The morning in the attic was as sunless as ever, featuring only a leaking ceiling, moldy wallpaper, and the highly unbothered crunching sound of the puppy, Bruce, munching on his dog food.
Chen Mo sat cross-legged in front of the broken sofa. Spreads before him was a crumpled piece of scratch paper detailing today's budget: expired bread, dog food, iodophor, ink for drawings, and, if life still held any hope, a box of chicken breast.
He stared at the words "chicken breast" for three seconds before finally crossing it out with his pencil.
Bruce looked up at him, his tail sweeping against the wall of the cardboard box, as if expressing some sort of critique from a wealthy class perspective.
"Don't look at me," Chen Mo pointed at him. "You ate fifteen dollars' worth of puppy food yesterday, while I ate three compressed biscuits. Which of us acts more like a young master of the Wayne family? Don't you have any sense of it yourself?"
The puppy, Bruce, clearly had no sense of it. He lowered his head and continued to munch on his food, chewing with great rhythm, as if Gotham's financial crisis had absolutely nothing to do with him.
Chen Mo fished out the money hidden in the sofa crease and counted it again. One thousand four hundred and eighty-two dollars, the number remained unchanged. Money wouldn't grow on its own--a fact that highly contradicted the basic perks of a transmigrator.
Just as he was about to stuff the money back, a piercing horn suddenly blared from the street below, sounding like a scrapped school bus using its final signs of life to denounce capitalism.
"East End Temporary Educational Registration Point now open! Wayne Foundation Special Enrollment Initiative! Children with no fixed residence, school dropouts, and illegal immigrant children can all register! Free breakfast! Free lunch! Free school bus!"
Chen Mo's hand froze mid-air.
He slowly turned his head to look out the window, his expression as if he had just heard Gotham City Hall announce that starting today, everyone would get free cash, crime would drop to zero, and Batman would off-work and go home to sleep.
The yellow school bus downstairs stopped at the intersection. Its paint was peeling so badly it looked like it had a skin disease, yet a brand-new blue and white logo was plastered on its side: Wayne Foundation Educational Outreach Vehicle.
Two people wearing reflective vests stood by the vehicle door. One held a registration clipboard, while the other had a tattoo half-exposed on his arm. The tattoo was forcibly covered up by a band-aid, looking like a very diligent but completely useless effort.
Chen Mo narrowed his eyes.
He had seen that tattoo before, on a low-level thug of the Maroni family. Now that this guy was wearing a volunteer vest, his entire vibe instantly transformed from a gang temp to an educator.
Gotham really was a city that provided its citizens with career transition opportunities.
Downstairs, several homeless youths had already been "invited" out of cardboard boxes, abandoned cars, and alleys. The so-called invitation consisted of two beefy men standing on either side, smiling like slaughterhouse employees about to escort piglets onto a truck.
A skinny, tanned kid tried to escape by crawling under the chassis, but a reflective-vest guy reached out and hooked him by the collar, lifting him like a cat unwilling to take a bath.
"Brother, don't run," the man said in a gentle tone. "It's just school, not like we're sending you to Arkham. The Wayne Foundation gives subsidies per head. If you don't go, my lunch voucher for today is gone."
After listening, Chen Mo slowly closed the window.
Three seconds later, he pushed the window open a bit more.
It wasn't that he wanted to join the fun, but the terms "free breakfast" and "free lunch" carried a destructive power in the Gotham slums comparable to strategic nuclear weapons.
Hiss...
Just as Chen Mo was debating whether to pretend he hadn't heard anything, the system in his mind suddenly gave a soft chime.
The general message conveyed was that minor superheroes ought to receive a basic education.
Chen Mo closed his eyes and took a deep breath of the moldy air.
"System, you know what? Every time you speak up, it makes me feel like you're not a Spider-Man system, but a neighborhood committee auntie system."
The system did not argue back.
A system that could only beep lacked the capability to chat.
But then again, skipping school was called teenage rebellion for ordinary people, but for Spider-Man, it might be considered a complete collapse of his public persona.
Chen Mo hid the money securely, filled up Bruce's water and dog food, jammed the attic window shut from the inside, and finally threw on a tattered canvas bag.
The canvas bag contained his suit, a few pages of drawings, and the half-broken pencil he had snapped.
Climbing down the side of the building, his feet landed right into a puddle of black water.
Chen Mo looked down at the tops of his shoes, then at the dilapidated school bus filled with a charitable aura in the distance, suddenly feeling like his life resembled a soggy french fry.
Forget it. Even though his spider-sense didn't tingle, this scene was so bizarre, maybe it was better not to go to school after all?
Just as Chen Mo intended to hug the wall and bypass them, the woman holding the clipboard turned and spotted him.
Her eyes lit up, like a market vendor seeing a fish actively leap onto the chopping board.
"You! Kid! Come over and register!"
Chen Mo immediately flashed a sunny, harmless, poor yet resilient smile.
"Ma'am, I think there might be a slight misunderstanding here. Although I look like a minor, my psychological age is actually very mature--mature enough to pay taxes independently. Though currently, I have no taxes to pay."
The woman flipped through her clipboard with a blank expression.
"Age?"
