Beneath a standalone little villa.
Ben, who had already transformed into Thing, wore a coat and hat to conceal his figure as he used a phone booth to call his girlfriend.
Before long, his girlfriend rushed out excitedly.
Unfortunately, to his despair, the woman he loved most—who had accepted his proposal and planned to marry him in a few months—saw what he looked like now and learned what had happened to him.
She decisively broke up with him and returned his engagement ring.
Distraught, he went to Brooklyn Bridge and at one point considered jumping into the sea to end his life.
"Mr. Ben, so this is where you are."
Just as he hesitated, a voice suddenly came from above him. Hawking was standing in the air, looking down at him.
In fact, Hawking had been lying in wait near Ben's girlfriend's home long ago.
The reason he had not appeared immediately was that he wanted to wait until Ben had gone through the breakup, when his heart was at its most vulnerable.
"Mr. Hawking, why are you here?"
"Susan and Johnny were both worried about you, so they asked me to find you. I saw what happened just now too. You don't need to be so upset. I'll take you somewhere with many people in situations similar to yours. They all came to terms with it in the end and continued living well."
Hawking came before Ben and comforted him.
There were quite a few oddly shaped mutants at Mutant School. As long as he brought Ben there to take a look, it would be easy for him to empathize with them and work through his emotional knot.
Besides, Professor X, who was best at helping people work through such knots, was there as well.
Once Thing's emotional knot