The living room at Aunt May's was filled with the aroma of freshly baked butter cookies. Sunlight filtered through the lace curtains, scattering fragmented patches of light across the arithmetic textbook. Lin Mo circled Peter's third mistake in red pen, the tip scratching faintly across the page. "You expanded this quadratic function wrong. You mixed up the signs."
The tips of Peter's ears reddened slightly. His fingers unconsciously fiddled with the calculator buttons, making a jumble of numbers flash across the screen. His gaze drifted past Lin Mo's shoulder to the power line outside the window—two sparrows were chirping as they fought, their gray feathers tossed by the wind like a bouncing ball of yarn. "Oh..." the boy answered vaguely, drawing a crooked spider on his scratch paper.
"Peter." Lin Mo tapped the table. His Dynamic Vision caught the movement of the boy's Adam's apple. "That's the fifth time you've zoned out today. Aunt May said you only got sixty-two on your last math exam. At this rate, you won't even finish your summer homework."
"No," Peter snapped back to attention. His glasses slid down to the tip of his nose, and he hurriedly pushed them up. "I was just... thinking about something." He tugged the scratch paper back, trying to cover the spider drawing, but accidentally knocked over the glass of milk beside it. The pale brown liquid spread over the workbook like an ugly cloud.
"Careful." Lin Mo pulled over some tissues to help wipe it up. The soaked parts of the page had turned translucent, and beneath them he could vaguely make out the words, "Webbing Tensile Strength Calculation Formula." Holding back a laugh, he brushed his fingertips against Peter's burning ear. "What were you thinking about? Something more important than quadratic functions?"
The boy's cheeks immediately turned as red as sun-baked tomatoes. He gripped his pencil until his knuckles went white, and after a long pause, muttered in a voice as soft as a mosquito's buzz, "I was thinking... why can spiders crawl on walls? What's so special about their feet?"
Lin Mo's heart skipped a beat. Here it came. Pretending to organize the textbooks, he glimpsed a metal edge sticking out of Peter's school uniform pocket—a crude device made from paper clips and rubber bands, with a little silvery-white sticky substance on it. It looked remarkably like Spider-Man's Web-Shooters. "That question..." He slowly opened the science textbook to the page on surface tension. "Solve this problem first, and I'll tell you a secret."
"Really?" Peter's eyes lit up like little bulbs being switched on, and even his pupils seemed to grow larger behind his lenses. He immediately sat upright, snatched back the workbook, and sent his pencil racing across the scratch paper while muttering, "Let x be the unknown, substitute it into the formula... no, that's wrong, I should complete the square..."
Aunt May's laughter came from the kitchen, along with the crisp clatter of dishes. "Lin, don't be too strict! Let him have a cookie before he studies more!" A tray was set on the coffee table, and the buttery aroma grew even richer, accompanied by a faint warmth. Aunt May wiped her hands as she came over, then covered her mouth in surprise when she saw Peter writing furiously. "Did the sun rise in the west? Our Peter is actually doing problems willingly?"
"He's waiting for me to tell him a secret." Lin Mo picked up a cookie and held it to Peter's mouth. The boy instinctively opened his mouth and took a bite, but his eyes never left the scratch paper. Cookie crumbs clung to the corner of his mouth like a tiny white ant.
"What secret works that well?" Aunt May sat down with a smile and poured them each a glass of milk. "If you can make this kid fall in love with math, I'll give you my family baking tray." Her gaze fell on Peter's scratch paper. When she saw the spider drawing, she shook her head helplessly. "This child has loved bugs since he was little. Last time, he put a grasshopper in my flour jar and made me redo the cake three times."
Peter's pencil paused, and his ears reddened further. He hurriedly finished the final step, then pushed the workbook toward Lin Mo. Fine beads of sweat dotted the tip of his nose. "I'm done! Is it right?"
Lin Mo carefully checked the steps, his fingertip tracing the neat calculations. The kid really was smart; his mind just wasn't on the right track. His approach was even simpler than the standard answer, but he had misplaced a decimal point in the last step. "Not bad." Lin Mo circled the error in red. "Other than this little mistake, everything else is right."
