It started raining in Gotham's East End at eight in the evening. The streetlights lit up the puddles, making it look as if the city had just washed its face and flushed its conscience down the drain along with the water.
If it ever had one, that is.
Chen Mo crouched on the roof across from an adult club, staring at the small red door in the back alley.
The club was called Red Velvet. The name made it sound like a dessert shop, but the posters at the entrance used practical actions to prove that it had absolutely nothing to do with sweets.
The neon lights were flashing hard, radiating a classic Gotham spirit of "no matter how poor you are, you've still gotta flaunt it."
As for why Spider-Man was crouching outside a club like this...
During the day, Chen Mo had memorized the tracking numbers on the food crates in the cafeteria. At night, he tracked them all the way along the walls, roofs, and back alleys.
He had originally thought he would find a mob warehouse, but instead, he found an adult club. Reality had won yet another ridiculous contest.
Two bouncers were currently standing at the back alley entrance. One was built like a refrigerator, and the other looked like his neck had skipped the factory settings.
The two were smoking, a blue food crate resting at their feet. The white Wayne Foundation label was still stuck to the side of the crate.
Chen Mo hung upside down beneath the drainage pipe, lowering himself from the rooftop inch by inch.
"Why the hell does this piece of trash still have the Foundation label on it? Didn't the manager tell us to rip it clean? Don't let the front-row guests see it. The guests are here to have fun, not to take a public welfare class."
"Then you rip it off. This damn thing is hard as hell to peel."
Having lowered himself to the perfect height, Chen Mo released his feet and dropped lightly behind them, his tone as enthusiastic as a door-to-door salesman: "Good evening, illegal catering redistribution enthusiasts! Is anyone here a fan of mine who needs an autograph or a photo?"
The refrigerator-shaped one was just about to turn around and pull his baton when Chen Mo kicked him right in the back of his knee. The bouncer's knee went weak, and he hit the ground with a loud thud.
The other opened his mouth to shout, but with a flick of Chen Mo's wrist, a web smacked over his mouth, pinning his entire face to the metal door of the back alley.
Chen Mo patted his shoulder: "Shh, no shouting in public spaces."
The kneeling bouncer swung a punch at him. Chen Mo slipped to the side to avoid it, driving his elbow into the back of the man's neck while delivering a gentle knee strike.
The hulking bouncer collapsed by the trash cans, looking like a piece of recyclable waste that had finally found its home.
Chen Mo tied the two into a neat bundle and stuck them against the wall.
"Don't move. You two are the kitchen door gods now. Make sure you stay in character during your cosplay."
Having dealt with the small fries, he pushed open the back door. Heat, the smell of alcohol, cheap perfume, and overnight grease instantly rushed out.
Chen Mo paused at the door, taking a serious sniff with his enhanced sense of smell to analyze the chemicals in the air, and immediately regretted it.
"Ugh... this smell is qualified to apply for an internship as a chemical weapon."
Over a dozen blue food crates were piled in the back kitchen, but the Wayne Foundation labels had been peeled off one by one and replaced with the club's own black stickers.
The stickers read "Employee Meal Subsidy" in a very formal font.
"Employee meal subsidy? Relief meals detouring from a school to the backstage of a strip club. Gotham's logistics should really change its name to Wicked Navigation. This route planning is way too underworld."
The backstage door was half-open, and the sound of women arguing drifted out. The voices were sharp, short, and fast, each sentence sounding like fingers scratching the edge of a table.
Chen Mo poked his head in. Five or six women were crowded around a vanity table.
They wore sequins, mesh, and cheap fabrics. Their makeup was heavy and the lights were bright, but exhaustion doesn't care for foundation, and concealer can't fix a hard life.
A white woman cradled two meal boxes, her face ash-pale and her lips dry and peeling. A Black woman had very thin arms, but her shoulders and back were tensed rigid. A Latina woman clutched a meal voucher, refusing to let go even with a broken fingernail.
Their eyes all looked very similar.
Different skin colors, different accents, but the same thing was written on their faces: hunger, fatigue, endurance, and a slight, unsettling sense of relief--relief that they weren't yet too old to lose the qualification of being chosen.
A man in a suit vest stood at the door holding a cigar, every inch of fat on his face screaming, "I hold the power of distribution."
He spoke slowly: "Stop arguing. Whoever performs well tonight gets an extra portion."
The manager waved the meal vouchers in his hand, his smile incredibly greasy: "But I'm the one in charge of handing out the meals... Bitches, show some gratitude."
This sentence made the backstage fall quiet for a moment. A woman said in a low voice that her daughter hadn't eaten at school today...
She spoke very softly, as if afraid that if her voice were any louder, even this shred of moral cover would be stripped away.
The manager shrugged. "The world doesn't stop just because a kid is hungry. You know this is a strip club, right? If you want to join a pity party, you've come to the wrong place."
