Days as a Spiritual Mentor in American Comics

When Rose, looking pale, walked into the office, night had almost fallen. Shiller was still revising the design diagram. He didn't lift his head when he saw Rose enter.

After completing the last brush stroke, Shiller finally raised his eyes toward Rose. In less than a month, this woman had lost at least a third of her weight, her face gaunt as if she hadn't slept for many nights.

"Long time no see, Miss Rose." Shiller's tone remained gentle, but his body language made it clear he indeed saw her as a stray dog.

"The person you want, I've brought him." Rose's tone sounded like a sigh, and she said, "I know you're not from Gotham, you've made a mess here. This is not a good thing."

"So you think Gotham could get even worse, huh?" Shiller smiled and said, "Then I thank you on behalf of the Gothamites. During the years you had the natural disaster fund, not acting personally to make things worse here."

Rose picked up on Shiller's sarcasm, but she clearly lacked the strength to retort. She said, "I'm just a professional manager, working for others to make money. Now that the Charabang Family has fallen, there's nothing wrong with working for you."

However, Shiller lowered his eyelids, maintaining a smile, but shook his head and said, "No, lady, it's not that simple."

"What's the difference?" Rose said, "The Charabang Family is not the first master I've served."

"If you've been this destitute with every change of master, how have you survived until now?"

Rose was choked up for a moment. She knew it wasn't like this. Previously, when she switched employers, it was job-hopping; the other side offered her a better deal and a bigger stage. She voluntarily left her original employer to go elsewhere; she wouldn't be in such a sorry state when clearly, she became more and more triumphant with each move.

Of course, there were also a few accidents. However, as someone from the slums, Rose climbed to her position today not by being weak and bullied. Even if she had fallen into extreme peril once or twice, she always managed to break free and turn the tables.

But this time was completely different. Rose suffered much more psychological torment.

Rose came from poverty, born in the slums. Her mother was a drug-addicted prostitute. During her upbringing, she survived by being a clandestine prostitute and laundering money for others, climbing her way up and reaching the place closest to the upper class.

While climbing, she thought the sky above her was blue. When she reached a high place, she realized it wasn't the sky but a garbage bin lid painted blue.

The garbage bin would be opened on schedule, allowing those who climbed to the top to glimpse the outside world. But more often, they saw the large hand holding the lid of the garbage bin, so close yet so far.

When Rose began to work for this hand, she gradually understood what it was like outside the garbage bin. But the more she understood, the more she knew she could never climb out.

The lid over their heads was something they could not shake. What's inside the garbage bin will always be trash, and even if they jumped out, they would still be litter scattered outside, never becoming human.

So she became even more cautious, almost obsequiously so, convincing herself to abandon all hope, surviving only by pleasing the owner of the garbage bin. At least this way, she wouldn't fall back to the bottom.

Not knowing how long such days had passed, she had long forgotten who she was, just repeating such logic, turning everything she encountered, including herself, into something inhuman, so she could hurt her own kind without any scruples.

Until one day, the garbage bin exploded.

To be precise, someone had stuck a bomb on the lid of the garbage bin. The large hand holding the lid was blown off directly. The wound was a gory mess, ear-splitting screams of agony.

Rose was terrified. Her first instinct was to hide. She began to hypnotize herself that it was all an illusion. Deep down, she didn't believe that all this was really happening.

She even began to hate that it happened. What was wrong with the former days? She had already stood at the highest point of the garbage mountain. Although still in the garbage bin, so many were worse off below her.

At first, Rose didn't know exactly what she was struggling and escaping from, but soon she realized—the incident made her discover that the gods she thought were high above could also bleed.

This highlighted her previous cowardice. Looking back now, she had too many chances to strike at that hand with a knife, but she did not.

Rose was also contemplating why she hadn't done so. She didn't have an accurate answer, only some vague premonitions.

Perhaps it was because that hand had always been holding a steel garbage bin lid. The lid was like a shield, and anyone who tried to resist would end up with a broken head and bloodied on the unyielding barrier, even losing their life.

Some people were still fearlessly defiant, but more were scared. If you collided and failed to break through, then you would lose everything you had and tumble back to the bottom.

Everyone at the top, to have climbed to their position, had paid too much. They could not afford such failure. Rose felt the same.

But now, someone had shown through actual actions that even such seemingly impregnable barriers could be breached. And it wasn't even that difficult to achieve.

Being able to manage the natural disaster fund was enough to show her importance in Mr. Charabang's eyes. Precisely because of this, Rose understood this man better than anyone else.

Shiller's defeat of Mr. Charabang was outrageously simple, so simple it was almost laughable. There wasn't a single aspect of it that required any sort of superhuman strength or wisdom to accomplish.

