Batman stood at the edge of the shadows, his white lenses staring dead at Chen Mo.
He didn't move.
He didn't leave, nor did he come closer.
He just stared.
Chen Mo felt a chill run down his spine from being stared at by those completely emotionless white lenses.
In the half month since he arrived in Gotham to broaden his horizons, he had seen many types of eyes--Larry's greed, Scarface's fury, and the restaurant proprietress's calculation when sizing up merchandise.
But Batman's eyes were different.
Those weren't the eyes of a person looking at another person; they were the eyes of a person looking at data.
Like a machine scanning, dismantling, and reducing him from a human being back into a set of parameters.
As if he weren't a human, and the person opposite him wasn't human either.
It was especially scary for a spider.
How annoying. Bats were actually supposed to be quite cute creatures.
"Why are you acting as a vigilante?"
Batman spoke. His voice was very low, like sandpaper grinding against metal.
It wasn't a question; it was an interrogation. It wasn't out of concern; it was an inquest.
Chen Mo was stunned.
"Huh?"
"You possess strength far exceeding that of an ordinary person."
Batman didn't speak quickly. Every single word seemed to have been filtered before being allowed out of his mouth. Combined with that deep voice, it was highly oppressive.
"At the docks, you lifted a overturned car with your bare hands. In the alley fight, you precisely controlled your output, never using lethal force. You are starving, yet you didn't use your strength to rob anyone. You didn't even use your strength to threaten anyone for food." He paused for a moment. "This is not normal."
Chen Mo opened his mouth. He wanted to say "thanks for the compliment," he wanted to say "I'm so touched that you're paying so much attention to me," and he wanted to say "do you have a secret crush on me?"
But looking at those white lenses, he swallowed those words back down.
"There are only three possibilities for a person who possesses strength but does not use it." Batman's voice had no ups or downs.
"First, he is afraid of something. Afraid of his strength spiraling out of control, afraid of being Backlashed by an even greater power, afraid that he won't be able to handle the aftermath once exposed. Second, he is waiting for something. Waiting for an opportunity, a prey worthy of his strength, a target that warrants shedding his disguise. Third."
He paused for a moment. "He is playing a role. Acting out a persona that he does not actually possess. Using restraint to perform kindness, using starvation to perform harmlessness, and using talkativeness to perform innocence."
He took half a step forward, highly oppressive, like a patch of shadow itself moving forward half an inch. "Which one are you?"
Chen Mo stood there.
The blood on his shoulder was congealing, sticking to the torn fabric, gluing his skin and suit together.
He should act.
This was his instinct, the entirety of his experience from living in this city for half a month. Show a sunny smile, say some righteous lines, wrap suspicion in innocence, and disguise calculation as instinct.
He could do it.
He knew how to do it.
But he didn't.
"Alright, alright, since you asked so sincerely, I'll tell you."
Chen Mo's voice suddenly quieted down. There was no rambling, no witty banter, none of that Spider-Man who was always talking and always performing. "I didn't grow up in this place before."
Batman didn't speak.
"The place where I grew up had bad guys too. It had crime too. It also had those kinds of nights where you walk on the street and need to constantly watch if someone is following behind you. But."
Chen Mo looked down at his hands. The hands that could lift a car. "But someone there told me that strength isn't meant for stealing. It's meant for protecting."
"With great power comes great responsibility."
Chen Mo fell silent for a moment.
"I don't know if I'm acting. Maybe. Maybe I've been acting all along. Maybe your third option is the correct answer."
He raised his head and looked at Batman. "But if you act for a lifetime, act until you die, act until you can't even tell the difference yourself, then what's the difference between that and the truth?"
Batman didn't answer.
He stared at Chen Mo for a very long time.
So long that only the distant echo of police sirens and the sound of blood dripping onto the ground remained in the warehouse.
"The place you spoke of."
Batman finally spoke, "Does not exist. Gotham does not produce people like you. No city produces people like you. Your behavioral pattern is an outlier in statistics. Your moral coordinate system has no corresponding model in criminal psychology. You are not a normal person."
He turned around, a corner of his cape whipping up in the night wind. "I will find out."
He walked toward the edge of the shadows. His steps had no redundant movements, like a machine completing a preset path.
