As Jack once again lay on a bed in Arkham Mental Hospital, Shiller gleefully said, "Realized where your permanent home is yet? Given the amount of money you've paid, I can get you some extra pain medications."
"Do you think I'm a junkie?" Jack yelled in frustration, "Don't lump me with those drug addicts!"
"Look on the bright side, at least you've got a permanent bed here. You've seen how much the mob bosses out there, who can't get in here, want a bed ."
At the mention of the word 'mob bosses', Jack displayed a disgusted expression. He muttered softly, "You and that bat are the same, he doesn't want to laugh, you don't want to go mad, you're all lying to yourselves..."
Staring at the ceiling, he kept rambling, "Why must you be so serious? Why won't you admit it? Why aren't you proud of your chaos and disorder?"
Suddenly, he calmed down and philosophically said, "In such a mediocre world, having a uniquely crazy soul should be a matter of pride."
"But you always confine such splendid souls in bodies repulsive in their mediocrity."
"Living each day so seriously, pretending to be just like those walking corpses, this really disgusts me..."
"Insanity isn't the only way to understand the world." Shiller also sat down, his tone calm, he said: "I've always believed this."
"If you can't be a sharp blade that uses madness to rupture the world's pretense, then you will be domesticated by those hypocritical orders."
Jack mumbled some complex words, as though sleep-talking, each word pausing in his mouth as if he didn't know them, yet each sentence so complete and fluent.
"Order breeds disorder. Without order, chaos would no longer be chaos. It would become order. When you destroy order, you are establishing a different order."
"Many people think the ultimate answer to this world is chaos, but the moment they think this way, they've been domesticated by order. There is no ultimate answer in this world."
"Is this why you and that bat would rather do nothing?" Jack looked at Shiller.
"I'm a little different from him." Shiller poured himself a glass of water and said, "Batman is a warrior who maintains order in chaos. But I'm just an ordinary person."
"Ordinary people..." Jack sneered at his statement.
"As for you, you see yourself as a savior, trying to tell everyone that only madness can unravel all truths. Especially Batman, the answers he seeks are very close, as easy as just laughing."
"But he understands this. He just doesn't want to do it."
"This is why I think he's mentally ill." A hint of jealousy suddenly emerged in Jack's tone, "He has what I don't have and what I've always wanted, the core of darkness and madness. Yet he just doesn't want to do it, he could be the great deity that tears apart this mediocre lie, yet he just won't laugh."
"This question echoes in my brain every day, making me feel confused and mad."
"Why are they so serious?"
Shiller shrugged and said, "Everyone is deceiving themselves. Only you tell the truth. Everyone else keeps a straight face, while only you laugh out loud. Hence, you're the only clown."
Jack stared at the ceiling and said, "When laughter is about to burst out of their mouths, their first reaction is fear, resistance, reflection. This is what being mad is+"
"Being a clown must be very enjoyable, because there's nothing in this world that you can't laugh at. You want them to know how happy you are, but it's a shame that nobody gets you."
"I've always thought that the ones who dress up like bats are the crazy ones," Jack looked at Shiller, "... and also those who pretend to be ordinary."
The night descended slowly over Gotham outside the window, and the city lights started twinkling. After the weather warmed up, the entire city began to renew its vitality, still carrying a hint of madness and evil, still chaotic, still bustling.
The next morning, Shiller in his office, he took a paintbrush, Brand nearby, somewhat reluctantly took off his gloves covered in paint. Shiller said to him, "I'm quite certain, this run-down hospital needs a complete renovation."
Pointing at a corner of the wall, he said, "If it wasn't for that madman's graffiti ruining my walls, I wouldn't have noticed the cracks in the bricks there, they might collapse one day."
Brand sighed, "You make a good point, but we need a long-term plan for this. We can't just tell the patients that we're starting renovations tomorrow and tell them to get lost, can we?"
Looking up at the corner of the ceiling, he says, "Anyway, for now, we'll just have to do it ourselves."
"You just can't bear to lose the revenue from those few days," Shiller said with a laugh. "If we have to renovate for two months and there's no commission to collect during that time, that would be a big loss, right?"
Brand touched his nose and muttered under his breath, "It's all because of your damn mob industry chain. I didn't realize money was so easy to earn in my entire life. If work stops for two months, how much would I lose?"