"When you face them, you just can't comprehend why they would waste their talents in such a way? Why wouldn't they appreciate the gifts God has given them? You consider them naturally evil, even worse than common evildoers..."
"In reality, you can't help but envy them, jealously wanting everything they have which you lack, and how unashamedly they squander these precious things..."
"Talent, youth, friendship, love..." Shiller's voice waned in the narrow hallway, veiled in a hazy layer of old and musty dust.
The sanity in Scott was warning him not to trust the words of a madman. Yet, he found himself drawn to his tale as though bewitched by the devil.
"The way you perceive these high IQ felons is just how I perceive you, common people..."
"You lot, you are born scum, disgusting insects that make me want to hurl, full of idiocy and filth..."
Shiller started heaving, his excitement visibly surging back up. Not even an overdose of tranquilizers could subdue his wild excitement, the glow of his cigarette shaking as if tracing a drawing in the air.
"You were never aware of just how much you have—a body full of health and vitality, a vigorous spirit, a heart seething with raging emotions and a mind capable of forgetting..."
Shiller took one deep breath after another. His words fragmented in the gaps between breaths. Suddenly, however, he settled back down, as though the released drug was once again suppressing his excitement. After a moment of silence, he resumed speaking.
"Ordinary people sacrifice rare talents, living lives of ignorance and confusion, yet they're blissful. Madmen have abilities far beyond normal people but must endure a lifetime of facing madness and chaos, unable to fully savour their emotions..."
"It's tough to determine who's more unfortunate."
"Originally, I had accepted the reality that one cannot have both. But then one day, someone approached me, changing my mindset, because he holds both simultaneously."
"Batman..."
Shiller's eyes widened in a somewhat dazed manner, as if some hallucination was beginning to take shape amidst his roaring neural activity. When he spat out the word, it seemed he was breaking down every letter with an inexplicable malice.
"He had it all—logic and sentiment, reason, and emotion..."
"He could possess a superior intellect without the emotional deficit that comes with extreme rational thinking. He had not only the intense focus that comes from setting aside all distractions to calculate but also the sense of justice that kept him from breaking moral rules..."
"When I first saw him, I knew that was him. A damn lucky one, a creature favored by God..."
Shiller coughed quietly a couple of times, then said, "But in him, I saw a terrifying future. Do you know? Do you know?"
"That shook me because, given this grim future, he shouldn't start that high—he shouldn't be normal, shouldn't have it all..."
"What confuses me even more is, how on earth could he squander it all in just a few decades, given that he indeed had everything?"
"At the age of 18, he was still a somewhat traumatized, talented hero."
"And by the time he was 40..." Shiller's voice gradually dropped, then resurfaced from nothing, "by the time he was 40, he became a madman just like me..."
Shiller started gasping again, seemingly battling with terrifying hallucinations before revealing a disturbing smile, saying, "Then I understood. It was Batman. Batman turned him into this."
"It was Batman who led him into madness in the most precious twenty years of human life."
"It was Batman who made Bruce climb from the sunshine into the shadows over two decades, shedding his armor to don a straitjacket."
"It was Batman who turned a perfect genius that I could only dream of, into me."
"When I realized this, it felt like I had heard the biggest joke in the world, and then, I laughed."
"You're mad." Scott looked at him and said, "You've already started talking nonsense; stop trusting in these illusions—it will only worsen your condition."
"That's what I'm saying; you're much more professional than him." Shiller strove for calm for a moment, then said, "If he heard this, he wouldn't take it as nonsense but would remember each word, find abnormalities, and figure out what's going on."
"That's why he could never be a psychologist!" Shiller upped his tone and said, "Because, the first rule for psychologists is never to trust the ramblings of the insane—not even a single word."
"And that's why every madman in the world can be a psychologist, but he can't."
Shiller was rattling on, while Scott was having a hard time understanding what he was getting at. He had a vague idea that Shiller was talking about their pursuer, but he couldn't figure out the connection between Shiller and the mysterious Batman.
And once Shiller brought up that rule, Scott found himself even more puzzled—he had a hunch that Shiller was hinting at something. But if he was to follow that rule, he shouldn't be taking Shiller's words seriously because he's clearly insane.