When the night rain fell again in Gotham, Bruce, who had already taken a circle over the city, returned to Wayne Manor. His hair was wet and stuck to his temples, and his face looked a little pale.
When Alfred came up to hand him a towel, he asked cautiously: "Master, are you okay?"
Alfred doesn't often take the initiative to express concern for Bruce. He prefers to take action, but Bruce's condition now looks really bad.
He let himself get caught in the rain, making his hair and clothes wet, and his eyes were a little blurry, like a drug addict enjoying the effects of drugs on the streets.
Hearing Alfred's question, Bruce seemed to have grasped a life-saving straw suddenly. His eyes focused on Alfred's face in an instant, and looked at him and asked seriously: "Alf
Red, are there really ghosts in this world?"
Alfred reached out and put the towel on Bruce's head, pulled his arm to sit on the sofa, and then began to wipe his hair. While wiping, he said: "It depends on your definition of a ghost.
.”
"I always believe that human death is not the end. As long as a person is still alive in the memory of others, he is not completely dead. In the eyes of close relatives, although a person has left, he is still alive everywhere.
Traces, this longing is like a ghost lingering in the room."
Bruce leaned on the back of the sofa sluggishly, and murmured to himself: "No, I don't mean this kind of philosophical explanation, I...forget it, Alfred, please help me get one."
Come over with the thermometer, I might have a fever."
Alfred touched Bruce's forehead with his fingertips, shook his head and said, "No, sir, you don't have a fever. Your body temperature is normal. If you feel uncomfortable, I can pour you a glass of hot milk."
To Alfred's surprise, Bruce did not refuse. He just clasped his hands together and nodded, and said, "I feel a little cold. Can the milk be warmed up?"
After a while, Alfred brought back a cup of steaming milk. Bruce almost couldn't wait to lean forward, stretched out his arm, and picked up the milk cup with trembling fingertips.
The next second, he was so hot that he shook his hand and almost spilled the milk. Alfred stood beside him helplessly and said, "Master, I know that you and Dick haven't gotten along so well recently.
Pleasant, you may feel angry, but Dick is still a child after all..."
"No, it has nothing to do with Dick." Bruce held the scalding glass of milk in his hand, pursed his lips and said, "You may think I'm talking nonsense, but I just met someone when I went out. He...he
Looks like Thomas."
Alfred's eyes widened. He folded the towel and walked to the phone and said, "Master, I'm afraid I have to contact a psychiatrist for you. Hallucinations are an extremely bad sign.
"
"I also suspected that I was hallucinating, but..." Bruce took a sip of milk and fell into deep thought again. He recalled every detail of the meeting with Thomas in his mind, and found nothing. flaw.
His superb intelligence, calmness and rationality, his attention to factual evidence and psychological profiling all told him that the other party had a high probability of being Thomas Wayne.
But the problem is, the above things are telling him that Thomas has died a long time ago, and he had clearly watched the body being buried with his own eyes.
Bruce's pale face came from his poor mental state, but it was not because he was shocked when he saw Thomas that he showed signs of a mental breakdown, but he began to wonder if there was something wrong with his memory?
For most of the unconscious mental disorders in the world, a significant sign before the onset is that patients begin to distrust their own memories, and some inexplicable fragments that they have not experienced are inserted into their brains, making them They cannot distinguish between fantasy and reality.
Bruce clearly remembered every detail of when Thomas and Martha fell, as well as every expression of every guest at the funeral afterwards.
The little Bruce stood among the crowds of people coming and going, and everything that happened that day was deeply imprinted in his mind. For more than ten years, he always had this as a nightmare and could not get peace. .
But the scene that had appeared countless times in Bruce's dreams was overturned at this time. His reasoning ability told him that the person he saw tonight was Thomas Wayne.
This is definitely not something that can be achieved by simple plastic surgery. When a good detective determines who a person is, he will not only look at his face.
Bruce is like this, so he remembers all the logic of Thomas' actions, and the Batman who appears today perfectly conforms to this logic.
Alfred's eyes rolled slightly, and then he walked to sit opposite Bruce, held his hand and said: "Master, calm down, something that happened in reality has nothing to do with your memory. When it's completely the opposite, it's possible that neither reality nor your memory is wrong, but there's some hidden story behind it that we don't know about."
