Chapter 1133: Father and Son (53)_2

"What to gain?"

"You should be the most important person in someone's heart! Loki! Ask yourself!"

"Why are you always second best? Why is there always someone more important than you? Why doesn't anyone value you the most?" The tone of Old Loki sounds like the waves in the wind, each wave higher than the last.

"Why do you always want to be the person others see you as?"

Just one sentence was enough to calm the stormy sea.

As an older Loki looked at his younger self, his eyes filled with tears. He tried to lift the corners of his mouth into a smile, but he couldn't control it and instead, trembled as he spoke, "I always thought that if I had never left, maybe I would have already had everything I wanted, but I also understood that even if I hadn't left, I wouldn't have had …"

"Why do you want to be the person others see?" Loki repeated the question again, but this time, he was not asking the person in front of him.

"Loki, from the moment you were born, you were an orphan abandoned by the world, you were not supposed to exist. Only when they love and care about you do you feel less superfluous." Loki murmured softly.

Looking at old Loki, tears streaming down his face, Loki's tone became subdued, like a piece of music playing its final notes.

"But when someone says they love you, you think they're lying, because you know you're superfluous."

"When someone shows you their love with actions, you feel like you're not worthy, because you know you're superfluous."

"When will I reconcile with my existence?" In Loki's green eyes, a moist light shone like a jewel at the bottom of a spring. He suddenly shifted the person he was addressing, looking at old Loki and said,

"How much love do I need to receive to prove to myself that I deserve to exist? How many responses do I need to convince myself that I will always get a response..."

"...I don't know," Loki shook his head and said, "All greed in this world is essentially pessimism — if there is nothing now, it feels like there will be nothing in the future. If you can't always have, it feels like you never had."

Loki looked again at the hammer in his hand and said, "Even if you once had, you still complain about why it wasn't enough, why you can't always have, why others have what I don't have."

"Greed is a curse for all sentient beings, we endlessly demand from others but are never satisfied, hurting while loving."

Loki took a step forward and looked into old Loki's cloudy eyes, "And I, appear more composed than you, because, I've accepted it."

Loki gave a small smile that looked more like a cry.

He looked at old Loki and asked earnestly, "There have been many people who have shown me through their actions that the end of the road of greed is losing everything."

"Have I reconciled with myself? No. Have I given up on proving my existence? No. Has my illness cured? No. It's just that when I think about how I will lose everything, I accept it."

Old Loki's hand gripping the window frame tightened, blue veins popping. The frost on the window slowly melted where his finger touched.

Loki sighed deeply and said, "And you're not reconciled yet, because as long as you don't go back, you can assume that they will always exist. But will they really always exist?"

"Stop." Old Loki's Adam's apple bobbed fiercely. But Loki continued to speak rapidly, "You don't have to mix with a bunch of kids, and you are not incapable of leaving that desolate place..."

"It's just that you know that the end of the gods is inevitable, and you are powerless to change anything. But as long as you don't go back, the Asgard of your memory will stay beautiful and brilliant forever."

Old Loki, his face wet with tears, fell silent.

After a moment, he looked at Loki's youthful face, and then a smile broke onto his face. He began to speak,

"You're right, I remember everything about that place, every cloud, every drop of water, every dusk, every thunderstorm that swept from the sky."

"Perhaps, I can never return home, or perhaps, I never left my home." Old Loki said, laughing and crying at the same time.

When Loki looked at him, he saw in his eyes the unique mischievous and wicked smile of Loki.

"Perhaps, everything you said is right." Old Loki let his arms drop, standing under the reflective light of the snow. His voice was light-hearted when he said, "But you got one thing wrong."

"I can do nothing about the twilight of the gods? No, the twilight of the gods will never come..."

Old Loki stretched out his hand, and Loki slowly widened his eyes. For in his hand, a point of light had appeared.

The light slowly grew larger, emitting a soft glow. As the glow dissipated, a tiny speck of cold light revealed the endless cosmos.

Amid the cold light cast by the heavy snow, Loki's attention was drawn to the small universe. When he looked through the cosmic stars, he saw Asgard, just like in reality, experiencing a heavy snowfall.

Thor was leading his companions to frolic in the snow, Odin was surveying his fleet, and Frigga was using magic to restore the frozen fountain...

When he saw their eyes shimmering, Loki understood that this was not an illusion, not magic... this was a real universe.

But when Loki looked up at Old Loki again, he had disappeared. Even the traces left on the frost had vanished, as if he had never existed.

Fueled by instinct, Loki slowly reached out his hand and opened the window in front of him.

But outside the window was not the snow-covered Asgard, but a warm and cozy study.

An elder sat at the desk, and when the firelight from the fireplace hit his eyes, it was like the sunset casting its light on a verdant patch of moss.

He blinked sleepily, picked up his quill pen, and began to write an ending to a story.

But Loki was standing in front of the window, shouting at the empty, snowy landscape.

"Who are you?!"

The birds in the distance were startled, little black dots fluttering before falling like ashes. The wood in the fireplace was nearly burnt out.

The final word was written, but the author seemed to have more to say. So, he picked up his pen again and added a note to his recent favorite story.

And in the wind, Loki heard a voice like an illusion.

"Unfortunate one, don't seek your existence in others. The best proof of their existence is their beautiful and brilliant inner world."

"The roar of the angry is like a song, the tears of the sad are like a painting, the unfortunate should write their life of overcoming adversity and hardship into a wonderful story."

"Let go of your inferiority, wipe away your grudges, throw away all self-loathing, may the sword clank and the wind and thunder roars, wherever I look, there I will shout."

"If one day, I become a spark in the boiling furnace that forges others' iron will, then the sounds of emotions stirred by wonderful stories will treat strife as paper-thin, grab the throat of fate, and prove my existence."

"Who am I?"

"I am a child, a child who likes to listen to stories, and a father, the father of all stories."

I am...the God of Stories, Loki."