Chapter 58 Is There Something Wrong with This World?

Simon was immersed in his memories, clicking his tongue in deep reflection and emotional resonance.

A two-dimensional being could not perceive the awkwardness of three-dimensional beings. Ailia and Superman sat at opposite ends of the sofa, staring blankly at each other. Ailia felt relatively all right, considering that the person who played the harmonica in a heavy snowstorm wasn't him...

Superman felt relatively all right too. He thought: Judging from the scene Simon described, the Red Son seemed to harbor some indescribable intentions toward Ailia, but that was definitely a parallel universe counterpart! Surely no one would fail to distinguish between counterparts and stubbornly connect things they had done!

Yet, even though both of them solemnly insisted that they had not been affected in the slightest, something in this room, or perhaps in this entire world, must have changed. What on earth was it? Was it Bob, oblivious on the balcony, changing his sleeping position in a puppy dream? Had the sunlight of Metropolis wandered from the east to the west? Was it the neighbor's snoring suddenly drifting from diagonally above, the microwave's 'ding', the roar of car engines on the street, airplanes at ten thousand meters trailing white lines across the blue sky, or the invisible-to-the-naked-eye stars beyond the atmosphere breathing scorching flames in the cold universe?

Before Superman realized it, his senses had gradually drifted far away. The scene before him, once so clear in his eyes, now seemed separated by a hazy curtain of light. Only Ailia's serene, profound eyes were fixed in the center of that light curtain, reflecting his figure like a mirror.

After a long time—he had completely lost track of how long the two of them had been staring at each other—Ailia casually looked away and asked quite abruptly, "Would you like some water?"

"Ah? ...Oh, sure, thank you."

Superman snapped out of his trance. Watching Ailia walk into the kitchen to rummaging through cabinets for a guest water glass that probably didn't exist, he belatedly realized that if the Red Son was his counterpart, he didn't need to overthink it at all. After all, Ailia wouldn't hold a bias or other emotions toward him just because of what the Red Son had done.

Considering that Ailia had only ever left his messages on read and never replied... at best, they were strangers who had met by chance.

Meanwhile, Ailia was performing futile tasks in the kitchen. He took every single bowl and dish out of the cabinet one by one, neatly stacking them, even though there were no water glasses in the depths of the cabinet—in fact, there was nothing in there at all. This busywork effectively eased the anxiety and tension in his heart, though he had no idea what there was left to be nervous about when he was already halfway through a conversation with Superman.

When Ailia finally found a dust-covered water glass in a dark corner, washed it, and returned to the living room, he saw Superman sitting there looking somewhat dazed, wearing an expression of indescribable dullness. After a few beats, he snapped back to his senses, suddenly stood up, and took a few steps forward, almost bumping into Ailia: "You're back?! Sorry, I was just about to go help."

"Uh, no need," Ailia asked, perplexed, "Why would you help?"

"I move pretty fast, and I have X-ray vision... Never mind, pretend I didn't say anything."

Superman sat back down, holding the glass handed over to him by Ailia as solemnly as if it were a crystal bomb.

After a long silence, he took a deep breath to steady his emotions before pretending to be calm and composed. "Elri—Mr. Esposito, I feel like I should talk to you about my perspective on that Red Son..."

Ailia, also holding a cup, immediately and swiftly replied halfway through his sentence, "Of course."

Superman was startled for half a second by Ailia's rapidly improving English listening skills, and then said, "What I mean is, considering your relationship with Parallax, his understanding of you isn't necessarily accurate or comprehensive..."

Ailia chimed in briskly again right in the middle of his sentence: "Of course."

Superman began to suspect whether Ailia had actually understood what he wanted to express, but he continued anyway: "By the same token, your perspective—the you of that time—on the Red Son cannot be equated and applied to me."

This time he deliberately paused, but Ailia waited a few seconds after he stopped before saying somewhat hesitantly, "Of course."

Superman let out a sigh of relief. During those few seconds of silence, he felt as though he could hear the beating of his heart in his chest. Fortunately, Ailia's answer was the same as ever.

"Well, I'm glad we reached a consensus. Um, let's just pretend this past episode never happened, how about that?"

As soon as he finished speaking, he felt that calling it 'this past episode' was not quite appropriate. However, before he could deliberately correct himself, Ailia had once again smoothly piggybacked on his words and replied quickly, "Of course."

"Also, Mr. Esposito, if you don't mind me calling you Ailia—do you mind?"

"No," Ailia said in a deep voice, "Not at all."

"That's great." Superman completely relaxed, pleased to find that Ailia also seemed much more at ease than before. "Hopefully, whatever happened in the parallel universe won't affect the friendship between us."

As for when this 'friendship' had supposedly developed, or whether it even existed at all, it wasn't particularly important. The two mature and steady adults present did not care about such details.

And whether one or both of them harbored a secret sense of disappointment and frustration regarding these questions and answers... well, that was another story entirely.

The atmosphere in the living room returned to normal, at least in the perception of three-dimensional beings.

