[Zhongyingmei] The clown is actually me

dark.

The body seemed to be slowly sinking into the deep sea, surrounded by the cold and heavy water, and no sound disturbed the silence. Jack's soul was abandoned alone at the end of the world, and everything he knew did not exist here. ,? Including himself.

Suddenly, the water flow turned in a different direction, as if a pair of gentle hands lifted him up high.Is that the mother's hand,? Or the wife's hand,? Or who else?He couldn't tell the difference, the memory turned into a fuzzy chaos, he could only shed tears in the warmth of amniotic fluid, and a voice in his heart told him that it was his long-awaited destination and hometown.

Those hands supported him,? Let him surface,? Followed by the intertwined messy human voice, he heard someone calling doctor,? As if he was a baby that had just landed.In the darkness, someone lifted the back of his head and put the breathing mask on his mouth and nose. The first breath of fresh air poured into his mouth. He coughed a few times, opened his eyes with difficulty, and saw Pale ceiling.The blood bag swayed slightly under his gaze, and the bright red blood dripped along the veins, just like the blood pumped from his heart.

Holding a flashlight, the doctor opened his eyelids and observed the condition of the eyeballs. Seeing that there was no obvious cloudiness, he breathed a sigh of relief and asked him, "Be sober and don't faint. What is two plus three?"

Jack's lips moved: "Five."

"Do you remember your name?"

Jack froze, and just when the doctor thought he wouldn't answer, he whispered, "Jack...Jack Napier."

"Well, Jay... Mr. Jack Napier, we found you at the mouth of the river near Blackgate Prison. You don't have any identification on you, just a few banknotes. Are you a citizen of Gotham? Do you have a job? What is your address? Do you still remember the phone numbers of your family members, can you contact your relatives and friends?"

Jack was stunned for a long time: "...don't remember. I don't remember anything."

The doctor seemed to have seen a lot, so he was not surprised. He just sighed: "Well, you are not injured, but you have some concussions. Take a good rest, and you will be discharged from the hospital in half a month."

Jack tried to move his neck, which was stiff from lying down for a long time, and nodded slowly.

Jack sat up from the hospital bed when the doctor walked out of the ward. He was in a small clinic. Looking at the large brown stains on the walls, he could tell that the clinic had been in operation for some years.The small old clinic was full of citizens injured by the Blackgate Prison riot, and even the corridors were filled with hospital beds.Among the bloody patients with severed arms and legs, he seemed out of place only with gauze wrapped around his head.The doctor regards him as a victim who was stimulated by the riots. There are so many people like this now that they fill up all the hospitals in Gotham City. There is no place for such a small clinic. Medical resources are so tight Next, the exhausted doctor who had been spinning for several days had no energy to pay attention to his amnesia symptoms.

Holding the blood transfusion bag, Jack slowly walked through the patient's groaning/groans, through the lying limbs of the dying patient, through the tears and sighs of countless family members, as if walking through hell naked.

He walked into the bathroom and finally saw himself clearly.The mirror reflected a pale man with curly black hair like seaweed and two bright yellow-green eyes like charcoal balls. It seemed that he hadn't seen the sun for a long time, and his skin was paler than normal.He stretched out his palm and grasped it against the void a few times. The blue blood vessels under the skin were clearly visible, pulsating slightly with his movements.

In an instant, a picture flashed through my mind, it was a pair of blood-stained, pale as dead hands.

He was frightened by such a scene and took a step back, but when he collected his mind and looked over, the only thing that came into view was his own hand.He looked in the mirror again, and he was just an ordinary person in the mirror.

He shook his head, put the horrible picture behind him, and prepared to return to his ward.He walked slowly through the corridor of the clinic. It was dusk at the moment, and the setting sun reflected the window casement into molten red, and the snow-white clouds were outlined by the setting sun into a circle of brilliant gold. It was reflected in Jack's eyes, as if his pupils had also turned into a gorgeous golden color.

At that moment, Jack suddenly wanted a paintbrush very, very much.

"You've recovered." The doctor said while ticking off the medical record, "You still haven't remembered anything?"

Jack shook his head.

The doctor smiled: "At least you may have graduated from an art major. This is a clue. Have you completed your temporary identity certificate? Then you can be discharged from the hospital. The government will release the victims of the Heimen riot The subsidy is for you."

He straightened up and returned the medical records to Jack.The riot at Blackgate Prison left many victims traumatized. Some patients were severely hit on the head or inhaled nerve gas. At least one hundred people in Gotham suffered from mental symptoms of varying severity.Landmark buildings such as the police station near Black Gate Prison were burned down, and a large number of preserved citizen files were lost. Therefore, Jack, who has lost his memory and has no identity certificate, is not out of line in the current chaotic situation.

