The Voice of the Heart

The Voice of the Heart

By: dedu

Oliver first sensed that something was wrong one morning.

He awoke from the nightmare with his heart beating too fast, like a child straining to escape confinement.

Though already seventy-three, he stood before the mirror and saw a face that had been rewritten,as if time had retreated by twenty years.

The doctors said the procedure had been a success.A complete blood replacement, a heart transplant, followed by immunosuppressive treatment and neural adaptation therapy,this was, they claimed, a triumph of reverse time acceleration. Calculated against a theoretical lifespan of 150 years, he was now, biologically speaking, still a child. The segment of life in which death had not yet arrived had been skipped entirely.

He should have felt grateful.Yet afterward, in the bathroom, he found himself barefoot in the shallow water, laughing like a mischievous child. The laughter startled him—it did not seem to belong to him.That voice came from somewhere unknown.

He stared at his pounding heart in confusion. At first, he assumed it was merely emotional displacement. But soon he found himself chasing pigeons for no reason in the park, spinning in circles in hospital corridors, and even—during solemn family gatherings—suddenly wanting to crawl under the table to play with ants.

Oliver earned a reputation as an “old child at heart.”

Trying to regain his composure, he searched for his true self,only to realize that the playful presence inside him was not truly him at all.

Suddenly, the world seemed to freeze.A spoon hung suspended in midair. His loved ones’ faces were locked in expressions that had not yet reached understanding.

He sat back down and pressed both hands against his chest.

“Is it you?” he whispered. “Can you freeze that moment?”

His heart gave a gentle beat, as if answering. No sound,only understanding.

Her name was Xiaohua.She remembered that her mother didn't pick her up that day. After school, she bought an ice pop on her way home, unaware that someone was following her. Suddenly, two men forcibly dragged her into a vehicle that looked like an ambulance.

She had not been dying. She was not a condemned criminal. Yet she suffered a punishment worse than death.After that, her memory was cut off.

What remained was a restless surge,a racing heartbeat, an overwhelming desire to go home, a life force struggling with all its strength yet unable to escape, trapped by something invisible. It was as if time had been fast-forwarded, skipping directly over the rest of her life.

Oliver vomited,His body rejected the truth instinctively.

For the first time, he attempted to reverse time,returning to the moment before the surgery. Beneath the surgical lights, anesthesia had not yet fully taken effect,He wanted to refuse,But time would not move forward.

That moment was locked. No matter how many times he reversed it, every path led to the same point:He had signed the consent form.He had written a check for three million dollars.

All of it driven by a single fear: that his own heart would stop beating.In that instant, time revealed its cold structure:You may alter everything that comes after, but you can never cleanse the motive that has already occurred.

After the surgery, he tried to live “together” with Xiaohua,But the discord was unbearable.

He would burst into foolish laughter when dignity was required; weep when he should have felt joy; feel the urge to sing or make strange sounds when silence was demanded. His steps became light, then heavy. His blood alternated between burning hot and icy cold. It felt as though a battle between good and evil was raging inside him, sharpening his sense of shame to a knife’s edge.

“Why did you steal my life and my time?”

The question was both accusation and confusion.

He had no answer,Because he never intended to steal the life of an innocent child,simply "agreed" to accept organs from a death row inmate.

Yet his conscience told him the truth:All of this violated the natural order.

The phrase organ donor haunted him relentlessly. He could neither eat nor sleep. Desperate to escape reality, he longed to rewind time,but time did not obey his wishes.

Xiaohua did not understand what an “organ donor” was. She only knew that her heart had been forcibly installed into the body of a strange old man.

“Then… are you alive now?” Oliver asked.

Xiaohua fell silent,Inside, she was crying,tears of blood streaming through her soul.

Oliver often falls into inexplicable anguish and hysteria. Living like this is more painful than dying. His life is built on the death of another, burdened by stolen time and unbearable guilt.

He believed that at the end of life, would face God’s severe reckoning. The permission or silence of human law was never the standard of divine justice.

Cold sweat drenched him,So he fast-forwarded time,wanted to see how far a man could go while betraying his conscience,Twenty years,that was the limit,His heart would eventually stop. And yet that young heart remained trapped in the moment it was taken, frozen within an unfinished life.

In that instant, he understood:Advanced technology does not make people younger—nor does it make them happier.It merely compresses another person’s future into one’s own present.

Oliver could not rewind time to before he signed the consent form. He could not stop time. Nor could he simply rush through the remaining twenty years of his life.

So he made a choice:decided to discontinue all life-sustaining treatments for his heart, choosing instead to let his body endure whatever punishment or annihilation—awaited it.

In public, his voice trembling, he declared:

"If you have to extend your life by stealing your children's time, that's not medicine, that's plunder, that's moral depravity, that's blasphemy against God."

He did not know where the problem had begun,Perhaps it stemmed from a lack of sincere faith in God. He had grown up in a country of religious freedom, yet had been influenced by atheism—ultimately choosing to seek heart treatment in a vast atheistic nation.

A place where moral boundaries had vanished;Where evils beyond imagination could occur;A truly terrifying place.

Time seemed to freeze once more,The world fell silent. Sunlight halted beside the window.

He placed his hand over his chest.

“I am sorry,” he said. “I stole an innocent heart.”

The heart gradually grew calm.

At last, he understood:A true life is not about living to 150 years,but about following the order of heaven.

Happiness is living a life of peace of mind; it cannot be built on the suffering of others, nor can it steal the tomorrow of the innocent.

As time passed once more, his body aged rapidly, instantly aging him by twenty years.

This was not merely punishment, but a return—a return of the heart that should not have belonged to him.