Peter corrected it immediately, then stared at Lin Mo eagerly like a puppy waiting to be fed. Aunt May chuckled at the sight and carried the tray back to the kitchen. Before leaving, she winked at Lin Mo as if to say, It's up to you now.
Only the soft rustle of pencil against paper remained in the living room. Lin Mo pulled a copy of The Book of Insects from the bookshelf, turned to the section introducing spiders, and pointed at an illustration. "The secret is this—spiders have thousands of bristles on their feet, and every bristle divides into hundreds of even finer branches. Those branches can create Van der Waals Force with the molecules on a wall's surface, like countless tiny suction cups. That's why they can crawl on smooth surfaces."
"Van der Waals Force?" Peter's eyes widened round. He snatched the book and examined it closely, gently rubbing the illustration with his finger. "The force of interaction between molecules? Then if we could imitate that structure, could people crawl on walls too?"
"In theory, yes." Lin Mo watched Peter's shining eyes and remembered the red-and-blue figure who would one day swing between skyscrapers. "But humans weigh too much. You'd need extremely strong adhesion, and you'd also have to consider safety." He picked up Peter's scratch paper and pointed to the Web-Shooters sketch. "Your design idea is good, but the webbing would need a tensile strength of at least 800 megapascals. Ordinary materials can't manage that."
Peter's mouth formed an O, as though someone had hit pause on him. He looked at Lin Mo, then at the scratch paper, and suddenly covered his pocket as he leaned back, as though his secret had been exposed. "I... I was just drawing randomly," he stammered, his cheeks so red they looked ready to bleed.
"Just drawing, and it's already this professional?" Lin Mo deliberately teased him, then took the pencil and sketched an improved design beside the original. "Add a pressure device here so the webbing can shoot farther. And this switch—magnetic control would be more sensitive than a mechanical button."
Peter even stopped breathing. His eyes seemed glued to the drawing, and he did not even notice his glasses slipping down. Suddenly, he grabbed Lin Mo's wrist with shocking strength. "How do you know all this? Could it be that you also..."
"I've repaired similar mechanical devices." Lin Mo calmly pulled his hand back and stuffed a cookie into Peter's mouth. "Some retired S.H.I.E.L.D. equipment had similar designs. The principles are about the same." It was a flawless excuse—he really had repaired S.H.I.E.L.D. parts, though he had not told Peter those parts had actually been used to make weapons.
The boy nodded as if he only half understood. He chewed the cookie slowly, but his eyes moved rapidly as he processed the information. The sparrows outside flew away, leaving the empty power line swaying in the wind like a taut string.
"Another problem?" Lin Mo opened the workbook again. This time, he chose a geometry proof involving the principle of triangular stability—something that had much in common with the structure of a spider's web.
Peter did not lose focus like before. Though he occasionally stared out the window in a daze, he always pulled his attention back quickly. His pencil danced across the paper, drawing auxiliary lines with speed and precision. Sometimes he would suddenly stop and mutter, "No, it should be cross-braced like a spider web," then erase and redraw.
Lin Mo sat beside him and watched quietly. Sunlight fell across the boy's focused profile. His eyelashes cast faint shadows behind his lenses, while the sweat on the tip of his nose reflected flecks of light. This was the future Spider-Man, still only a high school student troubled by geometry problems, his eyes shining with curiosity about the world rather than the resolve he would one day show against alien invaders.
"Done!" Peter tossed down his pencil and let out a long breath. The proof in his workbook was clear and neat, with two more solutions than the standard answer. "Brother Lin Mo, look at this." He suddenly pulled a small box from his backpack. Inside was a Mechanical Spider, its legs made from watch springs. "I made it. It can crawl on glass, but it's a little slow."
The Mechanical Spider moved across the coffee table, its eight legs extending and contracting in alternation. Sure enough, it clung firmly to the smooth glass surface. Lin Mo used his Phasing Ability to scan its internal structure and discovered a tiny magnet and several suction cups hidden inside. It was an ingenious design. "Not bad," he praised sincerely. "You're much better than I was at your age. Back then, all I could do was take apart radios."
"Really?" Peter's eyes brightened further. "Then can you help me improve it? I want it to crawl faster and walk on the ceiling too."
