In the end, it was Batman who pushed the door open, with Shiller following him inside. Upon entering, they stepped into a semi-partitioned entrance hall. Shiller went over to the wall, found the light switch, and pressed it.
With a "click", the light flicked on. Batman stood in the doorway, his gaze trained on Shiller's hand. Shiller proceeded to look around as he moved further into the room. "You must be wondering," he said, "how I can determine where you've set traps and where you haven't."
"I'm skeptical about the professional abilities of a psychologist who can't cure their own hypersensitivity," Batman interjected, effectively cutting off whatever Shiller was about to say.
He stepped into the room to have a better look around.
The house was somewhat messy. Not luxurious in terms of décor, but its style was unique. What stood out even more was the array of various collectibles strewn haphazardly about every corner. The pieces didn't match and were cluttered, and the entire collection looked like a headache to clean up.
Shiller picked up a piece of modern sculpture from the table, abstract enough to be just a lopsided chunk of plastic that many people might not appreciate. He blew lightly on the dust accumulated on it, gave it a once over in his hand, then placed it back where it belonged.
The living room ceiling opened up to the skylight at the center of the second floor, somewhat akin to the shape of the Tower of Xir's Thought. Standing in the middle of the living room, Shiller let his mind wander beyond the earthly confines.
"Are you planning to open a mental health clinic here?"
Batman's question brought Shiller back from his thoughts. Shiller shook his head: "I only accept private appointments for limited psychological consultation, without prescriptions. There won't be any signboard outside and I won't hear any knocking. Uninvited guests are unwelcome."
"Complete confidentiality during consultations?"
"Yes, I adhere to the confidentiality laws of the psychological profession. I don't make any recordings or notes without patient consent..."
"What about memories?"
Slowly, Shiller ascended the staircase, the dull thud of his leather shoes echoing in the nearly empty room along with his steady discourse.
"Every person who sees a psychologist worries that their secrets might be exposed or be used against them. They often ask similar questions within the first few encounters."
"You assure them of your trustworthiness, use your professional skills to lower their guard."
"Right, much like how a murderer approaches their victim."
"If they believe in you, you begin to probe into their minds and uncover their secrets and issues. And they even pay you extra for you to feast on their secret miseries."
"Most secrets are worthless, dirty and ugly, they contaminate the brain. What they pay is a fee for me to cleanse my mind."
"You hate them."
"No, that's not my motive. The depth of the average person's stupidity is unfathomable, like a bottomless abyss. No single person's hatred would ever suffice to loathe all the fools in the world. I'd rather keep them at arm's length, out of sight and out of mind."
"What if they force their way in?"
"Well, that won't likely happen soon, as most people won't dare to tamper with your electric shock device."
Shiller was holding onto the handrail as he turned around, facing Batman: "You aren't forcing me to make an oversight; instead, you're simply piling on the pressure, making me feel that the moment my disguise fails, you would take action. You aim to prolong my masquerade indefinitely, ideally, forever."
"This is the essence of your strategy against criminals — to become a looming cloud over their heads, a tolling bell in their ears."
"Reminding them that in every shadow, there's an ever-watchful gaze monitoring their every move. The pressure forces them to suppress their true nature, to think twice before acting up, should they succeed reserving their act of being good for a lifetime, then they are good indeed."
As Shiller continued up the stairs, Batman's gaze remained steadfast on him, filled with the usual profound depths, and rare intense focus and fascination.
"Like you, I've also instilled fear in them before, extinguishing the flame of their inherent evil with a bucket of cold water. Erecting a barrier for the unfathomable evil that can never be completely eradicated... serving as the very last boundary at the deepest end of the abyss..."
Shiller dragged out his words. As he finished speaking, Batman's normally half-lidded eyes widened ever so slightly.
"...And it worked."
Having reached the second floor, Shiller turned his back to Batman and lifted his gaze towards the bookshelves on the wall. There was a small pause before Batman said, "The phone beside the hallway on this floor connects directly to my Batcave."
"How many such houses have you prepared in Gotham to deal with visitors from another world?" Shiller asked.
"The 'visitors from another world' I've envisioned aren't like you," Batman responded bluntly, "They aren't thrown down from a height of more than two metres, their feet aren't trampling foreign soil for a sense of security. They don't loosen their tie and relish the process of murdering someone to comfort themselves. They don't need to remind themselves that they are a teacher to reclaim their sanity."
Shiller took a seat on the sofa by the window in the upstairs reception area, he turned and looked out of the window, and said: "Please sit, I find myself missing my bottle of White Poet South."
