The Phantom of the Opera (Part One)

Gordon set the coffee cup in his hand on the table. Its bottom struck the tabletop with a crisp sound. He sighed and pulled out his chair, but the instant his butt touched the cushion, the old television beside him suddenly erupted with violent static, startling him so badly that he sprang straight out of the chair.

The television had been playing an ordinary drama, but suddenly the screen turned to snow and deafening noise poured from it. The screen flickered, and a pale-faced figure with green hair and grotesque clown makeup appeared.

The Joker’s painted smile made it seem as though he was always grinning, yet mournful sobs came from his mouth. As he cried, he wiped at his eyes with his arm and said in a hoarse voice, "An emergency missing-person announcement from Sad Jack. My good friend Batman is missing…"

His voice sounded like fire-charred wood, dry and rasping. Suddenly, he stopped acting and stared straight beyond the screen. The corners of his mouth twisted viciously downward, though his makeup still held that strange smile, making him look utterly distorted.

"…I’m going to find him, even if he just humiliated me." His face darkened. When he was not smiling, a terrifying atmosphere seemed to spread from him.

Schiller watched the television mounted on the wall from his hospital room at Arkham Asylum.

The Joker abruptly made a sorrowful expression again. "I’m a poor homeless man. After the roads cracked apart, truck drivers lost their jobs. I still have bank loans to repay, boo-hoo…"

He suddenly covered his face and began to cry. Then the sobbing grew sharper and sharper until it turned into wild laughter. He threw back his head and grinned, and that piercing laughter spread into every corner of Gotham.

"You think that’s what I’d say?!" he screamed madly. "That doesn’t matter!! What matters is the bat! You idiots!!!"

He clutched the camera, his deathly pale face expanding endlessly in the lens. It was as though he were trying to search for something through the screen, pressing his eyes closer and closer.

"When did I first see him? Let me think, let me think…"

"Oh!" The Joker suddenly shouted, throwing himself backward before straightening again. He flung his hair over his forehead, hiding his eyes beneath its shadow. He brushed it aside carelessly, and the downturned corners of his mouth slowly rose. His expression became gentle, yet even stranger.

"I smashed a thug to death with a hammer. His head burst open like a watermelon, just like this—bang!"

"Then his companions screamed, ‘The bat is coming! The bat is coming!’" The Joker puckered his lips, imitating the tone of Calling for Help.

"The bat? Hahahahaha, the bat… a bat that doesn’t kill…"

"How could someone like that exist? I thought, these gangsters actually believed Gotham had a savior! Hahahahaha…"

"I deliberately blew up buildings, smashed people’s heads open, or let them run away Calling for Help… but the bat never came! He wouldn’t come see me! My savior wouldn’t come…"

The Joker covered his face with both hands and slowly dragged them downward. His fingers pulled his pale skin down with them, easily exposing the blood-red muscle beneath his eyelids.

"And only today did I learn why…"

He suddenly seized the camera again like a madman and shouted, "Because he thinks I’m an Assassin raised by those idiots!! He thinks I’m no different from the lunatics on the street! He… boo-hoo… he thinks I’m an ordinary lunatic… boo-hoo-hoo-hoo…"

"An ordinary person… boo-hoo… how could an ordinary person be friends with the great Batman…"

As the Joker cried, he wiped away tears with his arm. "When I went to save him… he actually thought I was an Assassin from the Court of Owls…"

Suddenly, he thrust out his chest and drew in a fierce breath, filling his lungs with air. He grabbed the camera and roared, "He thinks I’m mediocre!!! He thinks there’s nothing different about me!!! This is all your fault!!!!"

"You created so many lunatics!!! You made Batman think I was an ordinary mental patient!!!! He can’t see me! Can’t see me! He refuses to play my game…"

He was nearly hoarse, sounding as though he were screaming in agony. Everyone watching the television could feel his fury and grief.

Then, all at once, he calmed down. Staring straight into the camera, he said, "You have a plan. I have one too, I have one too. I’ll prove it to you. I’m Batman’s friend. I am. I’m different…"

"I call this plan…"

"Owls Have Bad Luck! Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!"

As that mad laughter echoed through the sky, lightning flashed overhead, and Gotham began to rain again.

The television returned to static. Schiller stood, took out the remote, switched off the television on the hospital wall, then tossed the remote aside. He turned to Batman, lying in the hospital bed, and asked, "Well? Feeling better?"

Batman pressed his lips tightly together and said nothing. With his arms folded, Schiller said smugly, "This is what you get for refusing to listen to advice. I told you not to choose such an unlucky name. Well? Split in two now, aren’t you?"

Evans shouted from the bed beside him, "That has nothing to do with it!"

His voice was still somewhat raspy, but it carried plenty of strength. The Dionysus Factor that had been inside him had healed all his injuries, even erasing scars left from the past.

Batman, however, was in much worse shape. He was still on an IV drip and was clearly badly injured, unable to sit up properly even now.