"Fifteen, or fourteen, depending on which one is more convenient for your side," Chen Mo said sincerely, attempting a final struggle. "Personally, I suggest filling in eighteen. That way, it saves trouble for both you and me."
The woman raised her head, looking at him with the gaze of someone well-accustomed to Gotham street scammers.
"No fixed residence?"
Chen Mo fell silent for a moment.
This question was far too offensive.
"I have a residence," Chen Mo said seriously. "It just has no legal meaning, no water or electricity bills, no door number, and no landlord knows I'm living inside."
The woman checked an item on the form: No fixed residence.
Watching her write it down, Chen Mo felt a wave of complex emotions.
Another burly man in a reflective vest walked over, a highly professional smile plastered on his face, though the underlying gang flavor beneath that smile hadn't been washed clean.
"Kid, get on the bus. New policy from the Wayne Foundation--all school-aged, unenrolled children in the East End must be registered. You don't need to wait for mail; it's fine if you don't have an address. We're responsible for tracking people down at their doorsteps."
Chen Mo looked at him in shock.
"Tracking people down at their doorsteps? You call this a doorstep? The place I live doesn't even have a door."
The big man shrugged.
"So we changed it to tracking people down on the streets. Most homeless kids don't have doors where they live."
Chen Mo understood.
When the mail couldn't be delivered, the policy simply evolved into physical delivery.
Gotham's compulsory education specialized in random street spawns--catching whoever they encountered.
He glanced inside the school bus.
Over a dozen children sat inside. Some clutched moldy blankets, some held stolen canned food in their arms, and some had strips of cloth in gang colors wrapped around their wrists.
In the furthest corner, a young boy was hiding a razor blade under the sole of his shoe. Halfway through hiding it, he noticed Chen Mo watching him, so he very politely stuffed the blade a bit further inside.
Chen Mo nodded at him.
The little boy nodded back.
This was Gotham children's social etiquette: don't expose each other's contraband, and everyone can still be classmates.
When Chen Mo boarded the bus, the big man at the door made a note on the clipboard. Chen Mo's sharp eyes caught a small receipt pasted next to it.
"East End Community Cooperation Station: For every preliminary registration of a dropout child completed, a forty-dollar subsidy is awarded; upon completing school enrollment reporting, additional meal packages and safety supplies will be provided."
Chen Mo suddenly understood.
The Wayne Enterprises wanted to send kids to school, the community station wanted to collect subsidies, and the remnants of the gangs wanted to take a cut from the community station. Thus, a brand-new ecological chain was born on the streets of Gotham: catching kids for school.
Was this absurd?
Absurd.
But considering this was Gotham, it actually appeared slightly progressive.
As the school bus started up, a crow sat perched on a telephone pole at the corner of the street.
The crow tilted its head, its bead-like black eyes fixed on Chen Mo. It didn't caw, but merely watched quietly, like a black button pinned against the sky.
Chen Mo locked eyes with it for two seconds.
"What are you looking at," he muttered under his breath. "Never seen a Spider-Man get dragged off to school before?"
The crow flapped its wings but didn't fly away.
....
Meanwhile, in the underground data room of Wayne Tower, Bruce Wayne stood before a massive screen, watching outreach vehicles move across the map of Gotham.
Each blue dot represented a registration vehicle, each white dot represented a registered child, and each red dot represented an anomaly on site.
There were many red dots.
A great many.
So many that Alfred, standing nearby with a cup of tea, watched for three seconds before speaking tactfully, "Master Bruce, your education initiative seems to be undergoing a local Gotham adaptation."
Bruce did not speak.
His gaze rested on the real-time footage from the third registration vehicle in the East End. The vehicle's camera captured an Asian youth boarding the bus. His movements were too light for an ordinary child, and as he took his seat, his shoulders instinctively avoided the attack radius of everyone in the back row.
Alfred saw it too.
"This child looks somewhat familiar," the old butler said. "Of course, I mean the kind of familiar that 'constantly crawls around on your surveillance screens.'"
Bruce zoomed in on the image.
The youth wore a faded hoodie. His face was unmasked, his gaze clear, and his expression innocent, yet the corner of his mouth carried a slight, noticeable curve of dissatisfaction with the world.
Gait match: ninety-seven percent.
Compensatory movement match following shoulder and neck injury.
Recent signs of high-intensity gripping and pressure on the right knuckles.
Bruce remained silent for a long time.
"Do not interfere," he said. "Do not give him a special channel."
Alfred glanced at him.
"You launch a city-wide educational initiative to sweep in every homeless child without an identity, and then say no special channel. Master Bruce, that statement is statistically very amusing."
Bruce kept his eyes fixed on the screen.
"Arranging an identity for him alone would expose him. It would also expose that I am looking for him. Gotham doesn't just lack one student file; Gotham has thousands of children who aren't in the files at all."
His voice was very low as he said this.
"Sending mail is useless; they have no address. Making phone calls is useless; they have no numbers. Waiting for them to come forward voluntarily is even more useless. The people who need this policy the most will never receive the notice."
Alfred gave a soft sigh.
"So you chose to let the notice grow its own legs and catch people on the street."
Bruce looked at the youth forced to ride the school bus in the footage, the corner of his mouth moving almost imperceptibly.
"It works for now."