Ignoring him, Barbara turned and walked toward the security guard. Her stride was so determined she looked like she was on her way to deliver a campaign speech for the student council, even though she had no intention of ever joining it in her life.
Chen Mo walked in the other direction. He made his way near the entrance of the back kitchen and leaned against the wall, turning himself into a completely inconspicuous background element.
From that position, he could just see the cart, Barbara's back, and he was also not far from the cleaning cart.
Barbara walked up to the security guard, came to a halt, and looked up. She wasn't tall, but the way she tilted her head back to speak carried absolutely no sense of vulnerability.
"Sir, I'd like to report an issue." Her voice was extremely polite--so polite that the guard nodded subconsciously and said, "Go ahead."
Barbara began to speak.
She talked about how during today's lunch distribution, some students who originally attended this school had made discriminatory remarks targeting the newly arrived ultra-impoverished students while watching the commotion. She noted that these comments might violate Section 7 of the Third Amendment of the Gotham City Educational Equality Regulations concerning the campus linguistic environment, and as a member of the student council...
She paused here for a moment. As someone "in the vicinity" of the student council, she felt it necessary to formally report this to the school administration, but she didn't know what procedure to follow.
"Do you know what form needs to be filled out for this kind of complaint?" Barbara asked, her eyes so bright that the guard felt like he was facing a fourteen-year-old lawyer.
She rattled off a long string of jargon. He didn't understand a single word, but it just felt like she made a lot of sense.
Just like a lawyer.
The guard opened his mouth, his mind frantically searching for what exactly a "linguistic environment regulation" was.
Of course he didn't know, because he was a security guard, not an educational policy researcher.
But he couldn't admit he didn't know. Adults share a common weakness: they cannot appear ignorant of the rules in front of a kid.
"You'll have to ask the administrative office for that," the guard said.
When in doubt, pass the buck.
"But the administrative office is on lunch break right now," Barbara said. Chen Mo had told her this; he had noticed the lunch break light was on by the office door. "Could you write down what happened for me first? I'm afraid I'll forget by this afternoon."
The guard hesitated for a moment before pulling out a crumpled notepad.
Barbara began to describe the incident in immense detail--so detailed that it included what color shoes the middle-class boy was wearing, the exact words he spoke, whether his tone was high or low, and whether he looked back when he left.
It was so detailed that anyone with experience could instantly tell this person was entirely fictional.
The guard kept his head down writing, occasionally looking up to confirm details.
This was the timing Chen Mo needed.
On the seventh second after the guard's gaze left the hot meal box, Chen Mo moved.
There were no spider-webs, no superpowers--just a pair of eyes and a pair of very light shoes.
As Chen Mo walked past the cleaning cart, the heel of his shoe naturally brushed against the rubber pad beneath the wheel.
The cleaning cart had already been leaning askew. With this gentle nudge, the wheel slid sideways by less than two centimeters. Those two centimeters were enough.
The mop handle protruding from the side of the cleaning cart slowly leaned toward the adjacent tray return rack.
The plastic tray on the top shelf of the return rack was nudged by the plastic clip of the mop handle. It didn't fall, but its angle shifted by half a turn.
Chen Mo didn't stop walking. He continued to the back kitchen entrance and leaned against the wall, his expression still resembling a statue that proclaimed, "I have nothing to do with this."
Three seconds later, a sharp scraping sound echoed through the cafeteria. It sounded like metal screaming--short and piercing, enough to give anyone goosebumps.
The tray on the top shelf of the return rack finally slid off, taking three plates down with it to the floor and crashing in a succession of loud clatters.
Everyone turned around at the same time.
Gunfire couldn't make Gotham students turn their heads, but the sound of food trays hitting the ground could.
Barbara turned around too, her expression switching so fast it was like she had changed faces. A second ago she was making a serious accusation; a second later she became an ordinary student startled by a loud noise.
She even clutched her chest in coordination, looking incredibly convincing.
The guard snapped his head up, subconsciously glancing in the direction of the hot meal box for a fraction of a second. In that exact fraction of a second, the box of hot meals on the cart--nudged by an elbow as a cafeteria staff member frantically rushed to steady the return rack--slowly and very innocently slid forward.
The cart rolled for two meters before bumping into the raised metal transition strip on the floor, causing the entire box to jolt violently.
The lid on the top layer popped straight open, and three boxes of hot meals tumbled out, crashing onto the floor. Soup splashed out, and chunks of chicken rolled half a turn before coming to a stop in the crevices of the tiles.
The cafeteria fell silent in an instant, so quiet that one could hear that half a chicken leg was still steaming.
The staff member's face went completely pale. Her first reaction wasn't to distribute food, but to rush over, pick up the meal boxes, and try to slap the lids back on.
Barbara saw the three ruined meal boxes on the floor. The meat sauce had already seeped into the tile crevices, and the crispy skin from the chicken leg was shattered all over the ground, clearly making it unfit to eat.
She turned to look at Chen Mo, who was leaning against the wall by the entrance.
Chen Mo didn't look at her; his eyes were fixed on the brake clip beneath the cart.
That clip had been loose to begin with, and no one had pushed it all the way down when parking it earlier. With this impact, it snapped completely open. The cart was still resting against the metal strip, its wheels vibrating slightly, ready to slide again at any moment.
Barbara tilted her chin up.
The staff member had already frantically slapped the lid back on. Her other hand was gripping the cart tightly, a "we're doomed" expression plastered across her face.
Barbara suddenly spoke up. Her voice wasn't loud, but every word felt like a stone dropping into still water: "The hot meals have left the kitchen operations area, and some of the food items have directly hit the ground and been ruined. According to food safety procedures, this box of items cannot be resealed and stored."
