if he had found a kindred spirit, "You see, you feel the same way, right? Batman is actually a madman, but he doesn't admit it. If there were any external factors that drove him crazy, it would be too boring."

"You know, during yesterday's performance, did he really want to laugh?" Jack blinked his eyes, and his hazy eyes were full of longing, his tone becoming excited again. "I've hidden in the alley and watched him several times, watching him break the hands and feet of those robbers."

"But he's too serious." Jack complained, "Can't he be happy? Listening to the cries of those robbers, listening to the Criminals he hates and loathes beg for mercy in his hands, how could he not be happy? Since he's happy, why not laugh?"

Whenever Batman was mentioned, Jack couldn't stop talking. But Schiller wasn't interested in his crazy talk. He tapped the side of his notebook with his pen and said, "I also have two types of people I hate the most. One is the person who causes me trouble, and the other is the one who, after causing trouble, still stands tall and confident."

Before Jack could say anything, Schiller continued, "It seems that we are exactly the kind of people we hate the most. Since we despise each other, let's not interact too much. Move to the next hospital room tomorrow and live with Copperpot."

Jack snorted through his nose and said, "You're quite the people-person."

The next day at noon, Schiller had just returned from the cafeteria when he saw Jack squatting at the door of the hospital room, crying. He leaned against the door frame, covering his face, crying very sadly.

Schiller walked past him without looking, but Jack grabbed his white coat and said, "Oh my god! How can there be such boring people in this world? How could you arrange for me to share a hospital room with him?"

He grabbed Schiller's white coat with one hand and wiped away non-existent tears with the other, saying, "He just told me a joke, but even this joke was extremely boring."

"He actually said he wanted to open a restaurant, you know? And then he even wanted to put an iceberg in the restaurant. Oh my god..."

"I always thought it was crazy to dress up as a bat, but there are people who want to dress up as a penguin, a penguin, hahaha!"

"Doctor, they're all crazy, you have to save me!" Jack started trembling all over. "I don't want to be with these crazy people!"

Schiller bent down, grabbed his wrist, and pulled his hand off his clothes. He bent down and said to Jack, "First of all, this is a mental hospital. If neither you nor him is crazy, then you wouldn't be here."

"Secondly, it's not time for you to run out of the hospital room. If you dare to do it again, I'll have Batman expelled from Gotham University and make him go to Metropolis to study books. You'll never see him again."

Jack quickly got up and ran to the hospital bed with a cigarette in his mouth. He also covered himself with the blanket and hummed a lullaby, saying, "Little Jack is going to sleep now, hmm hmm hmm... Let's sing a lullaby..."

While pretending to close one eye and sleep, he secretly opened the other eye to sneak a peek at Schiller's reaction.

Copperpot sighed deeply and looked at Schiller by the door, saying, "Doctor, I suggest you move him to the next hospital room."

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

"More importantly, if this lunatic stays any longer, I'm going to beat him up."

"Okay, he'll go live with Evans tomorrow."

The next day, Schiller came back from lunch and found that Jack had somehow climbed to the high observation window on the wall. He sat on the window, clumsily moving his body, as if trying to climb out.

Before Schiller could ask what was going on, he heard Evans yelling from inside, "You actually like those musical comedies!! And you insulted classicism!! I really misjudged you. Those new operas are a complete blasphemy to opera!!"

"You're the crazy one!" Jack shouted, waving his fists while sitting on the observation window. "Those baroque operas are all outdated stuff! Verdi is completely garbage! They don't understand humor at all!"

As he spoke, he shook his head and sang a few lines, his dry voice and strange singing style full of emotion, without any skill.

He was spitting and spraying the names of the masters of Baroque opera and classical opera all over the place from the high observation window, while Evans was so angry that he threw a pillow at him.

Say what you will, Evans was still quite strong. He stood below and fiercely hit Jack's face with a pillow. Jack's arm was already injured and he couldn't hold onto the wall, so he fell outside the hospital room and landed in front of Schiller.

He was still angry and wanted to climb back into the hospital room to continue arguing with Evans. Schiller grabbed his clothes and said, "Do you want to go back and get beaten up? Do you really think you can beat him?"

Jack was furious and shouted, "He doesn't know anything about music, that fool! Classical opera is just a bunch of whining. Can you imagine that there are still old fuddy-duddies who like that stuff? Only musicals and operettas are interesting!"

Evans leaned against the door frame and shouted, "You're the one without taste! You damn lunatic!"

"You're the lunatic!"

Schiller stood by silently, unable to respond, partly because he didn't understand opera and partly because he didn't understand lunatics.

[ShaneFreak: Joker-Jack Napier]

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