In Gotham’s Upper East Side, inside a private villa owned by the Wayne family, the speakers by the pool made the water tremble.
The low-frequency bass was like an invisible hand, dragging everyone’s heartbeat into the same mindless rhythm.
Bruce Wayne leaned against the open-air bar, the glass of whiskey in his hand having been held there for forty minutes while the liquid level had barely dropped.
The ice had long since melted, diluting the drink into a cloudy, pale amber.
Someone nearby laughed, the sound sharp as fingernails scraping across a chalkboard.
A third-rate actress was trying to drape herself over his arm, her perfume as thick as a chemical weapon—tuberose, with base notes of musk and patchouli.
The top notes had already faded, leaving only the cloying, nauseating scent of pollen in the heart notes.
Bruce mentally deconstructed her perfume formula.
It was the only way he could ignore the burning sensation in his nasal passages.
He smiled.
A standard Wayne smile.
The curve of his lips was just right, his gaze unfocused and gentle, like an heir whose brain had been hollowed out by alcohol and debauchery, leaving behind only a handsome face.
No one ever really looked into the eyes of someone like that.
Across the pool, two rich kids were arguing about something.
One of them pulled a pocket watch from his suit jacket, its casing inlaid with a ring of blue diamonds that looked far too unnatural to be real.
Heat-treated color modification, Bruce judged internally.
Type IIa diamonds annealed at high temperatures, lattice reconstruction, brown turned to blue.
The cost was probably between one million and 1.2 million dollars.
The rich kid spun the pocket watch around his finger and said, “No, I didn’t buy it. I won it last month at a Monaco casino from the son of some bankrupt Greek shipping tycoon.”
When he said the word “won,” his tongue clicked against his teeth as if savoring dessert.
The other rich kid, unwilling to lose, claimed that the door handles in his yacht’s bathroom were inlaid with meteorite slices.
“You can touch outer space while you wash your hands.”
Meteorite slices.
Iron meteorite.
Widmanstätten patterns.
The market price was about three to five hundred dollars per gram, and the material for a single door handle could feed a longshoreman’s family at the docks for fifteen years.
Bruce raised his glass and politely clinked it against the champagne offered by the owner of the meteorite door handles.
He did not even let his lips touch the rim.
His gaze drifted past the edge of the pool, over the terrace railing, across the layered lights of the Upper East Side, and landed in the direction of the South District docks.
“Excuse me.”
Bruce Wayne set down his glass and gave the actress still hanging off his arm a standard, meaningless smile.
“There’s a boring board meeting tomorrow. I need to go back and get some beauty sleep.”
The actress pouted and said something along the lines of, “You always do this.”
Bruce did not listen.
He had already turned and was walking through the crowd with the same frivolous gait as any other playboy hollowed out by alcohol and nightlife.
The Lamborghini’s engine roared at the street corner before quickly disappearing into the night.
Three minutes later, a black Batmobile drove out from a hidden exit beneath Wayne Manor, slipping into the shadows of Gotham’s night like a silent armored beast.
In the Batcave, Bruce changed out of his custom suit twice as fast as he had put it on.
The scent of perfume still clung to his collar—tuberose, musk, patchouli.
He threw his shirt into the laundry basket with controlled roughness.
Not because he had a problem with the shirt, but because he had a problem with being forced to smell chemical weapons for four hours.
At this moment, the newly debuted Batman still seemed human.
At least, he still possessed human emotions.
Alfred stood by the workbench.
“Master, here is the information you requested on the ‘Pajama Freak.’ By the way, you left forty minutes earlier than your monthly average tonight. The media may use the headline ‘Wayne Heir Suspected of Kidney Failure’ tomorrow.”
Bruce did not respond.
That kind of dad joke was too cold to be worth continuing.
Sitting down in front of the main screen, Bruce opened the first surveillance clip.
South District docks.
Timestamp: two weeks ago, 2:14 AM.
A thin figure vaulted down from a wall.
Red and blue clothing.
Calling that outfit a “suit” would have been far too generous.
It was a handmade creation pieced together from old pajamas and a hoodie, the stitches uneven, the seams on the chest already split in several places, revealing the washed-out gray undershirt beneath.
The frame was slight, the shoulder width not even two-thirds that of an adult male.
He crouched on the edge of a shipping container, looking down at what was happening below: a knife-wielding robber and a longshoreman cornered against the wall.
Bruce thought he would pounce.
Any normal adult with strength and a moral conscience, when faced with such an unequal crime, would instinctively end it with speed and violence.
That was the rule of Gotham.
The strong spoke with power, the weak spoke with flight, and there was no third language.
But he did not pounce.
He raised both hands, jumped down from the container, and landed between the robber and the victim.
Palms out, fingers spread—a non-aggressive, almost clumsy posture.
“Don’t do anything rash, buddy. That knife looks pretty sharp. If you cut yourself, you’ll need a tetanus shot. Do you know how expensive that is? Are you sure your health insurance covers it? Mine definitely doesn’t.”
The robber swung the knife.