The staff member turned to look at her. "You're just a student--"
"Gordon," Barbara said. "My last name is Gordon. My dad is a hero, and he's also the Commissioner of the Gotham City Police Department. So if you want someone to sign off on this, I can call him over to sign it for you. He happens to be free this afternoon."
She bit down very lightly on the word "hero," but placing it right before "Police Commissioner" gave it just the right amount of weight.
"If there's a problem, maybe we could try calling the police?" Chen Mo chimed in at this moment, still pretending to look innocent.
The staff member's mouth opened and closed. Gordon. The surname of the Gotham Police Chief.
You might not be afraid of a student, but you'd better be afraid of a kid from the Gordon family who could call the Police Commissioner over at any moment.
Saying that calling the police was useless was something meant for the poor bastards in the East End slums and docks.
If this emergency call was placed from Wayne Manor, do you think it would be useless?
Why the hell did you come here instead of staying in a private school?
The staff member glared at Barbara Gordon with a resentful look.
The surrounding students remained standing; no one spoke.
The guard had broken into a sweat from the loud crash earlier, and now all that sweat had gone cold. He subconsciously glanced at Barbara, then at the ruined food on the floor. His mouth opened and closed, but in the end, he said nothing.
Barbara didn't say anything more either.
She just stood there, her legs perfectly straight, her chin slightly raised, her red hair gleaming faintly under the pale light of the bug zapper.
Seeing her posture, Chen Mo silently took a step back, returning to his previous spot and completely surrendering the protagonist's spotlight to her.
Barbara didn't look at him, but she knew he had retreated.
She cursed inwardly; this guy really knew how to hide.
The staff member was still struggling. Calling the police was out of the question, but...
"These are the reserved meals for this afternoon's visit, it's really not--"
"Then write a report," Barbara interrupted, her tone no longer sounding quite like a student's. "Write clearly that a brake failure on the cart caused the hot meals to slide out of the kitchen operations area, resulting in some food items hitting the ground and being destroyed. The remaining thirty-six portions cannot be returned to storage due to food safety procedures and must be distributed as an emergency measure to the students waiting for food who were missed during today's lunch."
The staff member's face turned white.
She wasn't just afraid of Barbara; she was afraid of the word "report." In the Gotham education system, the report species was an apex predator. It didn't bite people, but it would crawl along emails onto payroll sheets and settle down to breed there.
The guard wanted to speak, but Barbara turned her head to look at him.
She didn't shout. She just asked very calmly, "Are you going to take responsibility for this box of food? Will you sign off on it?" The guard's lips twitched, and in the end, he said nothing.
The distribution of hot meals began.
Barbara stood beside the window, personally handing each box of food to the students waiting in front.
Her movements were swift. There was no pity or pride on her face, only something raw but unyielding--the kind of thing that, just as Chen Mo had said earlier about "this world needs reckless heroes," didn't belong to logic or calculation. It belonged only to someone willing to run ahead first just to see how deep the pit was.
Chen Mo had returned to her side at some unknown point, holding a box of hot meals in his hands.
Barbara didn't know when that box of food had been handed to him. She only saw Chen Mo stuff the meal box into his backpack, and then she asked him why he wasn't eating.
Chen Mo said he had a Bruce with a broken leg at home.
"What?"
Barbara, who had just completely dominated the room, slowly formed a question mark over her head.
"Actually, I can't really say his leg is broken now. Strictly speaking, his leg healed a few days ago," Chen Mo explained with a serious expression.
"My puppy."
"..."
"Then you should use 'it,' not 'he'!"
Barbara glared at Chen Mo, then tried hard to suppress the corners of her mouth which were about to curve upward.
"You know what?"
Barbara suddenly spoke, her eyes still fixed on those students. "When I was little, I watched my dad work a case. There was a guy who stole a massive amount of money, but his accounting was so clean that no one could find any evidence. My dad didn't go through his bank accounts; he went to look at the man's tax returns instead. In the end, that man went down because he left out one item of income on his tax form."
"The IRS is awesome."
Chen Mo pretended not to catch her drift.
"..."
"Let's just end our friendship right now. I don't want to see you anymore."
"Hey, don't be like that. Why are you getting worked up after just a couple of sentences? Don't you just mean that people from your Gordon family don't like to collide with enemies head-on? You like to look for the lock's structure and then let the lock spit out the key itself."
Considering that he would still need to use Gotham's police system in the future, Chen Mo immediately pivoted.
"But you didn't even touch those locks today."
Barbara finally turned her head to look at him. Her eyes were like two screwdrivers just pulled out of a drawer--not piercing, but capable of unscrewing you to see what structure lay inside.
"You didn't even go near the cart. You turned the procedure into your tool."
Chen Mo fell silent for a moment, and then said very sincerely, "I'm just an innocent minor who happens to know how to look at a brake clip."
Barbara glanced at him. The corner of her mouth twitched slightly, but she forced it back into a cold sneer.
She didn't press him further on how exactly he had learned to look at brakes, find timing gaps, and calculate a security guard's attention span. Since it was only their second day knowing each other, she decided for now not to look too deeply into whether this Asian boy belonged to the category of "trouble," "suspicious," or "dangerous."
But there was one thing she was already certain of--he reminded her of someone.
That person also liked to beat around the bush, liked not to take action personally, and liked to let enemies defeat themselves.
Lately, some manga artist had drawn a doujinshi about that person, and it was taking the city by storm.
It was really good.
She just didn't know why the author updated so slowly.
So slowly that Barbara had once thought the author had been assassinated by Batman himself.