The night wind was strong, and only a few emergency lights were on atop the building’s roof.
Tom and Clark sat side by side by the guardrail, a few empty beer cans at their feet. Clark was clearly drunk today, his speech a bit slurred, yet he still wore a serious expression.
“Believe it or not,” he pointed to the bottomless night beneath his feet, “if you jump from here, before you even hit the ground, there’ll be a net on the third floor to catch you back.”
Tom was stunned for a moment, then laughed and cursed, 'Go to hell, you're drunk.'
“No, I’m telling the truth. If you don’t believe me, look.”
As soon as the words were spoken, Clark directly vaulted over the railing and leaped down.
Tom was so scared half his drunkenness vanished. He rushed to the edge and looked—sure enough, Clark was on the third floor, caught steadily by a safety net that suddenly sprang open. His whole body bounced a couple of times, then he easily got up and waved to those above.
Not long after, the elevator dinged, and Clark returned to the rooftop, patted the dust off his clothes, looking quite pleased with himself.
“That’s incredible...” Tang Mu stared at him, her expression shifting from shock to envy. “There really is internet?”
Clark shook the beer can: “You try it too?”
Tom hesitated for a few seconds. The alcohol had dulled his judgment, and the successful demonstration he'd just witnessed was far too convincing. He gritted his teeth, climbed over the guardrail, and jumped down, imitating Clark's actions.
The night wind howled in my ears.
However, there was nothing on the third floor.
No net, no cushioning, only the dull thud of hitting the ground directly.
Soon, hurried footsteps and the static of walkie-talkies came from downstairs. The security guard looked up at the rooftop and shouted with all his might:
“Superman! You bastard!
You turn into a疯子 every time you drink!”
On the rooftop, Clark (Superman) rubbed his reddened eyes, looked at the crowd downstairs scrambling about in a panic, belched with a whiff of alcohol, and muttered quietly:
“...I remember I put the net away.”
The night wind kept blowing.
The empty beer can rolled to the side, emitting a crisp sound.
Some jokes, a drunk Superman can handle, but ordinary people can't catch.
After landing, Superman did not immediately fly away.
He stood at the edge of the rooftop, looking down at the crowd already gathered below and the flashing police lights. Alcohol made his thoughts slow and chaotic. The security guard’s shouting still echoed in his ears — “You turn into a lunatic whenever you drink” — a line that was like a nail driven into the reflection system he rarely activated in ordinary times.
As Tom's body was being loaded into the ambulance, Superman instinctively wanted to go down and help, but was held back by his remaining shred of reason. He knew that appearing before the public in his current state would only make things worse. So he chose to turn invisible, quietly hovering in the night, watching the entire chaotic scene gradually settle.
When he returned to his apartment on the edge of the city, it was almost daybreak.
Clark Kent casually threw the familiar blue-and-red uniform onto the sofa, then sank into the chair. There was still half a bottle of unfinished liquor on the table; he stared at it for a long time, and in the end still reached out and poured it out.
"What the hell am I doing..." he muttered to himself.
Superman rarely gets truly drunk. His Kryptonian physiology makes him almost immune to alcohol, but for some reason tonight, those few cans of beer seemed to find a breakthrough, causing him to let his guard down unusually. The result was that a foolish joke originally meant to boast 'I have a safety net' directly cost an ordinary person's life.
He closed his eyes, and in his mind, he replayed again and again the hesitant yet excited expression on Mother Tong before she jumped.
“That’s incredible.”
“You should try it too?”
With just two short sentences, he sent someone on a path of no return.
For the next few days, newspapers and social media were filled with news about the 'man who fell to his death from the rooftop.' The police preliminarily concluded it was an accidental fall due to intoxication. No one connected Superman to the incident. Although the security guard had shouted that night, due to the chaotic scene and insufficient evidence, the matter was not pursued further. Only Superman himself knew the responsibility lay entirely with him.
He began deliberately avoiding that building.
During patrols, he would take detours, and when passing nearby neighborhoods, he would also increase his flight altitude. But every time the night wind blew, he would still remember the sound of beer cans rolling on the rooftop, and that sentence: 'Some jokes, a drunk Superman can handle, but ordinary people can't catch them.'
A week later, he made a decision.
As Clark Kent, he anonymously sent Tom’s family a sum of money, enough to cover the funeral expenses and part of their later living costs. No signature, no explanation, only a sentence on the card:
“I’m sorry. Some jokes shouldn’t be made.”
After mailing it, he stood at the post office entrance for a long time. The sunlight was good, but it couldn't illuminate the shadow in his heart.
At the same time, changes were also taking place over at the building.
Because of that night’s shouting, security guard Lao Wang became a brief “celebrity.” Some teased him for “daring to curse Superman,” while others suspected he had seen things wrong. Lao Wang himself, however, grew more and more silent. He repeatedly described the scene to the police—the two silhouettes on the rooftop, one jumping first and being caught by “something,” the other jumping after and never surviving—but most of the listeners only took him to be traumatized.
“How could Superman possibly get drunk?” A colleague persuaded him, “Stop overthinking it. If someone’s dead, they’re dead. Don’t make trouble for yourself.”
Old Wang didn't argue further. He just made sure to glance twice at the guardrail each time he patrolled past the rooftop, confirming no one was drinking and laughing there anymore.
In the blink of an eye, a month passed.
Superman's life superficially returned to normal: saving people, stopping robberies, occasionally bickering with Lois. But only he knew that the taste of beer from that night seemed to linger in his senses. Once, while handling a suicide attempt on a rooftop, with the person already standing on the edge, he instinctively wanted to say 'there's a net below,' but he swallowed the words before they left his mouth.
He used a more direct way to save the person back.
After landing, the person was still trembling. Superman stood beside him and suddenly whispered:
“Don’t believe anyone who says ‘there’s a network below.’ Especially people who seem very sure of themselves.”
That man nodded blankly, completely unaware of the weight of those words.
Superman watched as he was taken away by the police, then flew back into the night sky. The wind was strong, making his cape flap loudly. He remembered Tom's smile before jumping, remembered his own blind confidence after drinking that 'I can control everything,' and for the first time truly realized—
Power can catch a falling person, but it can't catch the stupid things one has said.
After a long time, on a quiet night, he once again came to the rooftop of that building.
The guardrail was still there, the ground was clean, and the beer cans had long been cleared away without a trace. He stood there, looking at the city lights below his feet, and suddenly spoke, as if talking to the air:
“Mother Tang, I’m sorry.”
No response, of course there wouldn't be.
He sat on the rooftop for a long time, not leaving until the east began to pale. Before leaving, he lightly tapped the railing twice with his fingers, making a crisp sound that quickly faded away.
Some jokes, a drunk Superman can handle.
Ordinary people can't handle it.
And Superman, after regaining consciousness, could only choose to keep this matter forever in his heart.
The city kept operating as always, the newspapers turned to a new page, and people continued discussing all kinds of legends about superheroes. No one knew that on an ordinary night, that person who was almost omnipotent had once, because of a few cans of beer and a boastful remark, lost a friend who was willing to believe in him.
The empty beer can had long since rolled away.
But that crisp echo kept ringing in his memory, again and again, for a very long time.
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