He silently took back his medical records and thanked the doctor.When he was discovered, he only had a few banknotes with him, which was not enough to pay for medical expenses, but the government relief subsidy helped him make up for this gap. With his knowledge, conversation and health examination, he applied for a temporary identity certificate and obtained economic benefits. The only thing he has to do after leaving the clinic is to find a job that can support him.

The moment he stepped out of the gate of the clinic, looking at the iron-gray sky, Jack felt a sense of familiarity, as if he had experienced all this before, but it was completely different.Gotham, a strange yet familiar city, has quietly changed its world.

He walked down the long street with the bag, like a fish swimming against the current.Suddenly he stopped, as if another soul was pulling him, making him turn his head, his eyes fell on a dark purple cashmere coat displayed in the window.

He stood there, as if he was fixed by Medusa's gaze, and stared blankly for several minutes. Finally, he glanced at the price tag and chose to give up.He didn't have a lot of money on him, so there was no need to spend a lot of money on an expensive coat. Spring was almost over, and a thinner, cheaper coat could keep out the cold.He thought for a while, and turned into the flower shop on the corner of the street. He remembered that the living room of the economical rental house had a rectangular balcony, so why not buy some seeds and flower pots to grow flowers.

Several months have passed in a blink of an eye, and Jack's body has not been found.

The terrain of the karst cave he fell into was very complicated, and he failed to reach the bottom after being pulled down with a safety rope several times.Not long after, due to plate vibrations, a small earthquake occurred near Gotham, and the cliff collapsed. Jack’s body may have been buried under the gravel, or taken away by underground water flow. Mud, it's lucky to find broken pieces of corpses.In this situation, all Batman can do is mourn for him like ordinary people.

Batman looked at a section of a spine soaked in the solution, dismantled and clotted with scarlet blood.This is what he snatched back from the Laughing Bat.When he first looked at this vertebra, he didn't know whether he was expecting a new Jack to grow on the spine. He knew that even if a new one grew out, it would not be the person he was familiar with who was buried deep in the cave. .But to his disappointment and luck, there was no movement in the vertebrae. It was held in the arms of the Laughing Bat like a baby, but it was a dead baby, and the Dionysian factor in the spine had been burned out.

"Master Bruce, you have to forgive yourself. Although you dress like a bat, you are still a mortal. You can't handle all emergencies perfectly, and mortals will always have things and people they can't save." It was rare for Alfred not to say a bad joke, but to comfort the other party with a sigh.

Batman shook his head: "I let him down—let him down again, last time in the ACE chemical plant, I couldn't save him, and I didn't this time either."

He took off his hood and battle suit, revealing Bruce Wayne's tired face. Things have been peaceful in Gotham recently, and Batman's duty time is not as tight as before. It's still afternoon, and there are still several hours before night, Because of Jack, he was in a bad mood, and he wanted to go out for a walk and breathe the fresh air of Gotham with coal dust.

Of course, the old butler would not make the boy he brought up sad. Bruce drove a red sports car and drove a few laps on the high-speed track on the outskirts of Gotham before slowly letting out the foul breath from his heart.

He stepped out of the racing track and stepped off the sports car. It was dusk, and the heavy sunlight fell from the gaps in the tall buildings, casting rows of long bright colors on the furry lawn.Looking down from a high altitude, it seems to be the golden strings on the vast land.

He walked across the grass and came to the edge of the artificial lake, where he sat on a bench. The setting sun gradually faded into the depths of the mountains, and the street lights came on one by one.

This is really a familiar scene, Bruce remembered that in the world of injustice, he fished Jack up from drowning at this lake, earlier, Jack was sitting on the bench he was sitting on now, snow-white The dress fluttered like a swallowtail in the wind, and he was holding a revolver in his hand, the black muzzle of the gun against his chin.He was too white, as if he died the moment he fell into the waste liquid pool, and what was standing and moving was just a corpse.

Does he want to live?

Bruce's mind suddenly jumped out of this thought.

He thought for a while, but he couldn't find an answer that could convince him, or he refused to think about it.The only thing Yomo could answer him was the tears that Jack shed when he stood on the steel frame of the Ferris wheel.

At this moment, as if fate was deliberately flattering him, he felt a human-shaped shadow covering him. The person was standing on the other side of the bench, half of his face was sunk in the shadow of the street lamp, and his black curly hair was wrapped around his neck. : "Excuse me, would you mind if I sit here for a while?"