Black Sun and the Bat-Lamp (Part 1)

On a morning in Gotham City that was neither bright nor warm, Gotham University’s students faced their final psychology exam.

When Evans handed out the papers, the classroom erupted in wails and groans. Then, the sound of leather heels striking the marble floor came from outside. In an instant, the classroom fell silent.

Schiller entered while folding up his umbrella. Seeing everyone bent over their papers and writing furiously, he nodded in satisfaction.

Then he planted the umbrella on the floor, rested a hand on its handle, and stood in the center of the classroom. "This exam lasts one hour and forty minutes. In theory, you may hand in your papers early, but it’s boring for me to proctor here. Any paper you turn in early, I will grade early."

"At the very least, make sure what you’ve written gives me enough to read until you walk out that door."

"Also, although I didn’t make you sit apart, it would be best not to whisper to one another. Keep your handwriting neat. Cursive is not allowed. Most importantly, write your name clearly. I mean your legal name. Don’t make me repeat what I said during the first week of school: no nicknames."

"All right. Begin."

The entire classroom then fell completely silent, leaving only the soft scratching of pen tips over paper.

Never before had any classroom at Gotham University possessed such a thick atmosphere of study. During a pause in his writing, Bruce looked up. Sitting ahead and to his right was the nephew of an East End hyena. The guy had smoked, drunk, fought, and brawled since he was barely over ten. He was a pure-blooded bad boy.

Yet now, he sat at his desk with his head down. Ten minutes had passed, and he was still writing furiously. Or rather, that brain of his, crammed with alcohol and tobacco, was somehow still capable of supporting the effort.

To Bruce’s left sat Gotham University’s famous graffiti kid. He was skilled with spray paint and regularly turned walls all over campus into a mess. When Sheldon enforced the campus alcohol ban, he had even sprayed a mocking oversized-head graffiti portrait of him onto the wall outside the principal’s office.

He was doing a little worse. He couldn’t write the first essay question and was currently drawing all kinds of patterns on the paper.

With his sharp eyesight, Bruce glanced over and saw that he was drawing Schiller. Unlike his usual mocking graffiti, this Schiller stood facing away from a black sun, arms spread wide, with particle-like patterns swirling around him. The whole image looked strange yet cool. The only question was whether Schiller would be willing to give him two extra points for his painstaking creation.

After half an hour, more than two-thirds of the students were somehow still writing. This was nothing short of a miracle for Gotham University.

During past final exams, several troublemakers would be absent from the start, so the seats were never full. Two minutes after the exam began, some people would write down their names, stand up, and leave.

Ten minutes into the exam, plenty of students would have guessed their way through the easy multiple-choice questions, tossed down their pens, handed in their papers early, and walked out.

In the past, after twenty minutes, only a few people would remain in the entire classroom. Even those who stayed were not writing the essay questions. They simply had nothing else planned and wanted to sleep in the quiet classroom.

But now, Bruce looked at his watch. Forty minutes had passed, and half the class was still writing.

No one dared hand in their paper early. Most of them had already racked their brains to the brink of exhaustion, yet they still chewed on their pens and sat in their seats, hoping their limited minds could squeeze out a few more words to put on the page. They were trying to ensure that this professor would not be quite so angry when he saw answers hovering somewhere between illiterate and semi-literate.

In truth, even introductory psychology textbooks were difficult, filled with specialized terms, names, theories, and definitions.

Not to mention these habitually uneducated Gotham University students—even students at famous universities in the United States had to prepare before a specialized lecture, or they would easily find their minds completely blank.

Memorization itself was difficult for students whose brains had not turned properly in a long time, let alone cramming it all into one or two weeks.

When an hour had passed, most people had stopped writing. Bruce wrote down the names of those who were still bent over their papers. They would be the backbone of the psychology club he planned to establish in the future.

After thinking it over, he wrote down the graffiti kid’s name as well. A club always needed someone to handle promotional artwork.

After the full hour and forty minutes had passed, the professor at the front finally said, "Papers in." The words seemed to slam heavily onto the floor, and waves of exhaled breath filled the classroom. Clearly, they had all been holding it in until they were nearly going mad.

Even after the papers had been collected, no one dared leave. Only after Schiller stapled them together, counted them, checked the names, and carried the stack of exam papers out of the classroom did the room explode like a bomb with a thunderous boom.

"Oh no! I didn’t know more than half the fill-in-the-blank questions! I’m finished!"

"Damn it, I spent all last night cramming psychology definitions, but they weren’t even on the test! If I’d known, I wouldn’t have wasted so much time on the earlier questions!"

"I wrote the answer to the second essay question under the fourth one! Oh my God, what am I supposed to do? I definitely won’t get a single point on the essay questions!"

