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Chapter 44: Thank You, Phantom Thief Kid
"...You're right. I was wrong all along."
Inside the glass walls, Two-Face looked down at his hands. The ferocity and violence in his eyes had disappeared at some point.
Replacing them was an unprecedented clarity.
"I thought the coin represented absolute fairness, but actually, it was quite the opposite."
"Oh? You really figured it out?"
In front of him, the floating head of "Harvey Dent" asked with surprise.
"Figured it out? I should say I finally gathered the courage to admit this fact."
Two-Face smiled somewhat melancholically.
Although this smile looked rather terrifying on his heavily disfigured face, it didn't give off a particularly hateful feeling.
At this moment, the temperament he displayed was completely different from a minute ago.
Calm, peaceful, yet carrying a lingering melancholy.
Compared to the evil, crazy Two-Face in people's minds, he was simply like...
The Harvey Dent of the past.
"You... you changed back?"
The floating "Harvey Dent" asked uncertainly.
"Changed back? True, to you, I must look like I changed from Two-Face back to Harvey Dent..."
Two-Face—no, Harvey—replied.
"But the truth is, the Two-Face you know is the original me. The kind and upright Harvey Dent was actually a disguise formed by education. Only, somewhere along the way, I started to genuinely admire those flashes of humanity."
"I wanted to be a good person. I wanted to do something tangible for Gotham. So the disguised me suppressed the real me instead. Suppressed for a very long time... long enough that I can't remember how many years passed. Until Maroni threw that bottle of acid on my face, and the darkness in my heart could no longer be suppressed..."
Harvey recounted his past.
Speaking of this, he suddenly looked at the face floating in the air—his own face from before the damage.
"At this point, you shouldn't need to maintain that appearance anymore, Phantom Thief Kid. Although I've seen many bizarre things in Gotham, talking face-to-face with my own head is still a bit uncomfortable."
"Seems you are much smarter than Two-Face. At least you didn't believe I was a shadow conjured by your imagination."
"Harvey Dent" spoke, the voice switching back to Phantom Thief Kid's.
He spun rapidly in place. His vanished body reappeared without warning. As he turned back, his face and clothes had all returned to Kid's original appearance.
"I have to thank you, Phantom Thief Kid. Your plan allowed me to see the light of day again."
Harvey thanked Kid with a serious expression.
"Actually, I was just trying it out. I didn't think it would really work."
Kid said modestly.
"I don't know why, but seeing you makes my heart very calm. Even the Two-Face from just now... even the me from just now. You might not believe it, but that could already be called his kindest state."
"Perhaps because of this, I was able to return to my body after so long."
Hearing Harvey's statement, Kid thought to himself.
If I'm not mistaken, this is likely due to the Peace Aura ability.
The Peace Aura reduced Two-Face's violent tendencies. Although the reduction wasn't ideal due to Two-Face's excessively crazy mental state—almost making Kid think the Peace Aura was ineffective on supervillains—it seemed to have worked.
Now it appeared that besides slightly weakening Two-Face's evil side, it probably increased the weight of the Harvey/good side in his heart.
Finally, combined with the psychological warfare Kid used by taking on Harvey Dent's appearance—throwing Two-Face's thinking into chaos—it allowed Harvey's persona to surface step by step.
Leading to the current situation.
"Since Two-Face no longer exists—or at least won't come out for the time being—what I need to do here is about finished. The curtain call has arrived; it's time to say goodbye."
At this, Kid smiled faintly at Harvey.
"By the way, Mr. Dent, you shouldn't mind if I take a trophy, right?"
"Trophy?" Harvey asked, puzzled.
"Just this."
Kid extended his right hand into a loose fist, thumb pressing against his index finger, and flicked upward gently.
Ping!
With a crisp metallic sound, a silver-shining coin shot up from Kid's hand into the air.
The instant the coin fell, Kid caught it casually.
"That coin! I remember it should still be on me right now."
Harvey patted his body in surprise. He couldn't recall at all which second Kid had stolen the coin.
"When did you get—"
The question stopped abruptly.
Harvey felt a coin.
So Kid didn't actually steal it? Just a joke?
"Take it out and look. I left you a gift where I took the trophy."
Kid's voice reached Harvey's ears.
Skeptically, Harvey took out the coin from his pocket.
Size, weight, patterns on both sides, even the production year were identical to his coin.
Only one thing was different.
"Th-this is!?"
The coin in Harvey's hand had complete, pristine Liberty Heads on both sides. No scratches.
"If you ever want to rely on a coin to make decisions for you again, try this one. It won't be so easy to scratch it up this time."
Kid said with his back to Harvey.
"Wait, there's one more thing I've been wanting to ask you."
Seeing Kid preparing to leave, Harvey asked the thing he couldn't figure out the most today.
"I want to know how you made the previous coin come up heads every time!"
Although visually, Kid's invisible body and making Robin and the thirteen hostages disappear from the scene were more magical, in Harvey's view, he could at least deduce the latter involved principles of light reflection.
Kid likely used some special material to distort the path of light so people inside and outside couldn't see each other.
Even though Harvey studied law, not physics, he could naturally associate this.
But Two-Face flipping the same result every time—even after checking the coin multiple times—Harvey couldn't imagine how Kid did it.
It completely defied probability.
But if it was human manipulation, how did Kid manipulate Two-Face?
Mind control? If Kid had that ability, he might as well have forcibly awakened the Harvey persona directly.
It couldn't just be pure luck!
"That? Even if I don't tell you, you'll know very soon."
Kid smiled mysteriously.
"Judging by the time, they should be arriving soon..."
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