"Wow, that line is pretty trash. Did you actually pass your villain training school graduation exam?"
Chen Mo leaned against the doorframe, talking while clapping his hands.
The moment the manager turned around and saw the red-and-blue color scheme, his expression instantly changed. The two mob lackeys behind him immediately reached for their guns.
But Chen Mo was much faster than them. A web from his left hand wrapped around the first man's wrist. With an upward yank, the gun flew out and smashed into the chandelier, sending a shower of sparks from the lightbulbs.
Just as the second man reached his hand inside his jacket, Chen Mo stepped off the wall, launching himself sideways and slamming his knee into the man's chest.
The man flew backward into a storage locker, buried under a cascade of canned food and meal boxes--a free buffet burial service.
The manager turned to run, but Chen Mo flicked a web, catching his leather shoe and dragging him back.
The manager flailed his hands blindly, knocking over a stack of food crates. The blue boxes crashed down, scattering meal boxes and vouchers all over the floor.
Smooth and seamless.
"So annoying. Why do you guys always pull guns when you see a spider? You clearly just run away whenever you see a bat."
Chen Mo narrowed his eyes, putting one hand on his hip while pointing accusingly at the three guys who had tried to attack him.
"Batman is the strongest!" The thug hanging from the chandelier let out the howl of a hardcore Batman fanboy.
Raising his hand to web the mouth of the short-sighted thug who dared to contradict his banter, Chen Mo grew even more displeased. "I'm jealous. Seriously."
The people backstage didn't scream, nor did they thank Spider-Man.
The scantily clad women lunged forward as if fighting for the last bus out of Gotham. Hands, arms, knees, and hair tangled together; no one wanted to let go.
One woman was pushed down. After scrambling back up, she cursed while stuffing the meal vouchers she gathered from the floor into her cleavage. Another woman's hand was stepped on. Her face went white from the pain, yet she still reached for a meal box with her other hand.
Chen Mo stood frozen, the banter catching in his throat.
He had just knocked down the bad guys, but the world hadn't automatically become better. It had simply gone from one asshole distributing food to a crowd of starving people fighting over it.
But who told him to be the friendly neighborhood Spider-Man? Might as well help them to the end.
"Stop," Chen Mo said, but nobody cared.
"...."
He hated this coldly violent city.
Chen Mo grabbed a nearby cleaning bucket and slammed it hard against the metal counter. The loud clang made even the vanity mirrors shake. "Everyone, the Red Velvet Food Scramble Championship is officially paused!"
With a backflip, he jumped onto the prep station, dodging a flying meal voucher, catching it mid-air, and tossing it back to its original owner.
"Don't fight, don't fight. Start lining up now. I repeat, line up. Otherwise, I'm going to use my webs to draw subway station crowd-control lines."
Chen Mo picked up the PA microphone on the wall, quickly splicing the wire into the club's sound system.
The music in the front lounge abruptly stopped. The next second, his youthful voice blasted through the speakers: "Attention, everyone! I hereby announce that Red Velvet is temporarily renamed the Homeless Cafeteria!"
A commotion broke out among the guests in the front lounge, likely assuming it was a new performance act.
Chen Mo continued his broadcast: "Line up backstage to receive your meals. No cutting, no pushing, and stop turning a children's relief program into the Hunger Games. Thank you for your cooperation."
The manager was webbed to the wall, half of his face pressed against a sign that read "No Smoking in the Employee Lounge." He was smart enough not to utter a single sound.
Please. Being webbed in the face wouldn't suffocate you, but it sure as hell was uncomfortable!
There was a reason he was the manager.
Organizing the crowd with a small megaphone, Chen Mo kicked the manager's shin as he walked past, then kicked each of the two mob lackeys once. He even delivered a flying kick to the hanging one, and finally didn't miss the staff member hiding behind the counter.
"Fairness," Chen Mo explained seriously. "I'm a big believer in educational equality. Everyone gets a share of the kicks. You should thank me for not implementing elite-tier kicking; that stuff charges a premium... You really should pay me for maintaining order."
The manager remained sensible enough not to talk back.
The line finally managed to form.
The women's faces didn't look good. Chronic hunger had pressed different skin colors into the same type of exhaustion. White skin looked grayish, black skin lost its luster, and brown skin looked as if it had been soaked in a rainy night for too long. Yet, every pair of eyes shone with a hard brightness.
Chen Mo handed out the boxes one by one, his movements fast and his mouth never resting. "Chicken, potatoes, rice, and a fruit cup. Congratulations, you have obtained a rare Gotham item: the dinner that was supposed to belong to your kid in the first place."
Some hands trembled as they took the boxes. Someone murmured a thank you, stopping halfway. Chen Mo pushed the box forward: "Don't thank me, thank this manager..."
"Thank God."
"...Fine, may your God bless you."
The meals were distributed quickly, faster than Chen Mo had expected.
