That night, Will tossed and turned in the holding cell at the police station, unable to fall asleep.
The crazy woman in the neighboring cell wouldn’t stop babbling.
The burly man across from him snored like he was sawing wood.
At least his cellmate seemed normal.
Uh…
If he were being honest, he wasn’t exactly that normal either.
His gaze seemed like a slippery hand, repeatedly wandering over Will’s body.
He was a handsome young man with slicked-back hair and piercing blue eyes beneath an eye-catching hooked nose.
He wore a suit that was slightly too large for him and sat upright on the bed with his legs crossed.
Their eyes met, and the young man was the first to open the conversation.
“My name is Oswald.
I’m with Mr.
Maroni.
What’s your name?”
“I don’t know.”
Thinking about being sent to Arkham the next morning put Will in an absolutely terrible mood.
If he had been able to talk to Gordon a little longer, he would have discovered that he wasn’t actually going to be locked up in Arkham.
He would merely undergo a simple psychiatric evaluation.
But kept in the dark, Will angrily turned over, presenting his round rear to Oswald.
His companion, however, seemed to have no intention of ending the conversation.
“You’ve got a pretty good figure!”
“What are you trying to do?!”
Will shuddered at those words and hurriedly covered his backside as he turned back around.
“Just a little joke.
Don’t take it seriously!”
Oswald grinned, revealing a mouthful of bright white teeth.
“But you really do have a good build.
You’re practically born to be a hired muscle.
As it happens, I’m recruiting people lately.
Interested in joining the Romans, taking up residence in the Senate, and welcoming a bright future?”
“The Romans?”
Will felt like the name was strangely familiar.
“Whoa!
A Gothamite who doesn’t know the Romans?
Don’t tell me you’ve never heard of the great Mr.
Carmine Falcone!”
That name was familiar to Will.
The biggest Mafia boss in Gotham.
And, if he remembered correctly, the name of his gang was the Romans.
Put that way, Oswald was actually inviting Will to join the Mafia.
He hadn’t found Batman, yet somehow he had inexplicably been invited to join a gang.
Reality and ideals really did go in completely opposite directions.
But the problem before him wasn’t whether he wanted to join or not.
It was that if he refused, he’d be sent to Arkham.
“If I agree, can you get me out of here?”
“Of course, my friend.
We’re working for Mr.
Maroni.
Surely we can get out of a mere police station, can’t we?”
The moment Oswald finished speaking, footsteps sounded in the hallway.
Then came the rustling of keys, followed by a potbellied jailer opening the door for them.
“I want to take him with me.”
Oswald straightened his collar and pointed at Will.
“He’s a separate price.”
The hallway was packed with surveillance cameras, yet the jailer had no qualms about holding out his hand for money.
“We Romans pay our dues every month on time.
You should be asking your damn commissioner for this money, not me!”
“But he’s not part of the gang.
Besides, Gordon personally interrogated this man.”
“Is that so?
All right…”
At this point, Oswald knew there was no room left for negotiation.
He shook his head in disappointment.
Then he took off his watch.
The watch glittered with gold, and it had a surprising weight to it when held in the hand.
Will was puzzled.
He and Oswald had only just met.
Why was the other man willing to use something so valuable to bail him out?
He only realized he had been getting ahead of himself when Oswald slipped the watch over his right fist and punched the jailer so hard that yellow bile came spewing from his mouth.
Amid the prisoners’ cheers, Oswald gave the fallen jailer another kick before turning around and waving at Will.
“You’re free.”
After that day, Will joined the Romans, becoming the underling of one of Maroni’s underlings.
In short, he was an underling’s underling.
After moving into the “Senate,” his future was “limitless.”
Incidentally, the name “Senate” had been coined by Oswald himself, inspired by the ancient Roman Senate.
Oswald had even solemnly assured Will that the gang would one day unify Gotham, and everyone living in this building would eventually become true Roman senators.
In reality, however, the Senate was merely one of the most common slum apartments in the East End, a damp, two-story wooden building.
Cockroaches and woodlice were hidden beneath every floorboard, and stepping on them produced the crisp sound of insect shells cracking.
Crack!
The miserable reality made it difficult for Will to believe the grand future Oswald had painted for him.
Three months passed in the blink of an eye, and Will had gradually grown accustomed to life in the Senate.
Collecting rent, watching over territory, and getting into exhilarating brawls with rival gangs who came looking for trouble.
He had also gradually realized that being a gang underling wasn’t nearly as glamorous as movies made it seem.
