Miaomiao rubbed her forehead where she had been flicked and pouted.
She blinked her watery eyes, looking a little hurt. "But he really did play with me for a long time. I had a lot of fun today."
Jason raised an eyebrow, torn between exasperation and amusement. "Fun? You can't even tell when someone has bad intentions toward you, and you still had fun?"
"I knew." Miaomiao's gaze was clear. "He just wanted to make me look silly. But he wasn't really planning to hurt me. He only wanted to play a prank, and he didn't even pull it off."
The living room fell silent the moment she said that.
She understood.
Of course she did. Miaomiao's gift was Perception, and she was extraordinarily sensitive to emotions. She might not understand the meanings behind those emotions, but basic goodwill and malice could not be hidden from her.
It was simply that, by Miaomiao's standards, John Elliott's little provocations amounted to nothing more than childish roughhousing, nowhere near malicious harm.
Jason fell silent for a long moment, then suddenly turned to Bruce. "Is this why you don't support us becoming Robin too young?"
He gestured vaguely toward Miaomiao. "You're worried we'd turn out like this silly fish? That dealing with Gotham's monsters too early would leave us unable to understand ordinary people normally?"
Clearly, after encountering a whole string of supervillains-Killer Croc, Poison Ivy, Harley Quinn, Bane, Two-Face, Penguin, Mad Hatter, Joker, Kingpin, Hydra, and more-Miaomiao's threshold had been set far too high. Ordinary students' petty rivalries and provocative little tricks practically seemed wholesome to her.
For a moment, Bruce had no answer.
It was true.
Having witnessed hurricane-driven waves in the endless deep sea, experienced the most primal life-and-death struggles in its dark waters, and brushed against the truly bloody