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Chapter 43: You Are... I Am... You Are...
"You are Harvey Dent? You are... me?"
Two-Face's eyes were filled with confusion as he muttered to himself.
"No! This is simply a farce!"
A trace of ferocity flashed across his face.
"You're lying! Don't think you can confuse me!"
"The coin was definitely tampered with by you! The verdicts just now don't count—no, they should be interpreted in reverse!"
Killing intent surfaced on Two-Face's face.
He re-aimed the lowered gun at the "Harvey Dent" before him and pulled the trigger without hesitation.
Click.
The sound of the trigger mechanism firing rang out.
In Two-Face's imagination, the impostor Kid disguised as him would be shot dead on the spot.
However, the reality was that no bullet fired from his gun.
"Hm?"
Disbelieving, Two-Face pulled the trigger several more times. Panic began to leak from his eyes.
Click click click—
Nothing happened.
"Harvey Dent" stood still, quietly watching him act.
"The safety is off. Racking the slide did nothing. Is the gun empty?"
Two-Face hurriedly pulled out the magazine to check.
To his horror, he found the magazine was full!
But he didn't hesitate for long.
Although he didn't know why the pistol wouldn't work, it wasn't his only weapon.
Two-Face pulled a switchblade from his pocket and stabbed at Harvey Dent without a word.
Facing such a dangerous situation, the latter showed no sign of moving, standing there dumbly as if waiting for Two-Face to kill him.
As if scared stupid.
It happened in a flash. Two-Face rushed in front of Harvey Dent in the blink of an eye.
"Die, you fake 'Me'!"
However, the image of the blade plunging into a human abdomen did not occur.
The instant Two-Face was about to stab Harvey Dent, the latter's body—from the neck down—suddenly disappeared before his eyes. It became more transparent than the clearest glass; Two-Face could even see the room behind him through the body.
Only Harvey Dent's head remained in place, floating solitarily in mid-air. It looked extremely bizarre.
This change happened too fast. Two-Face didn't react at first glance and maintained his forward momentum, passing straight through the middle of Harvey Dent's vanished torso. He ran several steps past before stopping in disbelief.
"Th-this, what is going on?!"
The scene that just occurred completely exceeded Two-Face's cognitive scope.
"Do you still not understand?"
Just then, Harvey Dent's voice rang in his ear.
Looking up, Harvey Dent's head had floated close to Two-Face at some point.
"I am merely a phantom in your heart. How can you kill a phantom?"
"Impossible! If you are a phantom in my heart, then who is Phantom Thief Kid? How can Robin and those hostages see you?"
As soon as the words fell, Harvey Dent said something that made Two-Face's hair stand on end.
"What are you talking about? Phantom Thief Kid? Robin? Where is there a second person here?"
Two-Face felt like he had been struck by lightning.
No. Impossible.
Everything before was definitely real.
He turned his head stiffly, his eyes widening instantly.
At this moment, he was still in the court he had meticulously arranged. That was fine.
The judge's bench, the defendant's chair, the jury seats—everything was there.
The only problem was...
No people.
No matter where Two-Face looked, he couldn't see anyone in the entire room except himself and Harvey Dent's head!
Robin and the thirteen kidnapped hostages were all gone.
Two-Face was certain that even if most of his attention had been on "Harvey Dent," he couldn't possibly have missed the commotion of over a dozen people breaking free.
And from the appearance of "Harvey Dent" until now, at most one or two minutes had passed. How could that short time be enough for a dozen people to escape without a trace?
Incomprehensible. Unbelievable.
Yet reality forced him to believe.
For the first time, an emotion named "fear" welled up in Two-Face's eyes.
"Think about it. Why did a perfectly fine pistol suddenly fail to fire? Why did every coin toss result in heads?"
At this moment, Harvey Dent's voice rang in Two-Face's ears again.
"The answer has actually been in your heart all along."
"The person rejecting you is yourself, Two-Face. No... Harvey. The days of using hypocritical fairness to exonerate your sins are over."
"Wrong! You're wrong! I never exonerated myself! If you were me, you would know that I follow the only fairness in this world—the coin! It's either heads or tails. No matter the time or place, the chance everyone faces is equal!"
Two-Face refuted hysterically.
"When the coin needs me to do good, I am the kindest person under heaven! And when the coin tells me to do evil, I am the most feared demon in the world! Good and evil coexist within me, absolutely perfect—"
"Is that so?"
Harvey Dent expressionlessly interrupted his agitated self-defense.
"What perfect balance? What arbitration of the coin? If you truly believed that yourself, then right now, after the coin has come up heads so many times in a row, you should be acting as a good person, shouldn't you? But what have you done?"
"You tried to shoot and kill me without flipping the coin."
"Th-that's because the coin was tampered with by you! How could I accept such a result?" Two-Face choked, then retorted forcefully.
"On what grounds do you say the coin is problematic? Where is the evidence? You were a prosecutor; you should know very well that accusations without evidence do not hold."
"Evidence? Only people who stick to conventions—"
"I am not talking to you, Two-Face!"
Harvey Dent shouted sternly.
"I am talking to me—the other self you abandoned deep in your heart—Harvey Dent!"
"You say Harvey... Dent. But I am Harvey... No, I am Two-Face... but I am also Harvey Dent... then you are..."
In this moment, Two-Face felt a splitting headache. He couldn't help but clutch his head with both hands, muttering incessantly.
Meanwhile, inside the room.
"I can't hear any sound. What exactly is Phantom Thief Kid doing?"
Robin looked doubtfully at the small space in the center of the room, suddenly surrounded by a ring of what looked like glass.
Under peculiar light reflection, not only could those outside not see Kid and Two-Face inside, but they could see right through the center to the other side. It was like Wonder Woman's invisible jet.
"Ever since Kid turned into Harvey Dent's appearance, these glass panels suddenly popped up, isolating him and Two-Face inside..."
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