After Gordon and Batman left the chapel basement, both of them seemed somewhat silent. After all, the place they had just been in had buried dozens of lives in the span of a single month.
Gotham was a dark city, but when that darkness was laid bare before people's eyes, only those with strong wills could bear the impact of such profound darkness.
Countless emotions were surging inside both Batman and Gordon. This was the first case Batman had handled since arriving here. Faced with evil that seemed endless and darkness without a glimmer of light, he suddenly realized that, just as Schiller had said, perhaps he truly had not been fully prepared.
Great force was merely a means of surviving here. To save this city, force alone was far from enough.
As he thought this, Batman rounded a corner and saw Schiller standing on the second floor again, holding an umbrella. Beneath the balcony was where that beggar had once stayed.
Batman felt another surge of absurdity. How could this damned criminal, who had killed dozens of innocent people, still dare to stand here? Why were there people in this world who could remain unmoved by living, breathing lives? Who could even kill them so cruelly, without hesitation?
The depression inside Batman turned into anger. Under Gordon's gaze, he leaped up from the street and landed directly on the balcony over two meters above.
"Your judgment is coming, you damned murderer," Batman said.
"Did you find the evidence you wanted?" Schiller asked.
"Of course. And that evidence is enough to put you on trial."
Schiller suddenly laughed. In an exceptionally lighthearted tone, he said, "How ridiculous. You're still thinking about putting me on trial. Gotham City's Police Department should really award you a Good Citizen Medal. You're such a great police officer."
"If there had been such a great police officer when your parents died, someone who found the evidence left behind by the murderers and put them on trial, wouldn't that have been wonderful? That's what you think, isn't it?"
"You don't trust the police or the courts, yet you still go looking for evidence, hoping to judge me through the righteousness of the legal system. Don't you think that's contradictory?"
"You want to prove that I broke the law, Batman, but your actions also broke the law. If I am to be judged, then so are you. You're using criminal acts to prove that a criminal is a criminal, aren't you?"
Schiller raised his voice, speaking with dramatic cadence. "You think you have the power to take revenge on criminals in your own way. Yet in the end, you're still just an ordinary person tamed by this orderly society. You still talk about evidence, still keep demanding judgment."
"If you cannot cast those things aside, cannot cast aside the shackles that orderly society has placed upon you, cannot erase from your mind those notions of law and judicial procedure, then you will never uphold the justice you seek."
"Bruce..." Schiller looked into his eyes and said:
"Law is not justice. You are."
"Gotham's laws did not save your parents, just as they did not save these dozens of missing people. If you continue clinging to such pointless fantasies about them, you will never become the real Batman."
Schiller could clearly see Batman's arms trembling. Veins stood out across the hand clutching the Batarang, and even his entire body was shaking. Clearly, he had become enraged beyond measure.
Schiller's words had cut far too deeply. He had exposed one of young Batman's greatest contradictions.
Gotham's laws had failed to save his parents, yet Batman, who constantly spoke of revenge, was still bound by the rules of order. In the end, what he followed was still judicial justice.
"You want me to uphold my own justice?" Batman asked. Then he raised a gun and pointed it at Schiller's forehead.
Of course Batman had a gun. In Gotham City, without a firearm like this, one could hardly survive. Much less speak of upholding justice.
Schiller still appeared calm. He said, "You still haven't answered my earlier question. Did you find the evidence you wanted? What was it?"
"Beside the crates in the chapel basement, there were stains you left behind. They contained dirt and leaves—leaves from North American Red Pine trees that only grow at Gotham University."
"What does that prove?" Schiller asked.
"It proves that you are the murderer," Batman said.
"Is that so? I appeared alone on the streets of Morsen District for no reason, and my clothing and behavior were suspicious. Then you found leaves belonging to Gotham University at the crime scene, which suggested that the murderer might be someone from Gotham University. Therefore, I am the murderer. What rigorous reasoning," Schiller said.
Batman looked at his expression, utterly devoid of remorse or guilt, and heard his casual tone. His anger truly reached its peak. Just as he was about to pull the trigger, Gordon came running over and shouted, "Stop! Put the gun down!"
