At five in the morning, the air in Gotham was thick with the lingering scent of gunpowder and the musty stench rising from the sewers.
Leon stood in the back kitchen of Gary’s Sunny Bakery, staring down a massive lump of raw dough heavy enough to put an ordinary man in the hospital.
He dusted, kneaded, and pressed with fluid precision.
His movements were so fast they left afterimages.
If anyone saw him, they would assume he was a martial arts master who had traded the temple for a kitchen.
In reality, Leon had only been working here for three days.
On his first day, Boss Gary had tried to teach him how to “inject soul” into the dough.
After watching the man’s greasy, sloppy technique, Leon had backhanded the dough into perfect elasticity, casually cracking the heavy wooden cutting board in the process.
He had smiled politely the entire time, even while mentally cursing the American approach to baking.
He had thought the sandwich his landlady gave him the other day was stale, but it turned out that was just the texture of fresh bread in this country.
It was a complete waste of good food.
Boss Gary had shut his mouth right then and there.
Looking at Leon’s bright, harmless face, he concluded the kid was simply built for manual labor.
The kid was good; he worked fast, and he worked hard.
Leon was replaying his recent highlights in his mind while working the dough.
The image of those duffel bags full of cash being scattered from the water tower yesterday was still fresh in his memory.
Green hundred-dollar bills had swirled in the gray morning light, raining down onto corrugated tin roofs, clotheslines, and the doorsteps of shanties that hadn’t even turned their lights on yet.
It was a refreshing memory.
Although the bakery work was exhausting, it came with the unbeatable perk of two free meals a day.
In Gotham, when you were an undocumented minor refusing to join a gang, a place that let you eat your fill without pointing a gun at the back of your head—and actually paid you—was essentially heaven on earth.
Leon glanced back at the bread slowly expanding in the industrial oven.
The warm aroma drifted toward him, giving him a fleeting, unrealistic illusion.
Maybe there really was a ray of sunshine in Gotham after all.
Maybe people like Boss Gary and his wife, who worked diligently to run a legitimate business, were the quiet conscience of this city.
The only problem was the pay.
It was far too low to be a long-term solution.
And that comic manuscript had been under review for far too long.
They wouldn’t finish the review, they wouldn’t publish it, and they definitely wouldn’t pay the royalties.
It was infuriating.
Even so, Leon quietly hummed a few lines of a familiar tune.
“Spider-Man, Spider-Man…”
He was in a pretty good mood.
All things considered.
Boss Gary’s rotund figure, looking like an oversized, over-baked sourdough loaf, shuffled slowly into the room.
He was followed closely by his wife, who was dressed particularly garishly today.
Her tight-fitting dress squeezed her figure like a sausage casing ready to burst, and her nails were painted a stark, blood red.
Leon stopped what he was doing and flashed a standard, practiced, sunny smile.
“Morning, boss. Morning, ma’am. This batch of baguettes will be out in ten minutes.”
Boss Gary didn’t speak.
He just stared at Leon, a glint in his eyes that made the hairs on the back of Leon’s neck stand up.
He had seen that look before.
Back in the slums, that was exactly how the street-level pushers looked when inspecting a fresh batch of product.
The only difference was the pushers were looking at white powder.
Gary was looking at him.
Please don’t do this.
I literally just finished praising you guys in my head…
Gary stepped up to Leon’s right side, resting a thick, greasy, sweat-stained hand heavily on his shoulder.
At the exact same moment, the wife moved to his left.
Reeking of pungent, cheap perfume, she leaned into him, resting her red-nailed hand on his other shoulder.
Leon was trapped in the middle, like a patty being grilled on both sides.
He could feel the heat radiating from Gary’s rolls of fat right through his apron.
It felt like being wrapped in an oil-soaked rag that smelled faintly of day-old garlic.
The wife extended a finger, leisurely hooking it under the strap of Leon’s apron.
She tilted her head, her thickly painted lips parting to reveal a gold tooth that glinted coldly in the fluorescent light.
“Little Leon… are you tired?” Her voice sounded like metal scraping against sandpaper.
It made Leon’s ears ache.
Leon, desperately trying to hold onto his first legitimate job, felt his smile stiffen for a fraction of a second before recovering.
“Not at all. For the future of Sunny Bakery, I could knead another hundred batches.”
Gary chuckled, squeezing closer.
The smell of stale garlic drilled straight into Leon’s nostrils.
“The work is indeed excellent. And you really are… very pleasing to the eye.”
His hand squeezed Leon’s shoulder with an unnaturally heavy, lingering grip.
It wasn’t the encouraging pat of an employer; it was a buyer checking the firmness of the merchandise.
The wife took over, her manicured fingers slowly crawling up the apron strap until they came to rest against his collarbone.
Her long nails lightly grazed his skin, sending a nauseating chill down his spine.
Leon looked down at the flour-dusted cutting board.
The beautiful, naive dream he had harbored about “Gotham sunshine” shattered like cheap glass, leaving absolutely nothing behind.
He hated this city.
“I do. I believe the contract said five dollars an hour.” Leon’s tone remained perfectly even, as if he were simply discussing the oven temperature.
The wife giggled, her chest shaking violently.
“Five dollars is for the outsiders. As long as you’re a good, obedient boy, you won’t have to do any of this rough, dirty kitchen work ever again.”
She leaned in close to his ear, dropping her voice into a sickeningly clingy whisper.
“Just keep the two of us company. Just the two of us. Whatever you want to buy, sister will buy it for you.”
Gary nodded enthusiastically, his jowls wobbling.
“It beats washing dishes or hauling bricks out there, doesn’t it? This is Gotham, kid. This is an opportunity most people would kill for.”
Leon lowered his head, staring at his flour-covered hands.
These were the same hands that had effortlessly lifted an overturned SUV yesterday.
The same hands that had shattered a drug dealer’s jaw and rained hundred-dollar bills down onto the slums.
Now, they were covered in cheap flour, with bits of dried dough stuck beneath the fingernails.
He wondered if the cash he had scattered had just been thrown to the dogs.
He wondered why he had wasted three days of his life in this hellhole learning how to properly bake bread.
He wondered why he had actually been humming a superhero theme song just two minutes ago.
He had actually, genuinely believed there were good, normal people in this dump.
Leon had originally intended to say something polite to diffuse the situation.
Something like, I’m actually a very traditional guy, or I have a sick grandmother to take care of, or even I’m severely allergic to garlic.
But in the end, he didn’t say a word.
He just smiled, fully resigning himself to reality.
The smile was still bright and sunny.
Of course.
There was no such thing as a good person in Gotham.
He had been too naive.
He was the idiot trying to find a clean pearl at the bottom of a septic tank.
Leon lightly clapped his hands together, dusting off the flour.
He raised his head, looking first at the wife on his left, then at Gary on his right.
His gaze lingered on their faces for a second each, as if confirming something.
Then he spoke.
His voice was perfectly calm, as if he were just discussing how much yeast to add to the next batch.
“Fine. You two brought this on yourselves.”