I was Chen Tao.
You see, although I had crowned myself the Best Actor back home, I still wasn't anyone important in Hollywood. Especially since I refused to act in scripts that might tarnish the image of Chinese people, even if they offered me the role of a superhero.
I got a few roles, but that was all.
I didn't like having people fawn over me anymore, either.
I didn't know why. Even though I had earned a decent income and achieved considerably more than the average person, I wasn't happy.
When I woke in the middle of the night, I often heard Batman whispering in my ear. He was saying something to me, but it soon dissolved into a hazy mist and vanished. By morning, those dreams would retreat from my mind like fog, disappearing into the depths of my heart.
What did you want to be when you were a child?
Bouncing around...
You wanted to become Batman, didn't you?
You'd use a bedsheet as a cape and land on the ground in a superhero pose, even if the impact made your knees ache.
You'd raise your fists at imaginary enemies, then shout that Batman had defeated them. Such ridiculous nonsense...
But no one could become Batman. You had already given up that laughable fantasy with your own hands, hadn't you?
Those days when you imagined yourself as Batman... In the end, they were merely a child's fantasies before adulthood.
He wasn't supposed to become something a normal adult did.
That was how it was, right?
It was very late. I was heading home alone. By coincidence, that day I ran into a riot caused by a demonstration that was still going on late into the night, right on the road I usually took.
Another tired old anti-immigration