“The Clown Street, for the new movie.”

“William the Jump?” she directly reflexed with the movie's name.

“Yeah, that one.”

She nodded and left me alone, but her hesitating right hand was the last to leave. Even a guy with brain damage could tell something went wrong. Perhaps she recognized me. Although I never revealed my face before. It could be my voice that leaked the secret, but I should probably let the idea fade from my mind.

My van reached Rex Street at six, and I got the hotel room settled at seven, just to miss dinner time after I decided to scout a little. Number 31 was an upscale restaurant doing fine dining. I couldn’t even get in without a membership. Who could imagine a place like this is the center of a crime empire?

Well, the place actually looked quite suspicious by itself. The building had three floors. The first floor was usually for daily customers, and the second was for holding weddings and all. The abnormal part was the third floor. The whole floor was booked ten years ago, and it wasn’t for a night or two but thirty years.

What hid behind the curtain of the third floor made me madly curious. I could feel the day of justice was coming. I begged for that day to come.

Rage recoil: Knight Bat

I thought I saw Hank again this afternoon. That guy in the van sounded just like him. How could he wasn’t Hank?

“He showed literally no fear at all! Like he was going to deal with that loser by himself,” I spoke with half of my hips on the edge of the workbench. A saw was only 1 millimeter away from cutting off my butt. I was simply too confident to let the thing be this way.

“A big guy with white skin and golden hair? Wasn’t he the stereotype of rudeness and recklessness? Tell me if he has a shotgun that’s riding shotgun,” the woman with two big scarlet boxing gloves answered as she landed her last punch on her sandbag.

“You don’t understand.”

With a bit of disappointment, I jumped off the table and walked toward the garage gate. Some of my golden hair hung before my eyes while I was leaving. It was itchy, but I enjoyed it, especially after mentioning Hank. My hair always stuck on my face after training with Hank. I once thought of cutting them off before he left me. Ironically, this hair became the only thing that could remind me of how he fought.

“Where are you going?” the woman unclearly uttered while groaning because of that dumbbell in her mouth and the one on her back. I believed one of them was about fifty pounds, and the other one was over a hundred.

“Coffee. Aren’t we doing the paperwork later?”

“That’s bad for…….”

“For my brain. I know. I know.” After beheading all her cliche, I let the gate fall back to the ground like a guillotine. I always thought of guillotines when I dropped that garage gate. I guess it was due to Hank.

The cafe wasn’t far from the garage. I used to buy two coffee a day—one for me and another for Hank. The cafe's name was Blue Eyes, and hilariously, all products there were half-priced for people with blue eyes.

Those cafe clerks must think I had a caffeine addiction or what. I just walked in, then left with two giant cups of coffee. Hank never paid me for the coffee, but I never had any trouble anyway. I just pretended I didn’t have blue eyes but black eyes like Hank or Hannah, the woman doing boxing and weightlifting.

“Yep, it’s the fifth week since we found anything,” Hannah let the dumbbell fall off her hands and paused, “Wait, maybe it’s the sixth week?”

“I’ll go with the fifth,” as my hands flitted on the keyboard, my mind flew to the stars again. I started thinking about it since that accident on Hank happened. Would Hank’s fiance survive if we killed that killer instead of putting him in jail? I couldn’t imagine a future where this didn’t work out. I even made up the excuse to tell the union and those newspapers after killing him. Things had changed over the years. Heroes could kill under life-threatening situations, but I didn’t really care. The new policy couldn’t stop that accident even if it existed back then.

Staring at the report in front of me, I asked Hannah that old question again, “Is there a chance that he’s right?” I stayed silent after the sentence. Only my hasty fingers and my numb face could answer her.

“Didn’t I tell you? What he did is wrong, wrong, wrong!” Hannah had her finger indicated at the screen. The tip of her index finger was pointing straight at the monitor picture of that man.

The man was under a white mask with a weird pattern. Unfortunately, the poor quality of the picture due to the elderliness of the monitor made the design unidentifiable. The rest of the man was clear enough to identify, but his brown jacket and jeans were too common to be seen as something that could signal him.

“First, no lynching is allowed. Not to mention he didn’t even have a hero license. Even if he has one, he is too strong to make the case that any of the gangsters he killed can threaten him by a little,” Hannah bombed me with those righteous words while I pulled myself out of my thoughts.

Looking at my numb face, she suddenly put her hands delicately on both of my cheeks. She mildly said, “Are you too tired, Alice?”

“I don’t know.” Her palms were soft and sweaty. I could feel her sweat sliding down my cheeks.

“Well, then, take some sleep and a day off. Will you? The Great Golden Punch could deal with a day of solo missions.” Hannah held her right arm in the air and squeezed a little hill using her bicep. Her sweat popped into the air when she did it. Unsurprisingly, I wasn’t disgusted and didn’t hate it. I guess we had been together for too long.

“Yeah, I will.”