"Who exactly was that lunatic?" Batman asked in confusion. "The explosion blew me away. When I woke up, I saw him right in front of me, smiling at me without stopping."

"I thought he was a Talon sent by the Court of Owls, so I sprayed him with the anesthetic on my arm, but he didn’t react at all."

"I asked whether he had been sent by the Court of Owls to kill me, and he started screaming madly and smashing things, then squatted on the floor and cried."

"He punched me, and I coughed up blood twice. Then he apologized like crazy and ran out, saying he was going to find a Doctor for me."

"I only rescued you after he left." Schiller shrugged.

"Didn’t he just say that he’d caused a lot of incidents before?" Batman said in a low voice, frowning. "I always thought he was the same as those people driven mad by the rain."

"But thinking back now, about a few weeks ago, I went out on patrol and encountered three bombings in a single night. Even in Gotham, that frequency was abnormally high."

"He just wanted to be your friend, but you never noticed him at all."

"There are too many lunatics in Gotham." Batman’s mouth turned down, making him look cold and severe. "Why should I distinguish how they’re different? I have no interest in entering a lunatic’s mind."

Schiller walked between the two hospital beds, pulled over a chair, and sat down. Then he turned toward Evans and asked, "I explained everything to you earlier. That’s what happened."

Evans’s sorrow was obvious. "I didn’t know anything. I was kept in the dark the whole time. I…"

He covered his eyes painfully. "I clearly remember that my relationship with my brother was very good. I can even remember his smile, but when I try to think about it carefully, I can’t remember anything at all."

"Human memories have protective mechanisms. After your personality was revived, too many missing and inconsistent memories could very likely cause that personality to collapse again."

"At such times, the mind’s self-repair function takes effect. It beautifies many important things to fill the gaps in your memories and the wounds in your mind."

"I don’t think he was like that. He wasn’t…"

Schiller suddenly reached out and pressed directly against Evans’s forehead, forcing his upright body back onto the bed and his head onto the pillow. Evans convulsed once. When he opened his eyes again, his gaze had changed.

"You can see Evans’s behavior too, can’t you, Alberto?"

He remained silent. Though he looked exactly like Evans, when Alberto emerged, even his facial muscles seemed completely different.

"You should have heard what I told Evans earlier as well. You are actually the personality created by the Court of Owls, the Assassin raised through their brainwashing program."

Alberto sneered. "Do you really think I was loyal to them? If I hadn’t acted fanatical, how would they have used me to carry out that plan? And how could I have obtained a chance at immortality?"

"Immortality is all you seek?"

"Revenge… and revenge." Evans’s nose twitched, making him look extraordinarily vicious.

"If what you say is true, and I am the personality created by the Court of Owls, then they made an enormous mistake."

"They should never have shaped me into another Godfather. They should never have made me so much like my father. They should never have turned me into a true Falcone. No Falcone in this world would willingly let others pull his strings."

Schiller leaned to one side against the chair’s armrest and said with interest, "I thought it was strange at the time too. The behavioral patterns they gave you conflicted with the beliefs they instilled in you."

"They wanted you to be loyal to the Court of Owls, yet they also wanted you to become the Godfather’s perfect heir, someone exactly like the Old Godfather."

"But the Old Godfather could never have been a fanatic devoted to some mysterious organization. He believed only in himself, only in the power held in his own hands."

"So you were pretending from the beginning?"

Alberto shook his head. "No. I really did defect to the Court of Owls, but not because I believed in them. It was because I wanted revenge on my father."

"Before, I could never find the reason. But when you told Evans The Truth, I understood."

"I understood why I could not feel even the slightest familial affection from him, not even a trace of his trust in me."

"He never considered me his son."

Alberto’s voice grew increasingly low. "Perhaps because they wanted me to play the role of Falcone’s heir well, the Court of Owls gave me none of The Truth. So I believed I really was Falcone’s son."

"But he was not a good father. Every glance he gave me, every action he took, carried malice…"

"…He wanted to kill me." Alberto’s voice trembled slightly.

"Can you imagine it?" Alberto’s voice began to take on a hint of madness. "Your father sees you as a monster every moment of every day. Every day, he struggles over whether to kill you…"

"I had no idea why." Alberto said painfully, "I thought I was his son. I didn’t know why he distrusted me so much, why he even hated me. That faint yet ever-present malice nearly drove me insane! I had to kill him! I had to take revenge on him!"

As Alberto spoke, Schiller seemed to see a stormy night at Falcone Estate. Young Alberto stood before the towering Falcone. Falcone held him as though worried that he was afraid of the thunder, drawing Alberto into his arms.

But Falcone’s eyes, Facing Away from Alberto, were filled with bone-deep hatred and madness. Young Alberto lay in his father’s embrace, staring out at the rainy night with nothing but fear and helplessness in his eyes—but it was not because of the thunder that had rumbled without end all night.