"Wait." Chen Mo called out to him.
Batman stopped. He didn't turn around.
"Why are you acting as a vigilante?"
Chen Mo deliberately lowered his voice, trying to turn his youthful timbre into Batman's deep, adult tone as he asked.
It wasn't a provocation, it really wasn't, he didn't mean it that way. He was being very serious, um... just like two fellow patients exchanging medical histories.
Batman didn't answer.
He stood there for a moment, maybe one second, maybe three.
Then he raised his hand and fired his grappling hook, the sound of the cable retracting slicing through the night sky.
Like a shadow swallowed by the darkness, he vanished.
Chen Mo stood in place, looking at that empty edge of the shadows. The black silhouette from moments ago still left an afterimage on his retina, but the man was already gone.
Like a drop of ink falling into another drop of ink.
He had a premonition that this person would appear again.
Don't ask why, just call it a Peter-Tingle.
Even though his current intuition hadn't evolved to the point where it could be called a "Spider-Sense" yet.
"Hey."
Chen Mo suddenly spoke. Not far away, a young, rookie cop was poking half his head out from behind a container, clutching a notepad in his hand, the expression on his face like a feral cat caught in headlights.
"How long have you been hiding there?"
The young cop cleared his throat awkwardly. "Not that long. Just right around the time from 'Why are you acting as a vigilante?'"
He paused, "Actually, I came to clean up the scene, but you guys were talking too deeply, so I felt bad interrupting. You know, after all, seeing someone dressed in a bat suit and someone dressed in pajamas discussing the philosophy of life at the docks isn't a scene you see every day."
Chen Mo didn't reply.
He sat down against the wall and began to tear off the fragments of the suit around his shoulder.
The fabric was stuck to the wound, ripping off a small piece of scab as he pulled.
He sucked in a breath of cold air, barely holding back a curse.
Wasn't it because there was an outsider in front of him, and he couldn't ruin his friendly neighborhood image?
The young cop edged closer, handing over a roll of dirty bandages and a bottle of unlabeled medicine. "Only got this. Make do with it."
Chen Mo took the medicine and sniffed it. The smell of alcohol was as strong as a chemical weapon. "Is this stuff meant for humans? Why do I feel like it's more for polishing leather shoes? Do vigilantes really not deserve health insurance? I seriously patrol and stop crimes very diligently every day, you know."
"It's good enough just to have this stuff. Besides, I'm a full-time employee and I don't even have health insurance. You're an off-the-books, self-employed vigilante and you still want health insurance?"
The young cop squatted beside him, watching Chen Mo pour the medicine onto his wound.
The pain made Chen Mo's entire body tighten like a fully drawn bowstring, his teeth grinding audibly, but he stubbornly didn't make a sound.
He wrapped the bandage, his movements so practiced that it made one's heart ache. The young cop looked at his bandage-wrapping technique and didn't speak.
"Hey," Chen Mo asked while tying a knot, "Since there's no health insurance, no bulletproof vest, and nobody cares if you live or die, why are you still a cop?"
The young cop went silent for a moment.
He looked down at his uniform, which had been washed until it was faded white. One of the buttons on his cuff was missing, pinned together with a staple instead.
"Maybe, it's because I haven't learned how to live like a dog yet." He stood up and patted the dust off his knees. "Leave quickly. When the backup forces arrive later, they won't be as easy to talk to as I am."
In the distance, at the very top of the Gotham Bridge, a black silhouette crouched there.
His cape was torn by the wind into a flag.
Batman hadn't returned to the Batcave.
He crouched at the highest point in Gotham, the recording playback on his tactical lenses paused on the frame of that youth saying, "With great power comes great responsibility."
He watched those three frames repeatedly.
Pupil diameter. Vocal cord vibration frequency.
Micro-facial expressions.
All data pointed to the same conclusion: he wasn't lying.
He even truly agreed with this sentence and treated it as his life motto.
Batman shut off the playback.
Gotham does not produce this kind of person.
No city produces this kind of person.
There was no corresponding model in his database.
He needed more data.
Batman stood up, his cape spreading out behind him.
The gray, overcast clouds hung very low, like a dirty rag that could never be wrung dry.