A moment later, Simon, lingering as a line in the different dimension, managed to pull himself together and complained loudly, "So the 'perspective on the Red Son' the two of you wanted to talk about is just this? We thought you were going to discuss topics like the rise and fall of parallel universes, the intricate shifts of political ideologies, or the dramatic twists of fate! Instead, you two were just planning to brush off that snowy-night confes—urgh!"

Ailia once again swatted him beneath the sofa, saying solemnly to Superman, "Apologize, the kid doesn't know any better."

Even though the kid was over sixty years old.

"It's fine," Superman nodded forgivingly. "Though Simon actually reminded me of something. He said I could treat the 'Destiny' that the Red Son knew as 'Ailia'. What did that mean?"

Ailia pondered for a moment, and under Superman's gaze, shed his human appearance in the blink of an eye.

Superman: "...!!"

This was no less shocking than someone slipping Lex Luthor into the Batcave. In extreme shock and fright, he abruptly stood up, his feet leaving the ground as he flew into the air, almost smashing through the ceiling. He instantly assumed a defensive posture, his heat vision even beginning to brew and form within his eyes.

Then he heard Parallax say in a deep voice, "Stop flying higher—I'm not sure if a yellow power ring can repair ceilings, and your upstairs neighbors will complain."

That tone carried the peculiar pronunciation and grammatical errors familiar to Superman, faintly resembling the way Ailia spoke, yet seemingly distinct. But Superman's focus was not on what Parallax had expressed:

"When I was talking with Ailia, you were there the whole time?!"

"..."

Parallax looked immensely annoyed: "Are you fucking stating the obvious?"

Superman: .

His heartbeat, unbalanced from excessive shock, was still a bit erratic. For the first time since arriving at Ailia's house, he sternly demanded, "What on earth is going on between you and Ailia?"

"...We are the same person," Parallax seemed to sigh deeply. "If you can't understand it, just think of 'me' as a non-human entity inevitably split away from Ailia."

Superman raised an eyebrow, catching the crucial point in that statement: "It wasn't you who split off Ailia, but Ailia who split off you?"

Parallax looked straight at him and replied indifferently, "Because only humanity makes compromises."

Superman looked thoughtful.

A moment later, he said, "Alright, I believe you two are the same person. So when I'm chatting with Ailia, can you really not avoid listening and watching?"

"..."

"No."

***

As of today, Ophelia had been attending school for nearly half a month, and her socialization progress was remarkable—in just three days, she had learned to huddle together with classmates to complain about teachers, exams, homework, and boring extracurricular activities. She still disliked close physical contact with others, but possessing an elegant, cold, and noble demeanor, her occasional eccentricities did not invite excessive criticism; instead, they were seen as a manifestation of being uniquely unfashionable.

Coupled with her naturally sharp mind and the habit instilled by Ailia of rarely asking questions—whenever she encountered a high-tech gadget she didn't recognize or understand, she would stand aside pretending to watch the scenery and secretly observe how others used it—no one had discovered anything unusual about her so far. She even managed to convince her classmates that she had always attended school before, but due to her 'father's frequently changing job,' she had to transfer often.

—Black Lightning had once marveled at her disguise skills and proposed within the Justice League that Teacher Ophelia should personally mentor certain superheroes who were notoriously bad at hiding their secret identities.

Yet, no matter how clever Ophelia was, she was ultimately still a minor and vulnerable to environmental influences.

Recently, the hot topic among her classmates was superheroes. More specifically, it was a self-serialized superhero-themed animation series on YouTube titled The 'Destiny' Family.

The author's ID was 'Saber', translated literally as swordsman, which vaguely brought to mind some long-popular Japanese visual novels, exuding an overwhelming adolescent chuunibyou vibe. Yet the creator was remarkably proficient in music, illustration, and animation. Judging from the occasional long-form uploads (five minutes), there seemed to be a stable storyline connecting the clips. For some reason, however, 'Saber' only uploaded scattered battle scenes or character interactions devoid of a clear main plot, stripping a great animation of much of its soul.

Even so, the existing content was entertaining enough because it featured not only the character 'Parallax' but also Yellow Lantern, Superman, Black Lightning who had been active in Metropolis, and Batman, Green Lantern, and Green Arrow from neighboring cities. To put it nicely, all the appearing characters had undergone a loving, gag-style softening; to put it bluntly, they suffered from severe out-of-character writing, each possessing eccentricities of personality... yet they were undeniably cute.

Who could resist a daily-bristling, gloomy, grumpy bird-like Parallax, and Superman who constantly showed up just to ruffle its feathers?

Who could resist the tag game marathon of the Yellow Lantern followed by Sinestro, Sinestro followed by Green Lantern, Green Lantern followed by Green Arrow, and Green Arrow followed by Batman?

These cute, brainless, nonsensical animated clips grew increasingly popular as serialization continued, spreading like wildfire among the massive fanbase of superheroes. In the latest installment of the animation, a new character had appeared: alongside the 'Yellow Lantern' was a Robin... bah, a mini Yellow Lantern. Like the other characters, her face was obscured by a uniform, but her figure roughly suggested she was a red-haired little girl.