Mom downloaded an app from God knows where. It was called The Perfect Daughter Generator. She thought it was just a simulation game and casually maxed out my "Intelligence" stat. But attribute points in the app were fixed; to raise one, another had to be lowered. She hesitated for a split second, then deducted all my points for "Pain Perception." "If she doesn't know what pain is, she'll focus much better on her studying," she muttered to herself. The very next day, my compass accidentally pierced right through my palm while I was doing geometry, but I remained completely indifferent. "Mom, it doesn't hurt. I'll definitely get first place on the exams again!" Mom shrieked in terror and rushed over to bandage my hand. But when she saw the perfect score on my practice test, her screams turned into a fanatical frenzy. Through the crack in the door, I watched Mom frantically tapping on her phone screen. "Emotions are superfluous. They just lead to high school romance and distractions. Delete." "Sleep can be reduced too. Two hours a day is more than enough!" "As long as she can win a Nobel Prize, living to be thirty isn't unacceptable..." I shrank back into my blankets, shivering, only to realize that even the emotion of fear was slowly draining away from me. At the dining table, Mom sat in front of an exquisite acai bowl and a whole-wheat turkey avocado sandwich. In front of me, there was absolutely nothing. I reached out to grab a piece of bread, but Mom clamped down on my wrist like an iron pincer. "Chloe, you don't need to eat this." She didn't even look up from her phone screen as she spoke. "Eating is a waste of time. Chewing, swallowing, digesting—doesn't every single step delay your SAT vocabulary memorization?" "I just turned your 'Hunger' level to the absolute minimum. From now on, you are only allowed one liquid meal a day." Dad took a bite of his sandwich and frowned. "The kid is still growing. Is this really a good idea?" "What do you know? Eating a couple less bites won't starve her to death!" Mom glared back at him. Dad shrugged his shoulders and didn't press the issue. "Fine, fine, I won't interfere. Save me from you complaining that I'm holding her back!" My stomach was spasming violently, the gastric walls churning and emitting loud protests of hunger. Yet, strangely, my brain wasn't receiving any signals that I wanted to eat. It was as if my physical body and my consciousness had been forcefully torn apart. I nodded mechanically, turned around, and went back to grinding through a massive Princeton Review AP Physics workbook. Even though I was dripping in cold sweat, my speed at solving the equations was terrifyingly fast. Mom stood in the doorway, recording a video of my back to post on her Facebook page. "My Chloe is so incredibly disciplined! Forgetting to eat and sleep to study—I could wake up laughing from my dreams!" In less than five minutes, the post was flooded with likes and compliments from other parents. Dad casually liked the post too, leaving a comment: "Like father, like daughter." That night, when Dad came home from work, he immediately noticed my right index finger. It was swollen to the size of a golf ball. It was the result of the compass piercing my palm earlier, combined with the high-intensity gripping of my pen, which had caused a ruptured tendon. The joint was completely deformed, turning a horrifying bruised purple. "Chloe! What happened to your hand?!" Dad rushed into my room in a panic. "How can you even write when it's swollen like this? Stop studying, let's go to the hospital right now!" My pen paused. Just as I was about to say "Okay," Mom's roar echoed from behind him. "What hospital?! Do you know how much time a round trip will waste?!" "Richard, can you stop hindering our daughter's progress?" "She is at a critical moment trying to solve the final extra-credit question!" Dad looked at my red, swollen hand, then looked at my furious mother. The anxiety on his face visibly faded away. "Well... she still shouldn't push herself to the breaking point." He muttered under his breath, then let go of my hand, turned around, and walked out of the room. "Do whatever you want. Just don't blame me if she ends up crippled!" The next second, the app issued a prompt: "Enable 'Block External Interference' Mode." Dad's retreating back instantly became a blurry haze in my vision. In my mind, only a line of cold, blood-red text remained: "Invalid social interaction detected. Suggest host ignore." "Current highest priority: Complete Math workbook." I rigidly picked up my pen again, my eyes completely hollow. "Please do not disturb me. I just figured out the approach for this equation." Late that night, the only sound in the room was the scratching of my pen against the paper. I had finally finished all the