Arkham Daily Life (Part 3)

When Jack lay down on his bed at Arkham Asylum again, Schiller said gleefully, "Now you know where your eternal home is, right? Since you paid so much money, I can prescribe you some extra painkillers."

"Do you think I'm a drug addict?" Jack yelled angrily. "Don't compare me to people who ruin their brains with drugs!"

"Take it easy. At least you have a permanent bed here. You should have seen how much those gang leaders who can't get in from the outside want a bed like this."

The mere mention of the word "gangster boss" made Jack's face contort with disgust. He muttered under his breath, "You're just like that bat. He doesn't want to laugh, you don't want to go crazy, you're both just fooling yourselves..."

He stared at the ceiling, muttering incessantly, "Why are you all so serious? Why won't you admit it? Why aren't you proud of your chaos and disorder?"

Suddenly, he calmed down and said with a touch of philosophy, "In this mediocre world, having a unique and crazy soul should be something to be proud of."

"But you always trap such brilliant souls in a mediocre and disgusting body."

"Living so seriously and earnestly every day, pretending to be no different from those walking corpses, it really disgusts me..."

"Madness is not the One way to understand the world." Schiller sat down as well, his tone calm. "I have always believed this."

"If you cannot become a sharp knife, using madness to pierce through the world's disguise, then you will be tamed by that hypocritical order."

Jack uttered obscure words as if in a dream, each word pausing as if he didn't know them, yet each sentence was so complete and fluent.

"Order is the prerequisite for disorder. Without order, chaos ceases to be chaos and becomes order. When you destroy order, you are actually establishing another kind of order."

"Many people believe that the ultimate answer to this world is chaos, but when they have this idea, it means that they have been tamed by order. There is no ultimate answer to this world."

"Is this your and that bat's reason for doing nothing?" Jack looked at Schiller.

"I'm a little different from him." Schiller poured himself a glass of water and said, "Batman is a warrior who maintains order in chaos, but I'm not. I'm just an ordinary person."

"Ordinary people..." Jack scoffed at his statement.

"And you, seeing yourself as a savior, want to tell everyone that only madness can reveal the Truth, especially wanting to tell Batman that the answers he seeks are within reach, as simple as a smile."

"But he wasn't unaware of this; he just didn't want to do it."

"That's why I think he's mentally ill." A hint of jealousy suddenly appeared in Jack's tone. "He has what I don't have, the kind of primal darkness and madness that I've always dreamed of, but he just doesn't want to do it. He could have become a great god who tears apart this mediocre lie, but he just doesn't want to smile."

"This question echoes in my mind every day, leaving me feeling confused and crazy."

Why are they so serious?

Schiller shrugged and said, "Everyone is deceiving themselves, only you are telling the truth; everyone is pretending to be serious, only you are laughing out loud, so you are the One Joker."

Jack stared at the ceiling and said, "When laughter is about to burst out of their mouths, their first reaction is fear, resistance, and reflection. That's when they're really crazy."

"Being a Joker must be so much fun, because there's nothing in this world that you can't laugh at. You want them to know how happy you are, but unfortunately, no one appreciates it."

"I've always thought that people who dress up as bats are the ones who are mentally ill," Jack said, looking at Schiller. "... So are people who dress up as ordinary people."

As night slowly falls over Gotham City outside the window, the city lights begin to twinkle. With the weather warming up, the city begins to radiate new vitality, still tinged with madness and evil, still chaotic, and still bustling with prosperity.

In the morning, Schiller was in his office, carrying a paintbrush. Brand, who was next to him, took off his paint-splattered Gauntlet with some disgust. Schiller said to him, "I'm pretty sure this lousy hospital needs a complete renovation."

He pointed to the corner of the wall and said, "If that madman's graffiti hadn't damaged my wall, I wouldn't have noticed that the brickwork there is cracked, and it might collapse any day now."

Brand sighed and said, "You make a good point, but this requires a long-term plan. We can't just tell the patients that we're going to start renovating the hospital tomorrow and tell them to get lost, can we?"

He looked up at the corner of the roof and said, "In short, until now, we still have to do it ourselves."

"You just can't bear to lose the revenue you've generated these past few days," Schiller said with a laugh. "If the renovations take two months, and you don't get any commission during that time, you'll lose a lot of money, right?"

Brand rubbed his nose, cursed under his breath, and said, "It's all your fault for this damn gangster industry chain. I never knew money could be so easy to make. If we have to shut down for two months, how much money will I lose?"

"Okay, then we'll do it ourselves. But cracks in the corners are minor issues. The biggest problem is that there aren't enough hospital rooms."

Brand sighed as well; he clearly knew that.

Arkham Asylum has a long history. When the building was constructed, Gotham didn't have that many people, and the hospital's capacity was limited. Even with Schiller's system of medical parole and imprisonment, the wards were still in short supply.

The main problem at Arkham Asylum now is the conflict between its outdated facilities and the ever-growing money-making needs of mob bosses.

