Extensive tendon tears, bone fractures, ruptured alveoli, plus widespread capillary necrosis—these injuries would typically land an ordinary person in the intensive care unit. For Spider-Man, however, they were just a matter of a few nights of deep sleep. Peter Parker wouldn't rest because of minor injuries; Spider-Man would continue to protect the city tomorrow.
But Peter didn't go on patrol the next morning, not because he was in a bad mood about failing to catch Shocker. He'd been caught red-handed by Gwen Stacy.
"Morning, smarty-pants."
When the blonde girl with her backpack appeared at his doorstep, Peter instinctively scratched the back of his head, his sleep-mussed black hair bobbing like an antenna.
"Uh, morning, Gwen. Up so early?"
"Every morning I wake up, you're already gone, so I wanted to see how early I had to get up to catch you."
Gwen finished, then added, "Of course, mainly my dad was busy very late last night, and told me not to wait for him to come home before sleeping."
"Police work tough? I heard some guy was bouncing around Manhattan yesterday."
"I don't know, he doesn't seem to want to tell me anything."
Caught by Gwen, Peter naturally couldn't put on his suit to patrol, so he simply followed Gwen to take the subway to Midtown Manhattan. They chatted as they bought tickets and boarded the train.
"How's the rock band going? Any leads?"
"Yeah, we found a few classmates, MJ, Liz, Betty... Oh, sorry, you don't know anyone but MJ." Gwen smiled. "I can make more friends than you, just like I told you."
Peter gave a dry chuckle. He never thought of himself as introverted, but American student social rules were just like that—muscle-bound jocks like football players were popular, while brilliant lab researchers couldn't even get a dance invitation.
Since everyone disliked studying, Peter Parker naturally couldn't find friends.
"How are you going to manage the practice? I don't think Uncle George will let you bring drumsticks home, let alone a drum kit."
"I guess so."
When the conversation turned to this topic, Gwen couldn't help but sigh, but then she just said "we'll see" and dismissed it. She then asked Peter, "You take the subway so early every day; you don't just go straight to school and then zone out until class, do you?"
Peter started thinking about what excuse he could concoct to justify his early rising, but then he suddenly had an idea.
"Have you ever tried getting off a stop early or a stop late?!"
Gwen, as expected, looked confused.
"What?"
"Like, getting off a stop early or a stop late, and then walking to school. We're still really early, so we can go to school like that every day."
"..." Gwen's expression was as if she were looking at an alien: "Is that why you get up so early every morning?"
"No, actually it's the other way around. I get up too early and have nothing to do, so I spend the time like that."
Peter sighed, then gave a helpless smile: "Wanna come along?"
"I don't have anything else to do anyway, so, lead the way."
This was Peter's most regrettable decision of the day.
Not because there was anything wrong with the path, but because as soon as they exited the subway station, a familiar roar blared from the giant TV screen on the mall's exterior wall.
"Just yesterday, our beautiful city was horribly ravaged by two madmen. Spider-Man and some lunatic in high-tech armor were constantly fighting. According to the information we've received from the police, this super-criminal calling himself Shocker is precisely the criminal Spider-Man so self-righteously arrested after 'fighting crime'!"
Jonah Jameson's face was beet red, almost bursting out of the screen.
"Take a good look, citizens of New York! What have these meddling, masked vigilantes brought us? More masked criminals! I can guarantee that this so-called Shocker is a terrifying entity created by Spider-Man himself! I can declare that he became a super-criminal precisely to get revenge on someone like Spider-Man, who thinks he's above the law! Just imagine, if the police or the Avengers had arrested this Herman, would he still have become a criminal?"
Then Jameson simply stood up, grabbed the camera in the live broadcast room, and roared with his face right up to the lens, leaving only spluttering spittle on the screen:
"No! Because he would know he got what he deserved! He'd know he was arrested by someone qualified! Not some busybody lunatic swinging around in tights! He wouldn't feel like it was bad luck or that he shouldn't have been caught!"
[If only you'd said that when we first met, little bug.]
[If only you'd said that to Herman Schultz instead of Shocker.]
Peter remembered what Schultz had said to him yesterday. He felt a headache coming on, rubbing his temples. He seemed to grasp another meaning.
If Spider-Man had said, "Hey, man, that weapon of yours is really cool," during that initial bank robbery, perhaps Shocker would never have been born. Perhaps because he didn't say that one sentence, a supervillain emerged.
"I actually agree with Jameson for once."
Gwen was shocked by Peter's comment.
"Seriously? Whenever Jameson talks about Spider-Man, even my dad would angrily say, 'That's a load of crap.'"
"Hahaha." Peter finally burst out laughing, shaking his head: "He really says that?"
"He never curses in front of his daughter, but I can tell by his expression, that's what he's thinking. So, where exactly are we going?"
Peter pointed randomly at an apartment building: "There, the rooftop."
A few minutes later, they reached the edge of the rooftop. Gwen stood at the edge of the roof, looking down: "The view is really nice, as long as you don't fall off."
"Do you remember Andrew Derby? He was in our junior high."
"Never heard of him." After Gwen said that, she tried hard to recall, digging the name out of her memory: "There was a freshman who jumped off a building and committed suicide when we were in eighth grade, was that him?"
"It was him, from right here."
So Gwen, who had been strolling along the rooftop edge, immediately retreated to the safety of the main rooftop. Only Peter remained seated on the edge, looking at the New York cityscape that he came to see for a minute or two almost every day.
"So... you knew him?"
"No. It's just that, two days before it happened, I saw him. He looked really down, like he'd been through something awful. Sometimes when I pass by here, I wonder, if I had gone over and talked to him for a bit then, would this have happened?"
Gwen was speechless for a while, not knowing how to respond. After struggling to organize her thoughts, she finally spoke.
"What if you had tried to persuade him, and he still chose to take his own life? Would you start blaming yourself for not talking to him properly, for not saying the right things? Mr. Saint Peter?"
"But..."
"No, don't tell me that." Gwen sat down beside Peter, cutting him off: "You wait. Give me a few minutes to think."
"Uh..."
"Okay, I've got it. You would absolutely not be suitable for working at a suicide prevention hotline, Peter. If you went into work with your saintly ideas on the first day, you'd be planning to jump off a building yourself on the second day because you couldn't save everyone the day before." Gwen gave an example that sounded rude but was apt: "These things, these kinds of things, they're simply not your responsibility. You don't have to be responsible for other people's affairs, especially those of strangers."
"Kindness is a good thing, smarty-pants, but excessive kindness can become a curse. And a curse is never a good thing."
Gwen finished, sitting beside Peter. They sat side-by-side in silence for a while longer. Gwen felt that Peter might think she didn't understand him, that she couldn't empathize.
Perhaps this kind of thing truly couldn't be empathized with.
She could only ask again.
"So sometimes when you think about things like that, you come and sit here. Do you feel any better?"
"At least I've never jumped from here."
Well, actually, there were one or two times, but he'd just swung away again. He had sought the feeling of freefall a few times, but felt less and less fear.
"Maybe you should go to a priest for confession?"
"I'm not religious. I believe in science."
"Then you can talk to me, or Uncle Ben, or Aunt May. Don't keep everything bottled up inside, smarty-pants."
To this, Peter Parker's only response was a calm smile.
"I will."
Gwen wasn't sure if Peter truly took it in, but she knew that Peter would definitely listen to one person. After school today, she needed to have a good talk with Uncle Ben.