"If you judge that he is Master Thomas, then he may indeed be, and you remember that he was already dead at the beginning. Maybe he was really dead at that time, but it may be a fake death, or he may have been resurrected later. This is not unreasonable. It's possible, isn't it?"
Bruce looked up at him, his eyes still a little dull, but in an instant, a fierce look burst out from his pupils, and he stood up excitedly and said: "Yes, you are right! Thomas and Martha were right back then. They might have faked their death, they might not have died at all, they might have gone into seclusion and now they're back!"
"No, I'm going to find him now. I want to find out what's going on." Bruce was about to leave immediately, but at this time, a burst of noise suddenly broke out upstairs.
As soon as Bruce looked up, he saw Tim lying on the guardrail of the patio, looking down at him, and shouted to him: "Hey, Bruce, you'd better come up and have a look. Dick seems to be having a nightmare."
Bruce took a deep breath and tried to cool down his boiling blood. He climbed several steps at a time and rushed into Dick's room. The tears on Dick's face had not disappeared, and he leaned on the pillow in a daze.
, Jason sat next to him.
Bruce walked over, gently hugged Dick, and wiped away the tears on his face with his fingers. Dick seemed to have collapsed. He pulled Bruce and said in a crying voice: "My ears hurt a little.
…”
Dick's tears continued to fall, he was even shaking with fear, and kept trying to push Bruce away with his arms.
Bruce hesitated for a moment, not knowing whether he should continue to exert force or let go of Dick. Jason winked at Tim. Tim stepped forward and took Dick's hand, and Jason pulled Bruce out.
"He's very scared." Jason said to Bruce: "This is an obvious response to stress disorder. What's wrong with you two?"
"I..." Bruce thought about what happened during the day. He lowered his head and sighed and said, "I don't know why Dick doesn't want to do his homework well. Even if I accompany him, he keeps dawdling."
"He didn't have good study habits. I was worried about him, so I said a few words to him, but he ran out."
Jason scratched his head, but Bruce squatted down and looked into Jason's eyes and said, "You have such a strong ability to empathize that you can even tell what I'm thinking. So do you know what Dick is thinking?"
"Have you read any books about the rebellious period?" Jason asked.
Before Bruce could answer, Jason touched his chin and said, "Before, when I was reading those psychology textbooks, I occasionally came across some books about adolescence and rebellious periods."
"There is an interesting theory in it, that is, rebellious behavior is actually very normal. It is a necessary stage for personality growth."
"The rebellious period is like a watershed." Jason's tone became slightly calmer, and it was obvious that he was repeating the contents of the book.
"Before the rebellious period, children's understanding of the world and their own behavioral standards come from the authority established by parents. Parents tell their children what things are like, what they can and cannot do, and children have no idea.
Accept this information with reservation.”
"But after reaching a certain age, children begin to establish self-awareness, and they will begin to think about, who am I? What do I think the world should be like? And, what kind of person do I want to be?"
"You can't get answers to these questions from your parents. Parents will only tell you that you are a child and will only tell you what they think the world is like."
"As a result, children began to explore, no longer unreservedly accepting the information their parents instilled in them, and began to try to judge things and understand the world with their own eyes."
"But to do this, the first thing is not to be trapped in the judgment of their parents. The authority of their parents encroaches on the space for their personality growth. When building self-awareness, they must delete some of the concepts their parents instilled in them so that they can have room.
Arrange your own ideas."
"But to break through their parents' ideas, they must first resist authority. Therefore, children begin to experiment and resist their parents again and again to try to break through the shackles of other people's thinking and build their own personality."
"This is why children in the rebellious stage always appear to be capricious, extremely irritable, inexplicable and especially like to go against their parents."
"In their subconscious, they are eager to prove that they are an independent person, not an appendage of their parents. They want to prove that they have a unique view on everything and that their personality is complete and independent."
"But among this age group, the vast majority of children cannot survive without their parents, and their parents do not think they are independent, so this will lead to very acute family conflicts."
"Children feel that their parents are oppressing them and do not want them to have a complete personality. They feel that their parents' views are outdated and they want to brainwash them."
"Parents feel that their children are unreasonable, ungrateful, and a ruthless white-eyed wolf."
Bruce listened to Jason's analysis in a daze. He seemed to recognize who Jason's analysis came from. He was very familiar with every pause between the lines.
As a result, Bruce forgot that the person in front of him was Jason, his child, not a teacher, and just asked instinctively:
