Schiller found Lionel still wearing a gloomy expression when he arrived in the reception room. Schiller sat down across from him, picked up the cigar box from the table, took out a cigar, then picked up the cigar cutter and began trimming it unhurriedly.
Seeing what he was doing, Lionel was about to say something when Schiller said, "I've always been a friendly person. Very few people look at me with such hostility."
"I know what you're thinking..." Schiller did not look Lionel in the eyes. He merely went on, "With that imagination-starved brain of yours, you spend day and night fantasizing about the praise geniuses have received..."
"In your fantasies, people like me should have been called geniuses since childhood, gotten into the best universities without effort, casually earned several doctorates, and sailed smoothly down the academic path until we became world-famous..."
"Then, when people asked how I did it all, I would put on airs and answer that it was all because of hard work, that anyone could do it..."
"I imagine you've seen plenty of interviews like that on television. Even if I wasn't the subject, whenever you heard those words, you felt such hatred inside..."
"Because you tried, but you couldn't do it. You think those people are all liars, merely luckier than you, gifted with greater talent, and therefore able to obtain everything so easily."
"You envy every person like that. You envy them so much you're nearly mad. That includes your son. You abused him mentally and physically, hoping to turn him into a puppet that would only act on your orders."
"I imagine that when I said your son Lex might not have autism, your feelings were quite complicated."
"You were afraid—afraid that it was all an act. Yet you were unwilling to