After finishing, he glanced at the floor clock next to him and said, "It's already very late. Your butler insists you should be asleep before nine, and it's already three hours past that. Take the keys and head upstairs."
"I don't need keys."
Leaving behind that final remark, Batman disappeared. Shiller shook his head and followed upstairs.
Shiller had already been aware of Batman's true identity, so Batman had not attempted to sleep in his bat suit. When Shiller knocked on his room door, Bruce was already in his pajamas.
Typically, one could only see Batman's chin when he was in serious mode. But now, Bruce's demeanor was starkly different from his usual self. This was Batman with his whole face revealed.
But it made no difference. Upon hearing Shiller reminding him that Alfred hoped he would be back for breakfast in the morning, Bruce produced an expression of considerable conflict and complexity.
"I advise you to head back. If he takes it upon himself to come looking for you, I absolutely will not help you out. Remember, a teacher will always stand on the same front with a student's parents."
Seeing Bruce's reluctance, Shiller had no choice but to threaten him further, "If I really do see Alfred tomorrow, I might have to discuss with him about your academic performance. In this term's final exam, though you barely passed, you fell behind the middle of the pack. What's worse is that you failed to turn in assignments six times throughout the semester, and most of them didn't meet the required word count."
"I've kept all your homework submissions. If you don't want your butler to see your nonsensical writing and academic garbage that serves no purpose other than polluting peoples' minds, you'd do well to go to bed and wake up early tomorrow to return to Wayne Manor."
Before Bruce could say anything, Shiller had already locked his room door with a loud bang.
At night, Bruce lay in bed, revisiting recent events in his mind.
Thanks to Shiller's ingenious business chain, there had been a surge in mob activity, making Batman's work increasingly challenging.
In daytime, he was busy performing various investigations in the hospital to unravel the complicated relationships among the gangs. At night, he had to oversee various mob battles to prevent them from crossing a line, causing widespread damage.
The police became much stronger after acquiring heavy firepower, but it didn't mean that the mob didn't have their own countermeasures. If the police used heavy weapons, the mob naturally would resort to even more violent firepower. The escalation of war came before Batman had a chance to upgrade his gear, dragging him into some fiercer conflicts.
As a result, the Batman armor, designed to repel bullets and melee weapons, could not defend against the damage inflicted by machine guns and grenades in the mob fights.
One night a few days ago, Batman had been hit by a machine gun bullet. The damage from a machine gun bullet, much longer than the palm of the hand, was incomparable to that from a handgun round. Luckily, Batman was only grazed on the shoulder. If he had been hit directly, probably half of his lung would have been destroyed.
This caused serious harm to him – the most severe injury he had received since he became Batman.
By the time he managed to return to Wayne Manor, his mind was not clear. It was only his extraordinary willpower that saved his life.
Bruce already knew his insensitivity to painkillers and anesthetics, often waking up midway through anesthesia. It was the same this time. During the operation, he was half awake, seeing Alfred sitting by the operating table.
He found it difficult to describe how Alfred looked at the time, which made his usually calm heartbeat tighten.
He suddenly noticed that Alfred had changed from his memory. He had aged a lot and looked much more dispirited compared to when his parents were around.
Only then did he realize the problem. The death of Mr. and Mrs. Wayne did not only hurt him.
Perhaps when Alfred thought he would have to endure the same pain again, he aged even more.
As Bruce lay in bed, tossing and turning, the images of Alfred he saw in his semi-conscious state kept flashing through his mind.
What saddened him even more was that after he woke up from the operation, Alfred did not say anything. He did not try to stop Bruce from doing anything. He only prepared breakfast as usual, just like the countless mornings that Bruce woke up from nightmares.
Sitting at the breakfast table, Bruce could barely swallow any food. He was Batman, but he was still human. Few people could maintain a calm state of mind to eat when faced with such emotional upheaval.
So he only hurriedly ate a few bites and ran away from Wayne Manor.
Actually, his first stop was Gordon's place, but he happened to arrive just as Gordon was driving to Shiller's house.
He followed Gordon the whole way, even catching glimpses of their entire conversation through a window from outside the restaurant.
He also saw Shiller, seated alone, finishing a whole cigar.
The professor appeared strange to him. He had never seen Shiller like this before. He looked relaxed, yet indifferent and sharp. While Shiller often came off as serious in school, this was completely different.
It was like seeing a stranger, another person.
He thought, perhaps the professor he knew before was just a pretense, just like him.
In this insane city, two lunatics had taken on their respective roles, performing mundane daily routines as a teacher and student in the most ordinary social identities.
Perhaps this wasn't "Pride and Prejudice", but rather, "An Actor's Self-Cultivation".
In this decrepit and dilapidated theater called Gotham, corroded by time, on the stage of Gotham University, the first act of this absurd drama seemed bizarre and comical.
The first teacher that Batman met on his first day at school, one who appeared strict and traditional, and didn't want to trouble himself, gave him the answer he most wanted in a seemingly unmotivated counseling session.
After scene after scene of the drama ended, the two actors themselves finally met offstage.
Putting aside their social identities, this absurd drama wasn't coincidental. Lunatics tend to attract lunatics, and oddballs often meet oddballs. It's just another manifestation of like attracting like.
As Bruce lay on his bed, sleepiness gradually engulfed him. Half awake and half asleep, he could hear the muffled ticking of the clock downstairs enveloping his dreams.
Besides the ticking, the only sounds on this frigid night in Gotham in 1987 were the barely audible wind and the ceaseless crackling of the fireplace.