Batman was interrupted for an instant. Schiller tossed a memory card onto the ground between them and said:
"Conclusive evidence? The murderer went to Gotham University, and I am a university professor. Truly very conclusive."
"Yes, how much you must have wished that when your parents died, someone like you now had simply and decisively put a bullet in the murderer because the evidence was conclusive."
"Don't mention my parents..." Batman said, his voice trembling slightly. "You criminal."
"You noticed many similarities," Schiller said.
"But your anger made you overlook more—many more differences."
"For example, I have never had any educational background related to chemistry or biology. For example, I have participated in the investigation of countless serial murder cases, so my counter-surveillance awareness would not be poor enough that I failed even to clean up my footprints. More importantly..."
Schiller looked at the memory card and said, "My evidence is far more conclusive than yours."
Gordon's interruption had lowered Batman's anger somewhat. As his reason returned, he realized that even in this damp, cold weather, sweat had soaked through the shirt on his back.
Batman warily picked up the flash drive and plugged it into the miniature computer on his arm. A projection sprang up.
By then, Gordon had also taken a detour onto the balcony. In the video, he saw someone in a plaid shirt furtively standing on the outdoor unit of an air conditioner outside a home, feeding a hose through the window. The figures standing and sitting inside the room all collapsed. After that person jumped down from the air conditioner unit, he entered the hallway. Before long, he dragged out two large boxes, loaded them onto a cart, and pushed them away. The figures inside the room had all vanished.
Batman had given Schiller the inspiration for this. Jonathan severely lacked counter-surveillance awareness. Schiller had stood in the hallway of the building opposite his, filming with a camera, and Jonathan had never noticed him.
Then again, no one in Gotham City would wander around in the middle of the night, especially not in a place like the Slums. One careless mistake could cost them their life.
Gordon suddenly shouted, "No wonder!"
"I remember that when we registered the addresses of the missing people, residents on the lower floors had indeed suffered more. Almost every victim's home had a balcony..." Gordon said.
Then he looked at Batman and Schiller. He said angrily to Batman, "I really misjudged you. Were you about to fire just now? Do you know you nearly killed someone?!"
Batman silently stared at the projection on his arm. Anyone who was not blind could see that the murderer in the footage had a completely different build from Schiller.
Although Schiller did not know how to fight and did not work out, he was still quite tall. He was only a little shorter and thinner than Batman, but he was nearly 1.9 meters tall. The person in the video was at most 1.7 meters tall and could not have weighed more than sixty kilograms.
"You thought Professor Jonathan was a nice old man, didn't you? Because he never checked assignments, treated you well, and would never fail you. But I'm different. I'm a troublesome professor. I always pick apart your assignments, give exams whenever I feel like it, and threaten every student with the possibility of failing."
"So of course I am the murderer, while he is not. After all, how could such a timid, quiet, thin, little man possibly be a serial killer?"
"Stop talking." Batman's voice trembled.
He recalled the scene with the beggar that day. From the corner of his eye, he could still see the stain left where the beggar had leaned against the wall. That intense guilt and shame closed around him again.
Gordon's words only added fuel to the fire. "I don't care what kind of freak you are, running around the city in a tight suit and causing trouble, but you nearly killed a good man. What grudge do you two even have? If you have a private vendetta, settle it yourselves. Don't interfere with police work."
"Aren't Gotham City's police busy enough already? You want to kill someone right in front of me? Do you want me to send you straight to prison?" Gordon said.
Several consecutive days of overtime had already put him in a foul mood. Impatiently, he said, "Tights freak, give me that flash drive. I need to take it back and file it... Sir, please come with me. You seem to know who the murderer is. We need clues..."
After a moment of silence, Batman silently extended his arm and handed the flash drive to Gordon.
He realized that his grandly ambitious debut had done nothing but cause trouble. The criminal he had believed Schiller to be was the one who had helped them most and provided the crucial evidence.
Schiller said nothing more. Batman also remained where he was, while outside, the endless rain began falling again.
Just as Schiller was about to leave with Gordon, he heard Batman say behind him, "...I'm sorry, Professor."
Schiller halted. He found it somewhat unbelievable. What had Batman just said???
Had he just apologized???