Bruce subconsciously began calculating the thin figure’s evasion route.
He would go left.
His center of gravity had shifted to the right, with a shipping container on the left and open space on the right.
The optimal solution was to use the edge of the container to perform a backflip.
A normal person would make that move.
But this person was clearly not normal.
He did not dodge.
The “Pajama Freak” turned sideways with minimal movement.
The tip of the blade grazed the messy stitches on his chest, missing by less than two centimeters.
Then he grabbed the robber’s wrist, twisted, and pushed.
The entire process took less than four seconds.
The robber’s knife fell to the ground, and immediately afterward, the “Pajama Freak” released him.
The robber fled in panic.
The surveillance showed the “Pajama Freak” standing in place for another two minutes, looking down at the bag of bread the robber had dropped.
The packaging was covered in dust, and the toast inside had been squashed out of shape, but it was still intact and unopened.
He bent down, picked it up, and patted the dust off the packaging.
Then he looked left and right, confirmed the alley was empty, stuffed the bread into his clothes, and quickly scurried away along the wall.
Bruce stared at the thin, small figure moving along the wall.
He tapped his fingers on the keyboard twice and rewound the footage to replay it.
Picking up the bread.
Looking left and right.
Stuffing it into his clothes.
Scurrying away along the wall.
“He took the bread.”
Bruce’s voice was very soft.
It did not sound like a statement, but more like he was confirming a fact he himself could not quite believe.
Alfred stood behind him, the tray in his hands perfectly steady.
“A vigilante who takes carbohydrates from a crime scene. Considering the cost of living in Gotham, this behavior does possess a certain economic rationality.”
Bruce still did not respond.
He pulled up the second surveillance clip.
The entrance to an alley in the East District.
A family sedan had overturned on the road, its chassis facing the street, the fuel tank leaking.
A homeless man was pinned under the edge of the car, his leg trapped in the gap between the chassis and the ground.
The crowd of onlookers stood in a safe semicircle, holding up their phones, with no one stepping forward.
That thin red-and-blue figure crawled over from the wall.
He landed.
No hesitation, no assessment, not even a single pause of “Can I do this?”
He gripped the edge of the car’s chassis with both hands, knees bent, back tensed.
Bruce opened the force measurement system.
The curb weight of the car was 1.3 tons.
In its overturned state, lifting one side of the chassis and prying open a gap large enough for an adult to pull their leg free required an instantaneous explosive force of about 3.8 to 4 tons.
In the footage, that thin body looked like a spring stretched to its limit.
The stitches along his spine burst completely.
He lifted the car, raising the chassis roughly forty centimeters off the ground.
The homeless man pulled his leg out and scrambled to a safe distance.
The “Pajama Freak” lowered the car, and the body slammed into the ground, kicking up a cloud of dust.
Before the homeless man could turn to thank him, he had already climbed up the wall and disappeared into the shadows of the alley.
From landing to leaving, it took no more than forty seconds.
Bruce opened the third surveillance clip.
The entrance of a convenience store in the West District.
A robber was threatening the clerk with a knife.
The “Pajama Freak” cut in from the side.
Without throwing a punch, he opened his palm and pushed against the robber’s chest.
The man flew backward, crashing into a pile of cardboard boxes three meters away.
Bruce placed the three clips side by side on the main screen.
On the left, lifting a car to save someone, with a power burst value of four tons.
In the middle, pushing away the criminal.
On the right, picking up bread and slipping away along the wall.
The same person.
The same hands.
Bruce leaned back in his chair, tapping his fingers twice against the armrest, the rhythm steady, the interval between each tap as precise as a metronome.
He stared at the three frames, his pupils contracting slightly under the cold light of the screen.
“He is in control. When he lifted the car, he used his full strength, because if he hadn’t, that person would have died. When he pushed the robber, he held back three-quarters of his strength, because if he hadn’t, the man’s ribs would have shattered. He has an extremely precise understanding of his own strength. He knows how much damage a single punch can inflict, and he deliberately avoids causing that result.”
He reached out and tapped the clip on the right, the one showing the bread pickup.
The thin, small figure froze in the center of the screen.
“He is hungry. He needs food. He possesses enough strength to lift a car with his bare hands. In Gotham, someone with that kind of power could obtain anything he wanted in countless ways. He chose the only way that wouldn’t hurt anyone: picking up a bag of dusty, crushed toast dropped by a robber at a crime scene.”
Bruce pulled up the timeline for the past half month.
From the first sighting until now, the boy’s movement pattern had always been climbing and jumping.
No record of web-shooting.
Until yesterday.
The South Shore docks.
Surveillance had captured him firing some kind of white, thread-like substance from his wrist, hooking it onto a crane beam, and swinging across the width of the alley.
Bruce zoomed in on the footage, watching the trajectory of the silk spray and the adhesion method frame by frame.
The nozzle was on the inside of his wrist.
There was no mechanical device.
The way the thread expanded in the air was not pre-woven fiber, but a liquid secretion that solidified rapidly upon contact with air.
