章 256: Whispers of the Past
Clark shook his head silently. "I can't promise that. Memory is tied to the soul; even time cannot erase a person's memories; it can only conceal them... Perhaps one day he will suddenly remember everything, or maybe he will never remember again."
Spider-Man said, "Then you should know that once he regains his memory—"
"Let's not discuss that for now," Clark interrupted. "I'm here to talk about what happened between us."
"I don't think there's much to talk about," Spider-Man shrugged, doing a backflip off the edge of the rooftop and facing Superman. "You killed my friend, Superman. Even if your hands aren't stained with his blood now, you still killed him. Do you remember? In Albania, in front of Soren, you crushed Whitney's heart."
Clark gazed at him in silence, his expression bleak.
He remained quiet for a long while before finally saying, "I know. I must bear all the guilt until my death."
Spider-Man clenched his fists.
He slowly stepped back, lowering his voice. "So don't come to me with apologies. I know what you want to say; you don't need to. Superman, losing a leg is nothing compared to those who died by your hands—they are the ones who need your apologies."
Clark replied, "I didn't come to apologize to you."
"I came—to promise you that I will repay this world with my life, Peter. I will always protect it; I will never again try to embrace it. I will watch over this world every minute, every second. I want you to know my commitment."
Peter didn't speak.
He silently picked up his coat and backpack from the rooftop, organizing his things, and when he bent down to retrieve a fallen metal bookmark, he suddenly spoke up. "I once admired you, Superman."
He straightened up. "When I was in middle school, all my classmates had newspapers with your picture on them. Do you know how much influence you have on children? We all thought you were the guardian of this planet."
"But who could have known that one day you would want to put this planet into your own glass bottle?"
He looked at Superman and shot a web toward a distant building, swinging over to the opposite structure.
"—Be our Superman, Kal-El."
Soren lay on his bed, fingers flying across the screen as message bubbles popped up like bullets firing rapidly toward the other end of the chat.
"You wouldn't believe where we went today! We almost flew around the entire planet!"
"I easily grabbed a car!"
"I even heard you cursing in Gotham!!"
He paused slightly before sending the last message, adding a "sweat smile" emoji, then continued: "Dude, you seem a bit down."
On the other end of the phone, Jason Todd held his device, chuckling coldly in the safe house.
—Who wouldn't be in a bad mood after losing a motorcycle and running into Batman upon returning to Gotham?
As he replied to Soren, he opened a can of Coke with one hand and typed back, "Oh, so that's why Superman's search index skyrocketed in the past twenty-four hours?"
"You should check the trending topics right now; the whole world is discussing Superman's new look, and they suspect he might be saying goodbye to us."
Soren: "?"
He quickly opened his Twitter, swiftly finding the latest trends in the U.S. Sure enough, "#Superman" was sitting at the top of the list.
He clicked on the topic and discovered many accounts sharing the same photo: on the Golden Gate Bridge, Clark was holding onto a bus that was about to fall off the bridge, while Soren floated beside Clark, comforting the terrified passengers onboard.
In the photo, Clark's graying hair contrasted sharply with his golden locks slicked back.
They hadn't captured his face, but they had clearly photographed the wrinkles on Clark's forehead.
Accounts sharing the photo were all asking what had happened to Superman. Why had he suddenly become so old? Who was the person next to Superman? Had Superman begun training an heir for himself?
Soren: …?
A male, male parent?
But soon, their speculations became increasingly ridiculous.
Some said Superman had been struck during a battle with a supervillain, which was why he looked this way overnight. Others suggested that perhaps Superman's powers were starting to wane, leading to the sudden appearance of a successor. There were even claims that Superman had been on Earth too long, and the environment was simply unsuitable for his survival...
Among the comments, there were certainly some dangerous remarks. For instance, some people said that this version of Superman looked just like their long-lost sugar daddy, while others claimed that Superman was even more charming than before. Even more outrageous were the heartfelt declarations in the trending posts, with people sobbing and expressing their willingness to jump off the Golden Gate Bridge right now for a close encounter with Superman, seizing the chance to appreciate how solid that muscular chest must feel.
