Natasha's blinking becomes slightly more frequent, but she still controls herself and doesn't turn around, silently staying where she is.
"Their purpose was to train me into a killing machine capable of causing chaos, so even if I possess extraordinary talent, I still inevitably had to undergo some professional agent training,"
Shiller's voice begins to grow more and more distant, echoing as if from the edge of the horizon.
"One particular training intrigued me, it was during this training that I discovered that my perception of pain is different from others."
Natasha, as if she knew what he was about to say, subtly swallowed, her neck muscles subtly twitching accordingly.
"Pain reflex is a person's most basic reflex, derived from our body's self-protection mechanism. Pain is a warning of danger, not just from external threat, but also for internal ones,"
"If a person's arm is bitten by a beast, they would instinctively retract their arm and run. If a person's stomach aches and experiences diarrhea, they would know that they might have eaten something bad and promptly adjust their diet to avoid being poisoned. To some extent, during human evolution, those who are more sensitive to pain, tend to survive."
"But if you need a killing machine rather than a person, the pain reflex is unnecessary and needs to be artificially selected and discarded."
Shiller sighs softly, lowering his head to say, "My pain reflex is naturally weak, it's more on the psychological side and seems to partially shield the impact of the painful sensation."
"I can see that," murmurs Natasha, "I slashed your arm, but your first reaction was to think, not to recoil due to pain."
"Although I took this into consideration before I acted, I didn't expect you to be so extreme, you're not a professional agent," complains Natasha.
"So, aren't you, a professional agent, even more extreme, ma'am?"
"Alright, you're just trying to pry my mouth open," Natasha swings her head in annoyance and admits, "Yes, probably even more extreme than you'd think, I have absolutely no pain reflex."
The two fall silent. Shiller is shocked by this revelation and doesn't speak. Natasha waits for him to say something but when it doesn't come, she decides to not waste any more time and continues.
"As you said, it was the grueling years of training that eradicated this instinct from me. Even if I have only one breath left, I can still aim and shoot much more steadily than an average person. My gun skills are still very precise."
"The three bullet holes in my chest are in agreement, ma'am."
Natasha, however, shakes her head and says, "No, there shouldn't have been three holes. Under usual circumstances, you would've been killed by a single bullet."
"Even if you were on the brink of death?"
"Even if I were already dead," Natasha turns her head towards Shiller, "the muscle reflexes in my fingers would pull the trigger at the last moment."
Shiller falls silent again, then says, "When people are in pain, they often pray, hoping that a divine power might be able to alleviate their sufferings. But the structure of human emotions is far more complex than we can imagine. If there is no pain, there is no joy."
"The souls of people are like a tree, the part that grows on the surface represents various beautiful emotions, while the part buried underground represents the pains or morbidities they do not want to bring up."
"If the roots underground are rashly eliminated or completely separated from the upper part, the result would be that the joy, happiness, and other positive emotions in the upper part would also gradually wither, turning the whole tree into rotting wood."
"We often hear of those who die at thirty but weren't buried until they were seventy. It's not rare that such people resolve their emotional turmoil, not because they have achieved what they are extremely longing for, but because they no longer have such intense emotions to want."
"Some people call this state as seeing through the reality of the world, or a state of stability and tranquility, but to reiterate, I prefer to call it 'numbness'."
Natasha listens in silence, not uttering a single word. Then, she turns to look at Shiller, his silhouette in the mellow light from the church's stained glass windows becoming blurred, like the silhouette of mountains against the dawn.
"You've already got all the answers you were looking for," Shiller turns to Natasha, "Nick, Erik, Odin, Hela, you're all the same. You're not patients suffering from mental illnesses but are more stable than anyone else. You've found all your ways out of your troubles and confusions, but the zeal in your peaceful lives is gone."
"However, ma'am, your more serious problem is that the trauma from the pain removal training hasn't disappeared. It's constantly affecting you, your numbness is still continuously growing, and one day, it will drain all the nutrients from the tree on the ground, turning you into a walking corpse."
Natasha remains expressionless and silent for a while, then asks, "How do you know this?"
"I've experienced it myself." Shiller leans back a bit further, exhaling deeply, "All my life, I've been trying to balance between morbidity and normality. I used to not restrain my morbidity, which led me to madness. The doctor sealed off my morbidity which made me fall into the numbness of powerless joy. My high tower and abyss are gradually perfected in this process of self-conflict."
Natasha swallows, she had never imagined that Shiller would dissect himself so deeply in front of her, and the female agent had never thought there would be something in this world that she would need to muster all her courage to do.
It was not something difficult, but it was harder than anything else in the world, that was, to open her heart and to honestly and truly describe her own feelings.
"When you... when you dissected me like a fish, I sensed an unparalleled burst of intense emotions exploding in my mind. I think it was fear, but I thought it was impossible at that time, for I thought I had evolved this emotion out of me."
Natasha laughs lightly, jesting, "Then there was surprise, as I felt pain, which I hadn't experienced for many years. The training I had undertaken had made me entirely immune to pain reflex."
"It's not that I don't feel the pain, it's just that once the pain is transmitted to the brain, the reflex nerves cannot work. I can control all of my muscle movements with my rational mind, with no abnormal parts."
"This is my secret to the high success rate of missions. All those targets that wanted to give me injury for an injury ended up here earlier than me, they've been waiting for me in Hell."