Most of the time, it was merely a shiny exterior.
Walking the streets surrounded by people made them look impressive, but the real life of a gang member was sitting on a concrete step and gnawing on black bread.
Fortunately, there was Oswald.
He was a small-time boss who took good care of his subordinates.
Without his patient guidance, Will might not have made it through the adjustment period.
…
Back in the present, Will felt much more awake after washing his face.
On his way back to his room, he ran into Oswald.
“Hey, brother, we’ve got work again!
This time it’s Mr.
Maroni’s casino.
All we have to do is handle security until three in the morning, and we’ll each get two hundred dollars.”
Will nodded mechanically.
“What’s wrong?
Cheer up!
This should be your first assignment outside the East End.
You might even get a chance to see Mr.
Maroni in person!”
“Oh…
Okay!”
Not wanting to make Oswald feel awkward, he reluctantly forced a smile onto his face.
But honestly, it looked pretty awful.
He would have been better off not forcing it.
How could Will possibly smile?
Three months had passed since his transmigration, yet the system still hadn’t appeared.
There was no shop that could be unlocked by completing missions, no superpowers, and he didn’t even know how he was supposed to return home.
According to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, once a person had satisfied the two basic needs of physiological and safety requirements, they would naturally start looking for something else to do.
But what?
Will loved open-world games.
He had lost count of how many all-nighters he had spent playing The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.
But right now, all he wanted was to empty his mind and pray for an auto-navigation system.
You threw me into this godforsaken place, and I’ll put up with that.
But why?
You at least have to tell me what I’m supposed to do!
Back in his room, he opened the wardrobe, which was filled with the smell of mothballs.
Inside hung a completely black suit.
A prerequisite for joining the Romans was having a sharp, well-tailored suit.
If you could slick your hair back with some pomade while you were at it, even better.
Living in a bottom-rung apartment while dressing like a respectable gentleman.
Just as Will took down the suit, a superhero comic slipped out of the inner pocket and fell to the floor.
He didn’t remember ever reading comics.
In fact, he wasn’t even sure whether superhero comics existed in this world.
He picked it up and flipped through the pages.
He quickly realized that things weren’t so simple.
This was actually a comic about Batman.
For three whole months, Will had finally seen that name in Gotham.
Even if it only existed in a comic, it was enough to get him excited.
The villain in the comic was a biological sciences doctor named Hugo Strange.
Doctor Strange needed money for his experiments, so he borrowed money from Maroni at exorbitant interest rates.
Unable to repay the debt, he was humiliated by his creditor.
Consumed by resentment, the doctor brought his research result—three biological monsters—and launched a surprise attack on Maroni’s casino.
He killed everyone inside and swept all the money off the gambling tables.
The comic’s story abruptly stopped there.
There were clearly plenty of pages remaining, but they were all blank.
“Is this the system’s hint?
This really is a damn open-world game!”
Will rubbed his disheveled long hair and cursed.
He wasn’t an idiot.
After extracting the key word “casino” and thinking it over, he quickly figured it out.
The reason there was no continuation was because he and Oswald would be going to the casino as security guards.
And then, just like the cannon fodder in the comic whose faces weren’t even worth drawing, they would be torn into strips of meat by those biological monsters.
Looks like these two hundred dollars are hazard pay.
Without this hint, Will would definitely die tonight.
But with this prophetic comic, he felt he could still be saved.
The most urgent thing was figuring out how to survive.
Should he simply tell Oswald the truth?
“Hey, brother, I have a comic here that says we’re both going to die tonight!”
There was no way in hell the man would believe him.
Besides, two hundred dollars was no small sum.
Oswald was the kind of person willing to take risks for money.
And he genuinely had the ability to do so.
Last week, the two of them had encountered a group of lunatics wearing red hoods outside the apartment.
Oswald had taken on more than a dozen of them single-handedly and beaten them until they couldn’t get back up.
The only price he had paid was tearing the seat of his dress pants.
Or perhaps he could simply pretend to be sick and not go?
That was a good idea.
But he wasn’t willing to let Oswald face the danger alone.
Oswald had gotten him out of prison, found him a job, and even lent him money to buy a suit.
In this godforsaken place called Gotham, Oswald was a breath of fresh air.
He was also the only person Will could truly call a friend.
“Forget it!
What’s the point of thinking so much?
I’ll just deal with whatever comes!”
After putting on his suit, Will tucked the comic into the small of his back.