Schiller turned back in disbelief. Batman stood in the shadows cast by the building, the only beam of light falling upon his mask. His lips were pressed tightly together, and Schiller found it utterly absurd.
He was Batman.
Because he was Batman.
And Batman was always right.
Batman would never apologize to anyone.
Faced with everyone's doubts, he would only say one thing: "Because I'm Batman."
In Batman comics, Schiller had seen far too much of Batman's dark side. For example, preparing Kryptonite against Superman, or having a plan to deal with every single member of the Justice League. He seemed to trust no one, not even himself.
It had to be said that when the comic editors created this character, those dark aspects made him more compelling. They also left a deeper impression on readers.
But they had also caused Schiller to develop a prejudice against Batman.
He believed Batman should be like that—the Batman from the comics. Batman never apologized because he did not think he was wrong. He believed those precautions against his allies were necessary.
That had given Schiller a prejudice: Batman was not incapable of apologizing. When he truly realized he was wrong, he still felt regret and guilt.
Schiller had indeed wanted to teach young Batman a few lessons. Do not harbor prejudice. Do not judge people by appearances. Do not let anger cloud your mind. Maintain independent thought.
But Schiller suddenly realized that he was not really qualified to teach Batman not to harbor prejudice, because he himself had an indelible stereotype of this character. He wanted Bruce to become the Batman from the comics in his mind, and he wanted that process to happen as quickly as possible.
But now, this story did not seem to be about a wise and learned professor and his young, reckless student. It was a very classic case of "Pride and Prejudice."
Batman had been absolutely arrogant in his own reasoning, believing Schiller had to be the murderer. With preconceived prejudice and a few pieces of evidence that happened to fit that prejudice, he had nearly shot Schiller.
But Schiller also harbored a prejudice against Batman, believing he should be the mature, steady, cautious, suspicious dark hero from the comics.
The two of them were not merely mocking each other's flaws; they were much the same.
Now, Batman seemed to have learned this lesson. He clearly recognized that he was not all-knowing or all-powerful.
His reasoning could be constrained by prejudice and produce enormous errors, while his impulsiveness, beneath such arrogance, was even more lethal.
He saw the scar on the side of Schiller's neck. He had left it earlier with a Batarang. At that time, he had assumed Schiller was a criminal and threatened him as he would threaten a criminal. Though he had not fired today, as Gordon had said, that wound had been deep. It would surely leave a scar.
Batman felt guilty about it, and deeply afraid in retrospect.
He thought that the law's inability to correctly judge every criminal was not a reason for him to use his own arrogance to judge others at will.
And when he could not guarantee that he was one hundred percent right, any impulsive act of violence might leave an innocent person—even a good person—with a scar that could never be erased.
He could only be grateful that the price paid by the innocent had not been their life.
Standing in the shadows, Batman thought that he had to prevent such a possibility forever. So he decided that no matter how vicious a criminal he faced in the future, he would never kill.
If even a single innocent person died unjustly at his hands, then he would become a more hateful criminal than the ones who had killed his parents.
Because the criminals who had killed his parents might have only sought money or revenge. The destruction they caused was two deaths.
But if Batman killed innocents indiscriminately, this city would have no hope left at all.
In the comics, Batman's rule against killing seemed to have existed from the very beginning.
Schiller had never looked into why. He had found the rule irritating. When facing those hateful criminals, those lunatics who kept escaping from prison again and again to cause trouble, why could Batman not just kill them? He had thought that countless times while reading the comics.
But he had never expected that in this world, young Batman would become determined never to kill criminals precisely because of him—because of Schiller.
Because he was Batman. He was this city's only hope. If the guilt of killing an innocent person crushed him, then this city would truly be beyond saving.
By a twist of fate, Schiller had still failed to help young Batman establish his own spiritual pillar, but he had successfully completed one of Batman's defining traits: he would not kill.
Schiller would never have imagined that in the days to come, he would regret this meddling countless times.
After Batman had fully matured, Schiller would roar in his heart countless times, wondering why Batman could not just lift a finger and strangle those damned criminals to death, so they would stop appearing before him again and again to shatter his peaceful life!!
And all of it had begun with what happened today. It was entirely his own fault.
Before you continue