When the empty crates were revealed, five people were still left at the back of the line. The five women stood there, hands empty, eyes staring at the food crates like they were waiting at a train platform for a line that had already been canceled.
Chen Mo turned back to look at the empty boxes on the floor, then at the manager on the wall: "Wow, truly magical. You stole so much food from kids, and in the end, you couldn't even feed the people here. Has Gotham's exploitation chain started downsizing its operations too?"
The white woman spoke first. She said her daughter was only one year old, but she had lost her job. She didn't cry as she spoke, but her lips kept trembling.
The Black woman said her son had asthma, and he wheezed worse when he was hungry. The doctor said he needed nutrition and regular meals.
Clutching her empty meal vouchers, the Latina woman said she wasn't even supposed to be working here anymore because her kid had gotten into the school and she could save on a meal's expense. In the end, that meal had made a full circle and dragged her right back here.
The other two women didn't say much. One said she had two more kids at home, and the other said she was just here to grab a bit of food for her younger sister. They spoke very quickly, as if airing grievances required lining up too, and if they were too slow, life would cut in line ahead of them.
Playing the pity card didn't work on bad guys, but it certainly worked on Spider-Man.
After listening, Chen Mo slowly turned his head to look at the manager.
The mask hid his expression, but the manager started shaking anyway, because some silences felt more like a countdown than curses.
"Dear manager," Chen Mo walked over, pulling him down a bit from the wall while tightening the web suspension. "Before I chop you into small, bite-sized packages suitable for cold storage transport, you'd better tell me where else there is food."
The manager shook like he had been stuffed into a washing machine on spin cycle: "There... there isn't any left. Truly, there's none left. There might be some bread crusts and cold cuts left in the kitchen, but most of it was sent away. The rest is alcohol. Alcohol doesn't count as food."
Chen Mo blinked: "Congratulations, you've discovered that alcohol can't be dinner. If Gotham's public health class were still alive, they should give you a little red flower. What else? Don't make me feel like your survival instinct has been written off as an expense too."
The manager suddenly looked like he had grabbed a literal lifeline: "Money! There's money at the front desk. Tonight's revenue hasn't been put in the safe yet. Cash, there's cash. Take as much as you want, just take it, don't hit me."
Chen Mo fell silent for a moment. Stepping to money. The phrase popped up in his head, and a chibi version of himself in a police uniform tapped on a moral chalkboard. Should he really hand it out? What would be the difference between him and a robber then?
"You have a heart of gold, right?"
"What?" The manager's brain couldn't process the turn of phrase for a second.
Chen Mo gently pressed the manager from the wall down onto the counter, his tone so gentle it made one's spine go cold.
"I am always very gentle with kind people."
If you aren't kind, then you're on your own.
Understanding the underlying threat, the manager was on the verge of tears.
"I have a heart of gold."
Chen Mo relaxed his grip on the manager's hand slightly.
"I am willing to provide relief to these poor women and their families." The manager's voice drifted as if his soul had already gone ahead to line up.
He was done for. The boss was going to beat him to death...
Chen Mo patted the counter: "Excellent. The award for tonight's best charitable performance goes to you. Now, Mr. Heart of Gold, open the drawer. Do it slowly, I'm afraid your kindness might get jammed."
The cash drawer popped open, revealing a stack of bills along with drink vouchers and membership cards.
Chen Mo picked up the cash, divided it into five portions first, and handed them to the women who hadn't received food. "Take it. An upgraded version of employee benefits, voluntarily sponsored by the manager."
They didn't take it immediately. It wasn't that they didn't want it; they didn't dare. Money being handed out from the manager's hands was like candy spat out from a snake's mouth. It was sweet, but who knew if it was poisoned.
Chen Mo stuffed the money into their hands: "Don't worry, he doesn't dare to be poisonous right now. He just passed the review of the Gotham City Temporary Morality Committee. Although I am the only member of the committee, the voting results were deeply touching. It was a unanimous vote agreeing that he is a good man."
The Black woman took it first, her fingers gripping it tightly. The others followed suit and took the money. Nobody cheered or clapped; their breathing simply grew a bit heavier, as if they could at least steal back a few hours from tomorrow.
Chen Mo then stuffed the remaining money into a plastic bag and tossed it to the oldest-looking female worker among the backstage staff.
The woman had graying hair and deep wrinkles around her eyes. The sequined dress she wore didn't look like an ornament, but more like a piece of armor worn in the wrong world.
"You distribute it," Chen Mo said. "Don't let the manager touch it. He's currently so kind that he's a bit allergic to money. Touching too much might cause him to go into shock."
The manager muttered softly that the money belonged to the club.
"You know the last guy in Gotham who was bright, cheerful, and had a big mouth every single day was called the Joker, right?"
Chen Mo turned his head to glance at him. The manager shut his mouth instantly, as if suddenly realizing that silence is golden--and that gold had just been voluntarily donated by him anyway.