practice tests. Lying in bed, I thought back to the way my parents had looked at me. In some hidden corner of my heart, there seemed to be a lingering trace of instinctual sorrow. I wanted to cry. I wanted to use tears to vent the pain and oppression trapped inside this body. But no matter how sad I felt, the corners of my eyes remained bone dry. I couldn't produce a single tear. In my mind, that mechanical voice echoed once more. "Crying function uninstalled." "Tear gland secretion causes a loss of electrolytes in the body." "To conserve hydration, this function has been permanently removed." I lay there with my mouth open, weeping silently at the ceiling. But I couldn't make a single sound. The next day, the school organized a mandatory physical exam for all students. When it was my turn to have my heart rate checked, the school nurse's brow furrowed tightly. She tapped her monitor in confusion, then pressed her stethoscope firmly against my chest again. "How is this possible? A resting heart rate of 140 beats per minute?!" The nurse's shrill gasp instantly drew the attention of the entire class. "Sweetheart, do you feel palpitations right now? Or dizzy?" I shook my head in confusion. The app's blocking system had already filtered out all physical discomfort from my brain. "No, ma'am. I just want to go back to class and memorize my vocabulary words." The nurse was terrified by my pale face and empty eyes. She grabbed my wrist, only to feel a layer of cold, clammy sweat. Next came my blood pressure and blood sugar—every single metric was shockingly abnormal. "Severe malnutrition, cardiac arrhythmia, and early signs of severe electrolyte imbalance..." The nurse made a split-second decision and called my homeroom teacher, Mr. Davis. "This child could go into cardiac arrest at any moment! We need to call her parents immediately!" Half an hour later, the infirmary doors burst open, and Mom stormed in like a hurricane. "Chloe Turner, are you faking sick on purpose to get out of morning study hall?" "The state exams are tomorrow! Do you know that missing even one vocabulary list could drop your ranking out of the top three?!" The nurse's jaw dropped. She stared at my mother as if she were looking at a monster. "Ma'am! Your daughter's vitals are on the verge of total collapse!" "She could go into shock at any second! And you're actually worried about her vocabulary words?" Mom turned her head, casting a cold, disdainful glance at the nurse. "Collapse? She looks perfectly fine to me. She's sitting right there staring into space." "You school nurses just love making a mountain out of a molehill, trying to trick me into going to the hospital to waste money on tests, right?" "If my daughter can't endure a little hardship now, how is she ever going to rise above the rest of the world?" Saying that, she reached out to grab me, intending to drag me back to the classroom. The moment her fingers touched my ice-cold skin... My vision suddenly went pitch black, and my entire body fell backward uncontrollably. In the fading moments of my consciousness, I saw Mom pull out her phone in a sheer panic. She didn't dial 911. Instead, she opened that blood-red app. A warning pop-up flashed on her screen. "Warning! Host is about to undergo a forced shutdown. Estimated repair time: 72 hours." Mom's pupils shrank violently. "Shutdown? No! The state exams are tomorrow!" "If she shuts down now, won't all our previous efforts be completely wasted?!" She paced around anxiously, her fingernails tapping frantically against her screen. "Is there any other way? Can she skip the rest period?" As if answering her summons, the app popped up a new dialog box. "Recommended Solution: You may exchange 'Lifespan' to instantly restore 'Stamina'." Mom's finger hovered over the screen, trembling slightly. "Well... living a long life isn't that useful anyway," she muttered to herself. "If she wins a Nobel Prize before she's thirty, or becomes a billionaire, what does it matter if her life is a bit shorter?" "Chloe will understand why Mom did this, right?" Then, hiding in the corner with her back to the nurse, she pressed the "Confirm" button. "Exchange Confirmed: Deduct ten years of lifespan, gain infinite stamina." A wave of boiling heat instantly flooded through my entire body. I felt as if I was surging with explosive, limitless power. I snapped my eyes open, ripped the IV line out of the back of my hand, and vaulted out of the hospital bed. Blood flowed freely from the puncture wound, but I felt absolutely no pain. "Chloe?!" Mr. Davis cried out in shock. I turned to my horrified teacher and gave him a stiff, mechanical smile. "Mr. Davis, I'm fine now. I actually feel like I'm in peak condition." "I need to get back to the classroom. I still have three practice exams I haven't