Little Bruce opened his mouth, but said nothing. Before coming here, he had been focused on matching wits with that insurance investigator. And when he had met Martha and Thomas before, their attention had been on Bruce and Main Universe Batman. He had not mattered at all.
Batman's inability to handle unexpected encounters also showed in how poorly he improvised lies on the spot. It was not that his mind worked slowly; he simply had a long windup before speaking. Whenever he made up a lie on the fly, he always suspected there were holes in it and had to run through it hundreds of times in his head. That only made the awkward silence longer.
As everyone knew, only an immediate, fluent answer made people believe it was the truth. If someone asked a question and the other person pondered for a long while, then fell silent for another long while, it obviously looked like they were making something up.
After Little Bruce had remained silent for twenty seconds, Martha frowned slightly.
"Maybe I'll go to Gotham University." Little Bruce did not put it too definitively, because he felt Thomas and Martha might have other plans. But no matter what, he would not seriously attend that university. That insurance investigator named Jerome was also a college student. How awkward would it be if they ran into each other at school?
"How are your grades?" Thomas asked. "Which high school do you attend?"
"I haven't started yet." Little Bruce recalled, "If nothing unexpected happens, I'll go straight into the second semester of tenth grade after I return."
"So you skipped half a year of classes."
Little Bruce nodded. He wanted to say he had skipped far more than half a year. He had barely studied properly throughout middle school. Most