A faint echo from a distant past. My father. The very antithesis of my being. Goodness radiated from him like sunlight. Morally rigid, a compass pointing unerringly towards a True North I could never even glimpse. His hypothetical sorrow, his imagined disappointment at my current state… it is a curious thought. To see his face, etched with a sadness I undoubtedly caused.

He would not rage. He would not condemn. Not like the others. His disappointment would be a quiet sorrow. And then… the predictable act of compassion. Not reprimand, but intervention. A guiding hand towards some sterile rehabilitation facility. He would approach my addiction not with anger, but with a profound, unwavering desire to heal. Just like Raphael. A stark reminder of the inherent goodness I can only observe from a distance.

The assertion that I lack empathy is accurate. However, it is a mischaracterization to suggest an enjoyment of sadism. The bugs' fleeting moments of joy elicit no corresponding elevation within me; their inevitable sorrows leave me similarly untouched. I am, indifferent.

It is a cruel and ironic twist, this genetic lottery that has cast me onto this spinning rock, this pale blue dot they call Earth, yet excised from my very being that fundamental, almost pathetic, adhesive that binds the rest of humanity: empathy. To be born with this inherent deficit, this profound inability to truly feel the joys and sorrows of others, is to exist in a perpetual state of detached observation. A pane of glass separates me from the vibrant tapestry of human connection, allowing me to witness their intricate dances of emotion without ever truly joining in.

This charade of empathy requires constant mental contortions. Raphael’s sliced finger: a data point, a biological event triggering a neurological response he labels "pain." I register the information. But the feeling itself? Absent. To even feign a semblance of appropriate reaction, I must conjure a scenario of grotesque self-mutilation. A chainsaw against my own leg. The mental image elicits… a flicker. A grimace, perhaps. A purely intellectual exercise in approximating distress. And yet, this meager performance is often sufficient to appease the emotional simplicity of the other bugs. They see a shadow of empathy and mistake it for the genuine article.

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The chasm of his emotional landscape remains an unnavigable void. Since I lack the inherent capacity to comprehend the nuances of what he calls "feeling," I am relegated to the crude language of conventional care. A band-aid applied to a trivial cut. A physical act devoid of emotional resonance on my part, yet one that elicits the desired warmth in him. Happiness. The comforting delusion of shared empathy, of being cherished. He believes in my devotion.

He once labeled whatever this… is between us as "attachment." A clinical term, devoid of the sentimental weight he often assigned to human connection. To be perfectly honest, its true nature remains an enigma. There is only this undeniable pull, this persistent ache of absence. I wish he were here. He would undoubtedly dissect my intricate manipulations with a mixture of exasperation and reluctant admiration. He would berate my callous disregard for the bugs, yet a flicker of intellectual appreciation would betray his disapproval. And, with that infuriatingly gentle magnanimity of his, he would likely offer a quiet "thank you" for my (relative) restraint, for choosing the labyrinthine paths of the mind over the blunt force of violence.

The baffling incongruity of it all. That someone possessing such an overflowing wellspring of empathy, a man whose very being seems attuned to the subtle frequencies of human emotion, could harbor any semblance of… feeling towards a creature like me. It defies all logical parameters, a fundamental mismatch at the very core of our dynamic. It is a puzzle I have turned over and over in the sterile confines of my mind. What does he see? What fundamental flaw in his perception allows him to bridge the chasm of my indifference? It remains, infuriatingly, an unsolved mystery.