finished!" After that incident in the infirmary, Mom seemed to have acquired a taste for the app's power. She was no longer satisfied with me just ranking first in my grade. Her targets shifted to Olympiad gold medals. She even wanted me to get early admission to MIT and eventually win a Nobel Prize... "Chloe, honey, Mom noticed your problem-solving speed still isn't fast enough lately." "Do you still have distracting thoughts in your head?" That night, Mom was casually scrolling through her phone. On the app interface, the "Emotion Module" tab was still glowing faintly. "Family affection and all that—it really holds a person back!" "Look at all those great scientists. Which one of them didn't renounce their family to focus entirely on their research?" She talked to herself, her finger hovering over the "Emotion Extraction" option. "For the sake of your future, Mom is willing to play the villain." She hesitated no longer and pressed confirm heavily. "Uninstalling 'Emotion Module'... Progress 100%." At that exact moment, a soft click echoed deep within my brain. Something warm and human was permanently siphoned away. A week later, my grandmother—the person who loved me most in the world—passed away. The funeral parlor was filled with white flowers and the low, mournful hum of a dirge. Dad was slumped by the casket, his back hunched, sobbing endlessly. I was the only one standing stiffly in the corner, wearing my black school uniform. In my hands, I held an Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary, muttering vocabulary words under my breath. The judgmental whispers of our relatives washed over me like a tide. "What is wrong with that child? Her grandma loved her the most, and she hasn't shed a single tear?" "She's still memorizing vocabulary? She's literally studied herself stupid. What a cold-blooded animal!" "What's the point of raising a kid like that? She's lost her basic humanity!" Hearing these whispers, Mom felt her pride take a hit. She walked over, snatched the book from my hands, and hissed at me under her breath. "Chloe, stop memorizing! Go bow to your grandma, everyone is watching!" "Just wait a little bit, and Mom will sneak you back to your room to study..." I turned slightly, dodging her hand. "Death is the inevitable biological endpoint of cellular metabolism in carbon-based lifeforms." "Crying cannot reverse the physiological death process. On the contrary, it consumes a massive amount of caloric energy." "Instead of wasting time mourning, it would be more efficient to solve two more physics equations and contribute to human technological progress." The entire room fell dead silent. Everyone turned to stare at me. Smack! A sharp, crisp slap shattered the quiet. Dad, his face covered in tears, stood in front of me with trembling hands. The slap was incredibly heavy. My glasses flew off my face and shattered on the floor. "You animal! That is your grandmother!" Dad roared, his eyes filled with profound disappointment and shock. I turned my head back, feeling the burning sensation on my cheek. There was no pain, no shame, and certainly no sorrow. My brain rapidly constructed a physics model and calculated the conclusion. "Impact area: approximately 20 square centimeters. Instantaneous pressure: approximately 30 kilopascals." I picked up my broken glasses from the floor and mechanically put them back on. "Based on the impulse-momentum theorem, your palm's velocity was approximately 15 meters per second." Dad shook with uncontrollable rage, pointing a trembling finger at me, stuttering, "You... you..." for a long time. Finally, his eyes rolled back, and he fainted dead away. Mom finally panicked. Looking at the unrecognizable stranger that was her daughter, an unprecedented terror gripped her heart. She shakily pulled out her phone, desperately trying to undo her previous action. "Chloe, it's Mom! Do you not even recognize your own mother anymore?" She frantically tapped the "Restore Family Affection" button in the app. But the screen only popped up a gray dialogue box. "Error! This module has been permanently deleted and cannot be recovered!" "Data has been cleared!" Mom collapsed onto the floor. "It's fine... it's fine." "Once Chloe wins international awards, we can just slowly cultivate her feelings back!" To avoid further "distractions," after Grandma was buried, Mom moved me to a rented apartment in the suburbs. Over the next three months, under her frantic management, I became a global genius who shocked the world. I published ten papers in international journals and solved a mathematical conjecture that had baffled the academic community for fifty years. The media dubbed me the future Einstein, and my high school even erected a bronze statue of me overnight.
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