Bruce touched his face.
"I'm certain my mom only had me. Otherwise, they wouldn't have let me off so easily when I took apart the engine of my dad's favorite vintage car as a kid."
Ririko looked up. "Then there's only one possibility left. That guy had surgery to look like you."
Bruce asked in confusion, "Who would get surgery to make their face look like mine? What would they gain from that?"
Ririko sighed in exasperation.
"Every man in Gotham wants a face like yours, okay?"
Bruce's face flushed slightly.
He looked away and cleared his throat. "So he committed crimes with my face to make me the scapegoat..."
His gaze returned to Ririko's face. "He even knows I'm Batman... That's going to be a problem."
Ririko nodded. "He just killed someone as Batman, too."
Bruce's expression changed. "How could he kill someone?!"
He realized how serious this was.
If Batman openly killed someone, no one would believe he would uphold his code anymore. The public trust he had worked so hard to build would crumble.
Bruce raised his eyes and tentatively asked Ririko in a low voice:
"How... do you know I'm the real one? What if I'm a fake, too?"
Ririko raised her hand, her fingertips lightly touching the glass as she slowly traced the line of his jaw. "How could I ever mistake someone else for you?"
She couldn't exactly tell him she could see the system data.
Bruce raised his hand as well. With the glass between their fingertips, their palms aligned on either side of the pane.
"Thank you for believing in me. And thank you for always being there... whenever I'm in trouble."
He couldn't explain that sense of reassurance. No matter how terrible things got, Ririko would stand beside him without hesitation,