"I can, but only if you finish all your summer homework." Lin Mo closed the workbook and pointed at the date written on it. "School starts in two weeks, and you've got enough problems left to keep you busy for a while."
The boy's face fell like a popped balloon. But he soon looked up again, hope in his eyes. "Then... every time I finish a problem, you teach me one mechanical principle? Like you did just now?"
"Deal." Lin Mo held out his hand. Peter hesitated for a moment, then held out his own. Their palms clasped lightly. The boy's hand was a little sweaty but strong, like he was holding a seed that had begun to sprout.
Ted's booming voice suddenly rang out from the hallway, making the windows buzz. "Mo! Peter! Come out and see my new magic trick! I can make a coin walk on the wall!" He threw open the door with a bang, holding up a coin and rubbing it against the wall. "Look! Doesn't it look like a spider?"
Peter's attention was instantly drawn away, like iron filings pulled by a magnet. Lin Mo shook his head helplessly as he watched the boy hurry over to discuss the coin's "magic" with Ted. Their heads were close together, their fingers gesturing against the wall. Sunlight cast their shadows there, making them look like two clumsy giant spiders.
When Aunt May came out carrying fruit, she found just such a scene: Lin Mo reclining on the sofa with a math textbook, while Ted and Peter crouched on the floor fiddling with the coin. The laughter of the three mixed with the cicadas outside and drifted gently through the living room. "Looks like I don't need to worry anymore." She smiled as she set the sliced watermelon on the coffee table. "Someone's better at keeping this child in line than I am."
Lin Mo picked up a slice of watermelon and watched Peter's excited profile. The boy's fingers darted along the wall, imitating a spider's crawling path, while he kept calculating something under his breath—probably converting the ratio between the coin's movement speed and a spider's. Lin Mo suddenly felt that perhaps a superhero's growth did not require earth-shattering events. Sometimes, all it took was someone willing to listen to his ideas, and an afternoon spent discussing how spiders crawled.
When the tutoring session ended that evening, Peter folded the corners of every problem he had gotten right and tucked them into his backpack as though they were treasures. At the door, he suddenly stopped and turned to Lin Mo. "Thank you, Brother Lin Mo." His cheeks were still slightly red, but his gaze was unusually serious. "I'll finish my homework quickly. Then... then you can't go back on your word."
"I won't." Lin Mo smiled and nodded, watching Peter skip down the stairs. The spider charm on his backpack swayed behind him like a tiny shadow.
Aunt May handed Lin Mo a glass of iced tea with a slice of lemon in it. "That child has always lacked a friend who could really talk with him. He used to hide in his room alone, taking things apart. I was afraid he'd make himself sick from being so lonely." She looked out the window at Peter and Ted playing with the Mechanical Spider, the smile on her lips as gentle as water. "Lin, thank you so much."
"It's nothing." Lin Mo took a sip of iced tea. The lemon's sourness mingled with the bitterness of the tea on his tongue. He knew there was not much he could do. He could not stop those future dangers from coming, nor could he bear Peter's pain for him. But at least for now, he could be the person willing to listen to him talk about spiders and solve math problems with him.
When Lin Mo left Aunt May's house, the setting sun had dyed the sky orange-red. Peter was still studying the Mechanical Spider with Ted, the boy's laughter clear as wind chimes. Lin Mo touched the fruit candy in his pocket—Grandma Gretchen had insisted on giving it to him, calling it a "reward for an excellent teacher."
He suddenly remembered the webbing tensile strength formula on Peter's scratch paper, the crude yet imaginative Web-Shooters sketch, and the light shining in the boy's eyes. Perhaps the seed of a hero was never planted in some earth-shaking moment. Perhaps it quietly sprouted on a sunlit afternoon, in a math workbook and a few conversations about spiders.
Lin Mo quickened his pace toward the repair shop, already considering what to teach Peter next time. Perhaps he could start with triangular stability, move on to the structure of spider webs, then extend it into structural mechanics. It would fit Peter's interests and help him catch up in math.
By the time the streetlights came on, he had already written a detailed plan in his notebook. Beside it, he had drawn a tiny spider crawling across geometric figures like a brave little explorer.
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