Chapter 7 — The Mighty, All-Powerful Genie

Six months had passed since Bách Nguyên transformed into a human, and during that time, he had experienced many firsts in his life that a thousand-year-old being had never had the opportunity to experience. The first time he caught a cold after standing in the rain for too long watching the summer shower pouring down on the garden, a feeling that for a thousand years he could only observe from the outside but could not feel on his own skin. The first time he felt hungry in the middle of the night after skipping dinner because he was busy reading a history book that Lâm Đắc Tường gave him, and felt a strange sense of relief when he finally got to eat a hot bowl of instant noodles cooked by himself in the small kitchen in the annex.

"You seem to like cooking." Đắc Tường commented one evening, when he caught Bách Nguyên struggling with a pan of fried eggs in the kitchen, although the result did not look very nice.

"I like the feeling of creating something with my own hands," Bách Nguyên replied, his eyes lit up with a rare sincerity. "For the past thousand years, I have only been able to create wishes at the request of others, nothing truly belongs to me. But this bowl of ugly fried eggs, although not delicious, is the first thing I made with my own hands just because I wanted to do it, not because someone ordered it."

Đắc Tường smiled at that sincerity, feeling a strange warmth every time he talked to this strange man. "Do you remember what you've been through in a thousand years? Are they all painful memories?"

"Not necessarily." Bách Nguyên sat down, his eyes looking far away as if recalling a long time ago. "There are moments I still remember clearly, not because they were sad, but because they were rare. A poor child once found a lamp in the rubble after a flood, and instead of wishing for himself to be rich, he wished for his whole village to have enough food to last the winter. I still remember the look in his eyes when he looked at me, not the eyes of greed like most others, but the eyes of someone who was pleading for others, not for himself."

"What do you wish for yourself, if possible?" Đắc Tường asked curiously.

Bách Nguyên was silent for a long time, then smiled slightly. "I used to think, if given the chance, I would wish to be free. But now that I have freedom, I realize that what I really desire is not simple freedom, but to live a meaningful life, to have people to care about, to have a reason to wake up every morning other than just existing."

In addition to new experiences about taste and body sensations, Bách Nguyên also gradually discovered a completely different world of modern humans that during a thousand years of observing from afar, he had never had the opportunity to truly touch. He learned how to use a smartphone, amazed at how with just a few touches he could contact someone thousands of kilometers away, something that had previously only been possible with magic. He learned how to drive, at first he was so clumsy that he almost crashed into the villa gate the first time he practiced, causing Lâm Đắc Tường to have a heart attack.

"Master, slow down," Đắc Tường shouted, his hands clutching the car door handle. "Just because you have extraordinary strength doesn't mean you know how to drive well the first time."

Bách Nguyên burst out laughing, a rare, refreshing laugh that even he was surprised by its existence within himself. "Sorry, I'm still getting used to it."

He also learned to enjoy music, an experience that stunned him the first time he heard a classical symphony that Đắc Tường played for him in an empty living room. For a thousand years, the only sound he could fully feel was the sound of praying or calling his name when someone summoned him from the lamp. Now, each note sounds like it touches a deep part of his soul that he did not expect still existed after a millennium of silence.

During those days, Bách Nguyên also gradually learned how to identify and name the complex emotions that people experience every day but rarely pay attention to. He learned the feeling of worry when he saw Nhã Kỳ returning home late after a stressful day of work, her face etched with fatigue that she always tried to hide with her constant pride. He learned a strange feeling of warmth when he happened to hear her laughing alone in the office through the thin wall, even though that smile was not for him but was just a reaction to a happy phone call with a close friend from college.

He also learned the feeling of jealousy, a completely new and somewhat embarrassing feeling that he had never allowed himself to admit, when he saw Nhã Kỳ chatting intimately and openly with male colleagues in the company through video calls that he overheard when passing by her office, while with him, she had never once shown the same friendliness.

"What is this feeling called?" He asked Đắc Tường one evening, after recounting that experience with a somewhat confused expression. "An uneasy feeling in my chest, not exactly anger, but not simple sadness either, appears every time I see her being kinder to others than to me." Đắc Tường laughed lightly at that adorable, innocent question. "Master, that's called jealousy, a very normal human emotion when they care about someone more than they think."

Bách Nguyên paused at that word, feeling that an important truth had just been revealed that he himself had never dared to face directly. "Do I... care about her more than I thought?"

"You can answer that question yourself better than me," Đắc Tường said, his gentle eyes looking at the young man who was struggling with emotions for the first time in his life.

That night, Bách Nguyên lay in his private room in the annex, looking up at the ceiling, thinking about the question he had just asked himself. For a thousand years, he had witnessed countless human love stories—great loves, painful separations, promises that were never kept—but he had never experienced it himself, because the genie was not allowed to have a heart of his own.

Now, as a real person, he realized that his heart was slowly but undeniably drifting towards a girl who was arrogant, cold, and always saw him as an annoying condition in her life. It was a truth that both scared and excited him in a strange way he had never experienced before.

He remembered the first evening when Mr. Vĩnh Bảo asked him if he wanted to be free, and he replied that he didn't know what freedom was because he had never experienced it. Now, after six months of living as a human, he begins to understand that true freedom is not only no longer imprisoned in the lamp, but also the right to love, to suffer for that love, to choose to continue loving even knowing that feeling may never be reciprocated.

The next morning, when she happened to meet Nhã Kỳ in the kitchen as she was preparing to leave home to go to work early, Bách Nguyên looked at her with a different look than usual - softer, more attentive, even though she was completely unaware of that subtle change in the eyes of the man she had always deliberately ignored.

"Have you had breakfast yet?" He asked, pushing towards her a plate of egg sandwiches he had just prepared himself, a cooking skill he had gradually mastered after months of practice.

"I don't have time," Nhã Kỳ replied curtly, not bothering to look at the plate of food, quickly picked up her bag and walked out the door.

He watched her figure disappear behind the gate, the morning sunlight shining on the car rolling out of the yard, then bent down to look at the plate of bread still intact on the table. Bách Nguyên stood silently watching, his hand still holding the plate of bread that no one had touched, his heart filled with a gentle sadness but not discouragement. He knew that a person's feelings could not be nurtured overnight, especially with someone who had built solid defensive walls like Nhã Kỳ throughout his youth. But he also knew he was willing to wait patiently, no matter how long it took, because this was the first time in a thousand years of existence, he had something truly worth waiting for.