Chapter Seven: Get Lost
Page (1/3)
Elia barely escaped; as soon as he stepped away from the crowd, he took off his coat and donned the face of Elia Esposito. Passing by a shop window, he studied his reflection for a moment, still puzzled about how Morgan Edge could conclude from such a face that "I told you, someone who looks decent, has all limbs intact, and isn’t mentally deficient couldn’t possibly be forced into selling themselves to others."
He couldn’t even tell if Morgan was complimenting or insulting him—getting beaten up was hardly undeserved. Elia hoped Morgan would learn his lesson and stop making wild deductions when he didn’t know how to reason properly.
Not every brilliant mind paired with a shadow could turn into Detective Conan.
There was also a fifty percent chance of drawing lots and ending up as Kogoro Mori.
He bought some fast food on the street, then took the shaky subway back home. When he unlocked the door, he found Ophelia sitting against the wall, hugging her knees, her head nodding as if she was about to fall asleep.
After finally returning to a familiar environment, Elia entered without much caution, his footsteps a bit loud on the floor. Startled awake, Ophelia’s eyes snapped wide open without a trace of drowsiness. She leapt up with agility that belied her frail frame, darting under the cover in the living room. Somehow, she now held a kitchen knife, the sharp and gleaming tip aimed straight at the door.
This was the first time she had shown any aggression beyond panic. If she usually resembled a gentle fawn in Elia’s presence, now with the knife in her hand, her blue eyes reminded him of a wolf cub lost in the wild.
Elia neither advanced nor retreated.
He stood calmly, locking eyes with Ophelia who was gradually recovering under the coffee table. After a moment, her arm trembled, and her eyes quickly filled with mist, as if the wolf cub had spotted its predator and reluctantly exposed its ears, ready to flee.
Seeing Elia’s expression unchanged, she hid the knife behind her back and timidly called out, “Dad.”
Elia first closed the door firmly behind him, then took out a wrap he had brought especially for Ophelia from his pocket. The air instantly filled with the scent of cheap sauce—a smell that particularly whetted the appetite when one was starving.
Ophelia visibly swallowed twice and unconsciously took a few steps forward.
Elia set the wrap on a counter a few steps away, then stepped back to the door, studying her and asking, “Are you hurt?”
The girl was stunned.
Thinking she hadn’t understood, Elia pointed to the hand that had held the knife moments ago and asked, “I mean your hand. Is it injured?”
“No, no,” Ophelia stammered, trying to extend her hand to show him but forgot she still held the knife. Caught between hiding it and not, her hand slipped, and the knife’s tip clattered to the floor.
The sound of the handle hitting the floor startled Elia. He no longer tried to soothe his foster daughter’s nerves but strode over, picked up the knife, and frowned as he looked down at Ophelia.
She shrank smaller under his gaze but, strangely, didn’t cry.
After a few seconds, Elia shoved the wrap into her hands and grumbled, “Eat.”
The girl immediately tore open the packaging and devoured the food as if she hadn’t eaten for days. Yet Elia clearly remembered he had stocked food in the fridge, even borrowing a microwave from the neighbor to prevent her from eating cold meals.
On the first night after his arrival, he gave all the cash he earned to his foster daughter; these days, he himself lived off the meager balance on his bank card.
Did Ophelia go out to buy snacks?
Even though the Suicide Slum wasn’t as safe as downtown, Superman was back. No way would something happen to a little girl under the watchful eyes of a superhero.
Elia couldn’t understand why every day he returned home to find a starving child who looked as if she had been abused. As an adult man, he would rather starve himself than let any minor in his house go hungry.
His growing frustration made his tone colder as he asked, “Where’s the money I gave you?”
Ophelia looked up with watery eyes, but her usual winning charm failed this time. Elia remained unmoved and repeated slowly and clearly, “The money I gave you—what did you spend it on?”
Page (2/3)
A trace of despair flickered across the girl’s face. Yet she dared not disobey Elia’s command. Silently, she turned and walked over to a corner of the wall, peeled back a patch of wallpaper torn at the edge by her toes, and pulled out a rusted, locked metal box. From it, she took out the cash and handed it to Elia.
It matched exactly what he had given her.
Elia was a little shocked and inspected the hole in the wall—he suspected the house might have a rodent problem, and this was the evidence. Then he looked at Ophelia’s treasure box and asked in confusion, “You don’t eat the food in the fridge because you don’t like it? Then why don’t you go out to buy food?”
Ophelia whispered a few words, but Elia couldn’t catch them clearly.
