At the same time, Wayne Manor.
Inside the Batcave, the lighting was dim and oppressive, illuminated only by the faint blue glow emitted from the massive surveillance screens.
Bruce Wayne sat before the main console, his striking jawline set as hard and cold as a slab of marble.
He hadn’t taken off the Batsuit yet.
His cape draped behind his chair like a pool of congealed black liquid.
Hard to understand people who decorated their homes in a cold, minimalist aesthetic.
Equally hard to understand people who didn’t take off their work uniforms after clocking off.
Displayed before Batman was all the surveillance data from the East End slums over the past forty-eight hours.
Alfred approached carrying a tray.
It didn’t hold a late-night snack, but a stack of timestamped aerial screenshots, arranged neatly in chronological order along the edges.
“Master Bruce, the review data you requested.”
Bruce didn’t reach for it right away.
His gaze was fixed squarely on the thin, red-and-blue figure in the center of the screen.
In the footage, the youth calling himself Spider-Man crouched atop a rusted water tower.
His posture didn’t resemble a precise tactical maneuver; rather, he looked like an old man feeding pigeons, squatting there and tossing something out handful by handful.
Hundred-dollar bills scattered from his fingers, caught by the gloomy Gotham breeze and swirling like a flock of lost green moths.
Bruce zoomed in on the image.
What caught his attention wasn’t “how much money he dropped,” but “how he dropped it.”
Every toss controlled the radius of dispersion.
Where the bills landed: in the shadows of corrugated iron roofs, underneath old clotheslines, behind trash cans by shack doorways, in the deepest corners of every alleyway.
Not a single bill fell onto an open street.
Not a single bill fell along the patrol routes of local gangs.
Every single one landed in visual blind spots visible from the air, but nearly impossible to spot from street level.
Bruce pulled his fingers away from the touchpad and leaned back against his chair.
Throwing money in the open meant whoever picked it up would be seen.
Being seen meant being targeted.
Being targeted meant losing the money—and their life.
He dropped the money in blind spots.
Every landing point fell within the routine daily activity zones of nearby residents—places they passed when taking out trash, hanging laundry, or squatting outside to eat bread.
Someone would inevitably come across it.
Rather than random charity, the act resembled assigning every banknote a location where it was most likely to be found by the poor and least likely to be intercepted by gangs.
Why drop money instead of handing it out house to house?
Bruce began running simulations on alternative methods.
Spending too much time in one place meant too many eyewitnesses and compromised tracks.
The gangs would lock onto his routine within twenty-four hours, following the trail to every recipient.
Those people would be dragged out of their shacks one by one, their fingers broken while being interrogated: “Who else did he give money to?”
In the end, the cash would flow straight back into the gangs’ pockets, while those who took the money would end up lying in alleys waiting for garbage trucks to pick them up.
Scattering the money.
No contact between giver and receiver.
No clues that could be beaten out through torture.
It wasn’t about keeping himself clean; it was about keeping those who got the money safe.
How much did he keep for himself?
Bruce tracked the boy’s hand movements frame by frame after the money was scattered.
He pulled the final few bills from the bag and stuffed them into his clothes.
Then his hand froze mid-air.
It stayed frozen for three full seconds.
The line of his shoulders tightened, like someone fighting against something only he could feel.
Three seconds later, the struggle ended.
He climbed down the wall.
Beyond that, the footage cut off, obstructed by the chaotic, sprawling structures of the slum.
With Spider-Man’s abilities, he really shouldn’t be active only in the slum district near the docks.
He should be operating downtown.
Once he developed web-shooters, downtown would offer far better leverage for his combat capabilities.
Bruce stacked all the footage onto a single screen.
The precision in choosing landing spots, the single optimal method of delivery, the anticipation of gang activity patterns, the consideration for the safety of the recipients, the extreme compression of his own payout.
All the details pointed in one direction.
He leaned back in his chair, staring at the slender red-and-blue figure on the screen.
A mutant with four tons of strength robbed bank robbers.
He kept only a few bills for himself.
The rest he scattered—using an extremely complex method precise down to every drop point—to the people in this city who needed money the most, and who were the least likely to be tracked by gangs.
When he did this, no one was watching, no one demanded it, and there was no reward.
He didn’t even know who those people were.
Bruce shut off the screen.
“Master Bruce.
Your conclusion?”
Bruce didn’t answer immediately.
His gaze lingered on the darkened screen, as if staring at a puzzle he had yet to fully solve.
“He can’t find any other way.”
Alfred remained silent.
“He wants to help these people, but doesn’t know how.
The system won’t help him, the law won’t help him, and there is no pre-existing path in this city that allows him to deliver money to those in need without it being intercepted by gangs.
So he carved his own path using the only means he had.”
Bruce’s voice was devoid of emotion, like he was stating a law of physics.
“This isn’t calculation.
Calculation is about achieving the maximum return at the lowest cost.
Every choice he makes increases his own costs and his own risk, reserving all safety for people whose names he doesn’t even know. You are reading on g.com, the official source.
Calculation doesn’t yield a result like this.
Calculation wouldn’t lead to ‘keeping only a few bills for oneself and throwing all the rest to strangers.’ Calculation wouldn’t make someone squat on top of a water tower in the dead of night, tossing hundred-dollar bills into the slums handful by handful like fish food.”
Batman paused.
“This is a person facing a problem he cannot solve, using the only tools at his disposal, choosing to do something he knows won’t change any underlying structure, yet choosing to do it anyway.”
And the tale of Jingwei filling the sea was sung not because she actually managed to flatten the sea.
Alfred fell silent for a moment.
“Do you believe he is good, Master Bruce?”
Bruce didn’t turn around.
His voice came from behind the raised collar of his cowl, muffled, as if separated by a layer of water.
“In Gotham, that word has been used too many times.
It’s worn out.
I don’t know if he is good.
But when he did this, no one was watching, no one demanded it, and there was no reward.
He thought of it himself.
He paved the way himself.
In a city where no one ever told him what he ‘should’ do, he chose the hardest, most complex, and least profitable way for himself.”
Batman turned around, his cape sweeping behind him in an arc.
“I don’t know what to call that.
But I’ve never seen anyone else in Gotham do it.”
Alfred looked at the second person to do so, without pressing further.
He watched Bruce’s back as he stood amidst that deep-sea blue light, cape hanging motionlessly behind him.
He knew Bruce wasn’t thinking about the boy—or rather, not just the boy.
Bruce walked toward the dressing room.
His footsteps echoed through the cavernous Batcave, steady and deliberate, like something slow and unyielding.
As he passed Alfred, he paused for a moment.
“Alfred.”
“Master Bruce.”
“He can’t find any other way.”
Bruce said nothing more.
Alfred didn’t answer either.
But Alfred knew Bruce had said those words twice tonight.
The first time, he was talking about the boy.
The second time, he was also talking about the boy.
But Alfred heard it a third time.
Jingwei filling the sea.
Can it really change nothing?
Perhaps one day, the sea level will rise by a fraction of an imperceptible percentage.
Perhaps one day, eventually, Gotham will have its very first night free of violent crime.