As Batman came up to sit down, he was holding a bottle of red wine and two beautifully designed transparent red wine glasses. When his hand armor grazed the surface of the glass coffee table between the two single sofas, the weak electric charge generated an electromagnetic field that dispersed the thin layer of dust on the table, leaving it spotless.
Shiller stood and pulled the curtain on Batman's side slightly closer.
Thus, as they sat in front of the window, the sunlight of the setting sun, reflected by the river outside, only shone on Shiller. The curves of his face, accentuated by the light, sketched a smooth golden line, which was akin to the golden threads embedded in his suit.
Batman poured wine into one of the glasses, while the other remained empty in front of him. With Shiller holding the stem of the glass, pinky and ring finger curled in, he gently tilted his glass towards Batman, made a toast with the air, and then took a sip of wine.
"I have been focusing on investigating serial killers since several years ago, but at that time, I was only trying to solve one problem: if all material needs of everyone in the world are met, and the society equally supports each individual through common prosperity, then how should society and the group deal with these innate madmen?"
"Did you reach any conclusions?" Batman asked, more frequently than before.
Shiller shook his head, "I am a loner, an innate psychotic in the mouth of psychologists. I have also undergone professional psychological treatment. My psychologist holds firm to the point that innate madmen cannot be wiped out, nor should they be."
"Those wolves hiding in the flock are virtually indistinguishable before they bare their talons. It wouldn't be wise to spend effort to root them out. This game-of-hide-and-seek struggle will continue as long as there are newborns appearing in the human race, and it's the ordinary people that are being consumed."
"They must be managed," Batman continued, "Make them understand what fear is, make them feel hesitant, and put invisible shackles on them."
Shiller nodded subtly. His body was straight, with only his hip slightly leaning against the low back of the single sofa. Batman was in the same position. The light shadows floating between the fluttering curtains had briefly fallen on him as well.
The river outside the window seemed to seep in along this line of light, although they were clearly on opposite banks, it was more like two isolated shadows standing together.
"For a creature who is either emotionally cold or completely doesn't understand emotions, instilling fear is not an easy task. After years of therapy, my psychologist successfully did it."
"I was originally unaware, fearless. However, he established an image of fear for me, made my behavior, speech, and language controllable, then we could talk about understanding, interacting, and coexisting with the society."
"Hard to imagine." Batman commented.
As the camera paused on Batman's face, Bruce slowly widened his eyes in his seat as a morbidly low voice came from beside him.
"Don't be surprised. It's the broccoli."
Suddenly, countless fragments of memory swept across Bruce's eyes, then stopped on a file he had seen before.
It was a "Emergency Limiting Measure" record from the Ninth Management Bureau, seen in Arrogant's memory.
"It's not just a joke." Bruce stared blankly at the morbid eyes and said, "They really used broccoli to make a circle?!"
Morbid nodded quite naturally, "It's a bit ridiculous and absurd, right? They could've created a more terrifying image, even death and blood, but they chose broccoli, which is harmless, almost like a joke to scare children."
"Why?" asked Bruce.
Morbid gently shook his head, a touch of reflective nostalgia in his eyes, then said, "I was still very young when I was taken into custody and began psychological treatment, and the key problem that the doctor confronted was that he didn't want to abuse me, but he wanted to cure me."
"If your grades in psychology were a little bit better, you would understand how difficult this is. It's simply a wild goose chase. Though the process of taming commonly involves violent means, controlling others does involve abuse, and instilling fear is no exception."
"Many of the factors that trigger fear embedded in human genes are related to violence, which is the most convenient way."
"But the doctor, with his foresight, thought that violence would be counterproductive. He proposed a rather idealistic plan to control a madman in a gentle and peaceful way."
"He believed that the same effect could be achieved through the method of hypnosis or the planting of concepts."
Morbid took a deep breath, "In fact, he was wrong. This method had no effect at all. The simulations he conducted in my mind were easily figured out by me... I've never been afraid."
"This idea persisted until one day when the treatment still had no effect. They split into two factions internally. The other faction believed that there was no need to waste more time. To be precise, this was the opinion held by most people."
"I saw disappointment in the doctor's eyes. Emotionally, I couldn't understand what he wanted. Fortunately, my superior IQ let me understand that what he really needed was just an ordinary child in sociological terms."
"The next day, the first brick of the Tower of Thought fell. From countless fragments, I picked the biggest and the brightest one, named it 'Arrogant'."
"Then I told him, that he was a normal person, allergic to broccoli."