Hard on the Knees

Prologue – Chemical Reactions

Honestly, I don't understand all this talk about Nobodies being incapable of feeling emotions.

Before I began my apprenticeship with Master Ansem, I had the good fortune to have taken a course in neuroscience, where I had the wool removed from my eyes on a good many "common knowledge" things.

At the top of this list was the belief that emotion is linked to the heart and other bodily fuctions. For example, once upon a time, the popular conception had something to do with blood flow, phlegm, and biles in all manner of colors. If your bile was black, you were prone to melancholia, if you had too much yellow, you were typically angry…blah blah blah.. You can look it up on Wikipedia if you feel the need to know the details.

But of course, it's all crap.

Crap that I suppose the Radiant Garden government taught in order to suppress us.

But that's another story.

Emotions, in reality, are merely the products of chemical reactions in the brain—neurons "firing" and whatnot. Then add or subtract a little dopamine here, a little seratonin there, and you're set. No mystery there, right?

Anyway, while I may not necessarily have a heart—maybe not in the normal sense of the word—I do still have a brain. At least I did the last time I attempted to think.

But the truth is, it doesn't take a genius, or even a mediocre scientist to figure this out; it only takes falling in love yourself when you're a Nobody.

I would know, because it happened to me.