But gradually, the topic began to shift. Some accounts started posting pictures of Homelander, accompanied by captions like, "Superman is old; we still have Homelander #Homelander," "Homelander #Homelander is our true superhero," and "We need #Homelander"…
Each of the polished photos of Homelander radiated vitality, with his eyes as blue as the sea and his smile dazzling.
One photo showed him lifting a fallen cyclist in the sunlight, slightly bending his back as he looked at the cyclist on the ground, half of his body covered in brilliant sunlight, resembling a saint emerging from the radiance of a yellow sun.
Soren looked at this photo, feeling a strange sensation in his heart—
This photo was strikingly similar to those candid shots of Clark that circulated online. Whether it was the angle of the shot or the lighting in the background, it seemed meticulously designed, subtly revealing traces of imitation of Clark.
…Homelander seemed to be crafting a public persona reminiscent of Clark.
He fought against the discomfort, saving the photo to his phone's album, frowning as he continued to scroll through the trending topics. He then noticed that in this short amount of time, the keyword "#Homelander" had started to rise, while questions about Superman began to emerge.
—Since January of this year, Superman had seemed very off.
He first began searching for something all over the world, then disappeared for months, only to reappear in the public eye recently. Yet the Justice League had not issued any official statements explaining Superman's change in appearance.
This inevitably raised suspicions: Was Superman unwilling to communicate with Earthlings anymore in the face of the suddenly emerging competitor, Homelander? Did he still wish to protect this planet as he had before, or did he want to step back and let the new generation of superheroes take his place?
Would Superman… still be their Superman?
The more Soren looked, the tighter his brows furrowed. After he could no longer hold back and replied to a tweet supporting Homelander's replacement of Superman, he closed Twitter and turned his gaze out the window.
Outside the windowsill, the summer night sky was clear and sparse, the night as gentle as water, and the moonlight soft and bright.
He knew that if he called out to Clark softly from here, Clark would appear before him immediately. Clark had given him the happiest day of his life; it was the first time he felt what it was like for a person to fly in the sky like a bird.
He couldn't help but think that someone who could fly in the blue sky forever would surely be as joyful as the wind.
—but Clark, why are you so unhappy?
Soren sat on the windowsill, holding his notebook. He laid the notebook open on his lap and picked up a ballpoint pen, writing and drawing on the paper.
This notebook contained everything he had realized about his past.
He flipped to the last page, crossed out the entry for Superman (suspected), and rewrote a name—Clark Kent.
As the ballpoint pen glided across the page, leaving its final mark, images suddenly flashed in his mind like a movie reel—seemed like many years ago, on a night like this summer night, he had turned to see Clark's face.
That Clark was young and handsome, without a trace of the passage of time. His blue eyes were even more deep and vibrant than now, filled with tenderness and excitement as he looked at him.
Soren couldn't help but reach out to this Clark, gently calling, "Clark—"
In that moment of stretching out his hand, he suddenly lost his balance, his body leaning forward as he plunged down from the third-floor windowsill, but landed into a familiar broad and solid chest.
The person he missed caught him as he fell, and under the summer night sky, he landed in Clark's embrace.
Even the wind carried a hint of the fragrance from the purple jacaranda.
Clark looked down at him, a single droplet of water still hanging from his hair, and asked with concern, "What's wrong?"
Soren couldn't hide his excitement as he said, "I just remembered something, Clark. I saw us walking together on the path through the fields, and I saw you, but you seemed a little—"
He tilted his head in confusion. "You seem a bit different. Ah, yes, your eyes seem even bluer than they are now—"
Clark's grip on his arms tightened.
His voice sounded a bit dry. "It's good that you can remember those things; it might mean your memory will slowly come back."
"Of course! Once I recover my memory, I'll know how we got to know each other!" Soren said cheerfully. He turned his gaze and saw Clark's wet hair and cape, growing a bit anxious as he asked, "Where did you just go? Why are you all wet? Come inside; I'll get you a towel to dry off."
"A submarine cable in the Newfoundland Basin broke, and I went to help repair it," Clark replied. "Then I heard you calling me—don't sit on the windowsill anymore. You almost fell again, and that's not fun at all, sweetheart."
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