The only thing that this sort of matter tested was courage. If anything else was to be added, it would be the understanding of the individual in question, as well as greed.

It seemed Rose possessed all of these qualities. Her hand was cruel enough, dark enough, never hesitating when it came time to silence someone for good, certainly not a person of faint heart. She knew Mr. Charabang well enough, with plenty of information at her disposal. She wasn't someone content with a modest fortune; she was sufficiently greedy.

Given all this, why then did she willingly play the role of lackey for so many years?

Not only willingly, but even with a sense of pride. Whenever she saw her own share among the Charabang Family's income statements, she would even puff out her chest with arrogance, believing it to be recognition of her abilities.

Thinking over her past, Rose found it utterly incomprehensible. This was the fundamental reason for her recent overwhelming exhaustion. She racked her brains but couldn't understand why she was so fond of playing the dog for others.

After much thought, Rose could only come up with one answer—that the Upper Class, through various means, had disguised themselves too perfectly, as if they were not of the same species as those from the lower echelons, but rather the difference between elephants and ants.

They made the lower class feel that they lived in a completely different world from the Upper Class, as if they were two different species, both mentally and physically, just like the difference between humans and dogs.

Reflecting on her own interactions with the Upper Class, Rose realized that they employed numerous methods to remind her that a dog could only be a dog, no matter how well it performed, it could not transform into a human, and receiving praise from humans was already the greatest accomplishment one could achieve in this life.

Having grown accustomed to the crazed, ugly, and vile appearances of the lower echelon, and then looking at the glamorous Upper Class, she naturally concurred with this notion, thinking that being the best dog was already an honor for her.

Rose didn't know if she would have maintained such a mindset for life if the Charabang Family hadn't collapsed in such a farcically instantaneous manner.

But at the very least, she had to admit that in the eyes of someone like Shiller, there was never any distinction between trash cans and the outside world, nor any difference between humans and dogs—the Upper Class were just as much rubbish.

This caused her to feel complex about Shiller. On one hand, she was thrilled to have been exposed to an entirely new world. On the other hand, she was filled with a fear of the unknown.

This was different from her feelings towards the Upper Class. Rose was familiar with the Upper Class; if not completely understanding them, she at least had a concept of who they were.

However, she had no understanding of Shiller, nor could she comprehend him. It wasn't as simple as using species as a metaphor; it was more like a set of unpredictable rules, unable to gauge his actions and intentions.

When facing him, Rose only felt danger. However, this danger was not targeted; it enveloped her from all sides, rendering her motionless, like a fly caught in a spider's web.

Thus, she felt both the anger of just having escaped one predicament only to immediately fall into another, and the escapist mentality of deferring death.

Rose didn't know what drove her to come here again. She clearly knew that working for Shiller and working for the Charabangs was not at all the same thing, but she had to say it was, even if it meant deceiving herself.

Rose feared what was to come, yet she had no idea what was on its way. Spider was already the best possibility.

"Alright, enough small talk." Shiller's fingers were interlaced as he looked at Rose and said, "If you're willing to work for me, I can't just not tell you anything..."

"No," Rose stepped back, feeling cold sweat forming on her forehead, she said, "no need, you just need to tell me what I have to do. Let's talk about the price instead."

"Of course, we need to discuss the price, but if you don't know my plan, there will be slip-ups. If we sign an employment contract, you become my subordinate. We still need to have a basic understanding of each other." Shiller said with a smile, gesturing to the spot opposite him.

Rose really wanted to just turn around and leave. She shouldn't have come today. But having come, it wouldn't be so easy to leave.

Rose reluctantly sat down. She took a deep breath, her hands resting on her thighs. Then, a messily drawn map was placed before her.

At first, Rose couldn't make heads or tails of it, but her professional capabilities were undeniably solid, and she quickly realized that this was the layout of Arkham Asylum. Shiller had used various colors to indicate the obstacles he had set up at room entrances or in the corridors.

Rose examined the map more closely, but Shiller's drawing was indeed a mess. Out of respect for her future employer, Rose said more tactfully, "If you plan to give this to a construction crew, it might be difficult to achieve the desired effect."

"Yes, I really have no knack for this sort of thing," Shiller shook his head and said, "The obstacles that can be added are just barriers or traps of some sort. Can you help me think of more creative measures to impede?"

Rose made a troubled face. This was definitely not within her area of expertise. She was a manager, not an interrogator—how could she know any creative methods?

But she was, after all, a professional and immediately said, "Although I'm not very familiar with this, I can find specialists. Do you have any specific requirements?"

"Of course, I do." Shiller handed another piece of paper to Rose, then said, "Have it done according to the list on here. It would be best if we could have the results by tonight, if not, then by tomorrow morning."

Rose looked at the contents on the paper.