"Did any of you write the graduate school application? Evans, did you? Yesterday, my dad told me that if a brain like mine could get into graduate school, we might as well expect our dog to climb a tree! But our dog is a corgi…"

"I still owe two papers. I have to finish them before vacation, or I’ll be on edge all break. There’s no way I’ll be able to enjoy myself…"

Several people gathered around Bruce’s desk. They were the first members he had invited to the club. Rainy, the graffiti kid wearing a fluorescent yellow headband, said, "The professor will like my painting. I can tell he’s a man with artistic taste."

"But he might like seeing your correct answers even more," Bruce said.

"Come on, I don’t understand any of that. Memorizing stuff pollutes my brain." Rainy rubbed his nose. He was a typical Germanic-looking boy, with green eyes, a few freckles, and reggae-style clothes.

"And who says it isn’t a correct answer? Who says answering questions has to mean writing words? Drawing works too. I’ll pass!"

"All right, I’ll pay you to make a poster for me. Make it big and impactful, something to promote the club. Name your price, but I want it to be truly stunning," Bruce said.

Rainy snapped his fingers. "Rich boy, you came to the right guy! No one in all of Gotham knows how to stun people better than I do!"

The group huddled together, whispering excitedly.

"What? You mean you’re going to…"

"You’re a genius…"

"Count me in. I want in too!"

"This will be a huge surprise… Yeah, I think it’ll work…"

"Maybe he’ll let us pass for this…"

A few days later, Schiller graded papers while his anger meter steadily filled. He had long expected little from Gotham University’s uneducated students, but he had never imagined they could do this terribly.

Not wanting his brain to be continuously polluted by this academic garbage, Schiller planned to work late today, finish grading every paper in one go, and fail most of them without mercy.

Suddenly, he heard a sharp cry from outside the office building’s window. It sounded somewhat like a fire siren, but shorter and more piercing.

Schiller stood and looked out the window. Some lights were swaying outside. Night had only just fallen, far too early for the streetlights to come on, and most teachers and students had not yet left campus.

He heard a noisy crowd below, and someone seemed to be shouting his surname. Schiller put down his pen, stepped away from his desk, and walked to the window.

The entire side of the building opposite was wrapped in a massive curtain. Schiller had heard earlier that the wall was being renovated. He did not often pass through that road, so he had not paid much attention.

But the moment he reached the window, the curtain covering the opposite wall dropped away. There seemed to be an enormous graffiti mural beneath it, seven stories tall. A row of spotlights at the bottom suddenly flared to life, illuminating the entire side of the building as brightly as day.

It truly was an enormous graffiti mural. At the bottom was Schiller’s back, while above him hung a black sun covered in countless bizarre patterns. Rings of flames made of golden designs surrounded the sun, and Schiller’s figure stood before it.

Schiller’s figure nearly blended into the black sun’s background. Or perhaps that incomparably huge sun was his Shade.

Standing at the window, Schiller was first dazzled by the high-powered spotlights. When he opened his eyes again, he saw that image.

Schiller: "…"

Symbiote: "…Wow."

Written across the side of the mural were the words: "Join the Psychology Club. Face the human heart. Face this black sun. —Blue Ghost Rainy"

When Schiller looked down, he saw a group of people standing below the building, excitedly waving at him. They were mostly psychology students from Gotham University, including Bruce Wayne.

Schiller looked up again at the black sun formed from countless eerie patterns. It possessed a bizarre, terrifying beauty that made it impossible to look away, as if it could draw one’s soul inside.

Terrifying, eerie, bizarre, absurd—yet filled with a beauty that made people fall into it and never escape.

Schiller recalled that "Gotham" had originally meant "Village of Fools." This place truly was filled with all sorts of absurd fools, unaware of where they had come from or where they would go when they died.

But it was also filled with all kinds of geniuses. They possessed incomparable talent and a vitality that captivated others.

Schiller truly was somewhat captivated. This bold, strange, absurd act was filled with a special vitality found nowhere else in the world. It was like terrifying Vines climbing up from a bottomless Abyss, and like a supreme work of art that stood shoulder to shoulder with countless masters.

Schiller knew more than these students, but he had just realized that there was one thing he had not yet learned—

He had not yet learned Gotham.

Everyone living here was mad, yet clear-minded at the same time.

This Dark City did not need anyone to correct it. They lived so madly in the Abyss, living out a twisted and eerie vitality.

That vitality grew from darkness. The people here wielded madness like a blade, piercing anyone’s heart with perfect precision.

Schiller stared directly at the black sun. Perhaps the people here were all incomparable geniuses, and the only fool was himself—every person outside the comics who dreamed of playing savior.

With minds that knew not the slightest bit of psychological theory, these people had seen through their professor as though they could read minds.

A black sun was still a sun. There could be no more accurate portrait of Schiller.

What Schiller had become truly was not a blazing, radiant sun, but a sun that gave no light and no warmth—a black sun.

A few minutes later, Schiller used his finger to write a line on the fogged-up glass—"You passed."

In an instant, thunderous cheers erupted below. Beneath the black sun, it was as though the people living under the light of that eternally unlit star were celebrating a new beginning.