“It’s biological. Not equipment, but a physiological structure. Half a month ago, he could only climb walls. Yesterday, he developed the ability to shoot webs. His body is changing. His genes themselves are gradually expressing new traits. Strength, climbing, web-shooting—one after another, like something dormant inside him is waking up in sequence. Four tons is only the limit measured for now, not his endpoint.”
Batman stood up and walked over to the clue wall, which was not yet full.
The “Pajama Freak” section only had a few strings connecting location tags: the South District docks, the East District alley entrance, and the West District convenience store.
He pinned a screenshot in the very center.
That thin back view, slipping away along the wall, so skinny he looked like he might snap in a strong wind.
Then he began to speak, using the emotionless, purely deductive tone Batman used when constructing a profile.
“At Gotham Harbor last month, a dockworker smashed his foreman’s scapula with an iron hook because he had been shorted twenty dollars in handling fees. In the East District, three fourteen-year-olds stabbed a peer seven times to steal a pair of limited-edition sneakers, then stood by and watched him bleed until the police arrived. At the West District convenience store, the week before last, a homeless man walked in and took a bag of bread from the shelf. The clerk pulled a shotgun from under the counter and broke two of his ribs.”
“This is Gotham.”
“A person can kill for twenty dollars, can kill for a pair of sneakers, and can be nearly killed for a bag of bread. This city teaches everyone living here the same thing: your needs are more important than someone else’s life. The hungry steal, the strong plunder, and the weak die. No one would put back food they had already secured while starving. No one would possess absolute power and choose to starve. No one.”
He paused.
His finger tapped the edge of the screenshot.
“He possesses four tons of strength. He could walk into any convenience store in Gotham and take anything he wanted. No one could stop him. He doesn’t need to rob, and he doesn’t even need to ask. He only needs to stand there and let others see his power, and someone would voluntarily hand him food. That is the logic of power.”
“But he doesn’t.”
“He chooses to pick up a bag of dusty, crushed toast dropped by a robber at a crime scene. He chooses not to accept thanks after saving people, instead simply climbing away. He chooses to push the robber away instead of shattering his ribs. He chooses to starve himself, even while possessing absolute power.”
“This is not just kindness.”
Bruce’s finger moved away from the edge of the screenshot.
He stared at that thin, small back, his voice very low, so low it sounded like he was squeezing the words out through his teeth.
“This is something even more bizarre. A person, while in a state of physiological extremity, still refuses to use his power to gain any benefit for himself. A person possessing every condition necessary to do evil at zero cost chooses the only behavioral pattern most disadvantageous to himself and most harmless to others.”
“This is not normal human nature.”
“Human nature collapses in the face of hunger, inflates in the face of power, and releases malice in the absence of consequences. He has not collapsed, not inflated, and not released anything. At every point where a crack in human nature should appear, he is like a machine programmed with absolute moral directives.”
“He displays a kind of abnormal, almost unsettling purity.”
Bruce turned around to face the clue wall, but the focus of his gaze was no longer on any of the screenshots.
He was looking at something more abstract.
“He is extremely materially deprived. His suit is pieced together from old clothes. No logistical support, no partner, no base. His mask is an old T-shirt. He is starving. His body is undergoing uncontrollable mutations, and every new ability that appears is likely accompanied by immense physical pain. He doesn’t know where his endpoint is. He doesn’t know what he will become.”
“Yet every time he acts, he controls his power within a nonlethal range.”
“It’s not because he is afraid to kill. It’s because he doesn’t want to kill. A person, while in a state of extreme distress himself, still chooses to use his limited power to protect others instead of improving his own situation. A person, while starving, still chooses restraint.”
“Gotham cannot produce such a person. No city can produce such a person.”
He paused for a long time.
“Such a… person shouldn’t exist in this world. It’s unreasonable. It’s not normal. It’s impossible.”
Alfred never interrupted him.
The old butler held the tray and stood in the shadows beside the workbench, his gaze resting on Bruce’s tense back.
He had seen all of Bruce Wayne’s states.
An angry Bruce would smash things.
A calculating Bruce would remain silent.
An exhausted Bruce would collapse into his chair and fall asleep.
This was the state Alfred had seen the least.
Bruce called it an “unwilling conclusion.”
When all the data and deductions pointed toward an answer he could not accept, he would verify it repeatedly, as if waiting for some overlooked variable to suddenly appear and overturn everything.
“Master.”
Alfred finally spoke, his voice very soft.
“You have been watching for forty minutes. Would you like to watch it again?”
Bruce did not answer.
He turned off the screen and walked toward the Batmobile.
“Master, where are you going?”
“To see him.”
“See what?”
Bruce gripped the steering wheel.
The vibration of the engine starting traveled from the chassis into his palms.
He looked up, through the gaps in the rock layers of the Batcave, toward Gotham’s permanently gray night sky above.
“To see who he is really fooling. Me, or himself.”
The Batmobile drove out of the cave.
Bruce gripped the steering wheel.
Rather than believe there was such a pure, such a kind person in this world, he would rather believe this was some mysterious prerequisite for a cult ritual.