Determined to solve this mystery, Elia sat her down on the sofa, made her repeat anything unclear until there was no room for misunderstanding.
Half an hour later, after getting her full testimony, he was still baffled. He asked her, “You don’t go out because you’re afraid, right?”
Ophelia nodded.
“Afraid of what?”
“…People.”
Elia fiddled with the lock on the metal box but didn’t comment on her answer. He continued, “And you don’t open the fridge because you think it’s cursed if you touch it without my permission?”
Again, Ophelia obediently nodded.
Something was definitely wrong here. Elia glanced at the plain second-hand fridge in the kitchen and said, “It’s not magic. It’s just a fridge. A fridge won’t curse anyone, and neither will I.”
The girl looked at him with a bewildered gaze.
Feeling he had hit a crucial point, Elia thought for a moment and cautiously asked, “Do you know what a fridge is?”
Ophelia understood the question.
She shook her head.
**
Another half hour passed before Elia ended the conversation with his foster daughter and returned to his bedroom. Sitting on the bed, he reviewed the day’s discoveries:
He had once thought Ophelia Esposito was just an ordinary school dropout.
But the conversation revealed an astonishing truth—Ophelia knew nothing about modern society!
She had no understanding whatsoever of any technological device in the house and held strange, non-ordinary beliefs about supernatural powers. She thought appliances like the fridge, TV, and microwave were manifestations of Elia’s powers and didn’t dare touch them. That's why she had been surviving solely on the food Elia provided.
However, she did have a concept of money and avoided leaving the house out of fear.
She was terrified of the strangers wandering the streets far more than she feared Elia. So she preferred staying inside this “Black Wizard” house, a place that seemed as if it could devour her, rather than stepping outside.
This was the first time since his arrival that Elia encountered such a situation—Ophelia’s greatest fear was not him. It stirred a strange fondness in his heart for the girl. Yet he still couldn’t figure out her origins. She herself couldn’t explain how she ended up with Elia or why she followed him to the Suicide Slum of Metropolis.
Moreover, his eldest son, Galer Esposito, who should theoretically exist, had so far made no move, giving Elia a bad feeling. Thinking of endless murder cases in American dramas, he worried the police might knock on his door the next morning with news of a corpse linked to him.
**
“He was knocked out by fear.”
Page (3/3)
Batman, who had examined the body of Morgan Edge, CEO of Galaxy Communications, said, “He was first scared unconscious by your opponent, then struck on the head with a blunt weapon. Without external interference, it will take at least four to five hours for him to regain consciousness.”
Superman hovered beside his colleague.
Batman was the superhero of Gotham City. He and Superman were both members of the Justice League, but Batman rarely involved himself in Metropolis affairs.
One reason was Gotham needed Batman’s constant presence; another was Superman’s reluctance to accept help.
Though it wasn’t obvious, Superman had a strong territorial sense. Having lived in this city since his youth, it was his home, where his friends, work, and loved ones were. His name was inseparable from Metropolis; they accompanied and shaped each other.
So usually, Batman respected Superman’s wishes, each managing their own city, and the Justice League only united when facing threats to the entire Earth.
But there were exceptions.
For example, when Bruce Wayne, aka Batman, discovered a mysterious enemy targeting one of his holdings.
“I’m still trying to find evidence inside the company linking Morgan Edge to international gangs,” Batman said. “Yesterday's fight disrupted my plan. Morgan Edge will be more cautious now, making it harder to catch him off guard.”
Superman shrugged. “That’s not my fault. Have you found the ‘Elia Esposito’ he mentioned?”
Batman opened a file and turned the computer screen toward Superman.
It read:
[Name: Elia Esposito
Appearance: Red hair / Blue eyes
Gender: Male
Age: Unknown
Identification: Unknown
Life trajectory: Unknown
…]
Followed by a series of “Unknowns,” as if this person had appeared out of thin air. Batman had only traced him to a small place near France in Europe, where a tourist accidentally recorded Elia Esposito in a vlog. In the footage, he looked handsome and neatly dressed, accompanied by a boy around sixteen or seventeen with black hair and blue eyes.
Batman extracted the audio from the noisy background.
In the video, the boy whispered angrily, “You can’t treat me like this! Just because I’m not your biological son?”
Elia Esposito opened his mouth to reply, but the video was unclear.
The boy, hearing the response, grew angrier and more fearful but still stubbornly asked, “Then who do you care about, Father? That little fool you picked up on the street a few days ago? She looks a bit like you. Or do you not care about anyone at all, trading everything away, I—”