"Do you understand what I mean?"
"No, you don't understand. You don't know what the world took from him."
"But I do. Only I do, because I lost just as much as he did."
"Memory is a cunning beast. It cannot be controlled or tamed. Drugs, emotions, magic—none of them can have a lasting effect on it."
"Yet people repeat this mechanical life day after day, numb as screws in society, domesticated into insignificant castoffs, losing the ability to think. And memory is obscured by such darkness."
"But any trivial little thing can become the trigger for memory's revival. With just a gentle push, enough pressure, cracks will appear in the darkness, and light will shine through them."
"But is that really a good thing?"
"Every crack creates new problems, and every new problem creates new cracks, until a person's life and memories shatter alongside that darkness."
"Only madness and chaos remain as the final destination! Hahahahaha!"
In a fairly luxurious hotel room, several corpses lay scattered about. There were men and women among them, and they were barely clothed. They had probably been playing some unspeakable games before they died, because aside from the smell of marijuana and alcohol, the air was thick with the scent of bodily fluids.
Since the windows and door were tightly shut, the air had settled there, making it easy for Batwoman to identify the situation inside.
She stood silently outside the room for several seconds, while the attendant who had opened the door for her had already been frightened into pissing and shitting himself, frozen in place by the gruesome sight.
As a hotel attendant in New York, he often saw dead people. Someone might be murdered today, aliens might invade tomorrow. He had originally wanted to save enough money to buy a