This contradiction has become even more apparent after the disaster in Gotham. Logistics facilities are being rebuilt, and most gang leaders are idle. What better place is there than Arkham Club?

Here, they reorganize their industries, exchange resources, build networks, and expand their connections to prepare for future development.

Everyone shares resources and information, progressing step by step according to different levels of the circle. If you don't join now, you won't even get a share when things really start.

Especially after Jack returned to the mental hospital, he became a really troublesome guy. Cobblepot, Evans, and Jack were like oil and water.

Cobblepot and Evans could barely stay in the same room, but it wouldn't work if Alberto came out. When the future Penguin Cobblepot and the Joker were in the same room, they often got into fights because of their different values.

Cobblepot belongs to the lawful evil faction in Gotham. Simply put, he's not crazy enough. In fact, the Penguin in the original comics is similar. He runs a large restaurant, chats and laughs with mob bosses, and even becomes mayor. This is a normal to abnormal career path in Gotham, which is completely different from the chaotic evil of the Joker.

So Cobblepot thought the Joker was a complete madman, incomprehensible, while the Joker thought Cobblepot was a fool no different from those mob bosses, and that spending even a second with him was an insult.

Cobblepot disdains reasoning with a madman, and the Joker is too lazy to talk to a fool, so their way of resolving disputes is to fight.

Neither of them was strong enough. Cobblepot was small and weak, and the Joker was a bit crazy and fought without any strategy. The two always fought to a standstill, ending up with bloodied heads, tied to hospital beds, and glaring at each other.

The Joker and Evans have huge differences in their understanding of art. They mainly argue, mainly because Evans doesn't like to fight, and Jack is no match for Evans. Their way of arguing turns into them reciting opera excerpts at each other.

If Evans' singing could be considered pleasant, then Jack's singing level would be so impressive that even Batman himself would be stunned.

As long as the two of them shared a hospital room, complaints about noise and disturbances would flood Schiller's office like snowflakes.

Therefore, each of these three people can only have a separate hospital room.

There weren't many wards to begin with, and these three patients, who generated no profit, insisted on each occupying a ward. Schiller had disliked them for a long time, but unfortunately, all three of them had legitimate reasons.

Cobblepot was stabbed several times by Evans, and he was seriously injured. It would be somewhat inhumane to discharge him now.

The conflict between Evans and his father has not been fully resolved. Alberto is determined not to return to Falcone Estate, and his godfather has no intention of coming to pick up his son. So things can only drag on like this.

Jack is stuck here because Batman is busy with classes and has nothing to do, and he also has to consider Gordon's mental health and work stress.

It was another afternoon when Schiller had just finished lunch. Jack stood on the balcony of the 7th floor of Arkham Asylum, one foot over the railing.

Inside the room, Bruce, Evans, and Cobblepot stood there. Evans said to Jack, "Let's talk this out. Can you come back from there first? If you fall, the professor will be very angry."

Bruce had only come to Evans to hand over the gang's work; he was unaware of the various thrilling events that had occurred at Arkham Asylum. So he turned to Evans and asked, "What exactly happened? Why did he jump off the building?"

"Can't you see?" Cobblepot, sitting on the bed next to Bruce, said, "He's a madman, he's having an episode."

Evans continued to earnestly persuade Jack: "This is the 7th floor. If you fall like this, you will definitely land headfirst. Your brains and blood will stain a large area of the ground, and the professor will have to pay a lot of cleaning fees. He will definitely be very angry."

Cobblepot also said, "The ground floor is all paved with stone, and it would be very difficult to clean up blood splattered in there. You would have to lift up all the bricks. If you really dare to do that, I have no doubt that he will give you a funeral that reeks of money."

A troubled expression appeared on Jack's face. He said, "Do you expect him to carry my coffin to a bunch of gang leaders and have them read eulogies to me? To have you, you idiot, lay flowers for me, and have that musically inept person sing hymns for me? God! He's a devil!"

"But do you think I'm afraid?!" Jack pounded on the railing and said in an aria, "The valiant Jack fears no devil, and I will prove to you that I am Arkham Knight!"

As he spoke, he veered sharply to the left and plummeted straight down. Bruce rushed to the balcony in two steps and saw Jack floating in mid-air. Schiller, standing below, reached out One Hand and shoved him aside with an annoyed expression.

Jack, who had just landed, was rolling around laughing. He said, "Hahahaha! An ordinary person, you say you're an ordinary person! Hahahaha, this joke is so funny, I have to hear it again tomorrow, hahahahaha!"

Evans glanced back at the calendar, then looked at Cobblepot and said, "Let's bet, will there be a 15th time this week?"

Cobblepot stood up and walked out of the room, intending to return to his own ward. He said, "I bet it will be more than 20 times."

Only Bruce, standing on the balcony, glanced back at Evans and Cobblepot, then down at Schiller and Jack. The wind on the balcony tousled his hair, and he muttered to himself:

"... Am I going crazy?"

Whee.