Chapter 12: Finished Dealing with the Bank Robbers
I immediately dropped down to the first floor, using the wall as a springboard. My body slid down fast, like a shadow falling from the ceiling. The muscles in my legs tensed and then released in one smooth motion, making gravity feel like a brief ally rather than an enemy.
The rush of air created by the descent hissed past my ears, carrying the cold scent of metal and old dust. For a split second, the world seemed to slow, granting me a narrow margin to calculate every possible outcome.
In that instant, I fired a web shot at the robber holding the firearm. The web struck his head—more precisely, his eyes—causing him to flinch in shock and reflexively raise his hands.
The webbing covered his vision abruptly, white and sticky, severing his focus in the blink of an eye. A stifled cry escaped his mouth, smothered by sheer surprise as his body stiffened like a stone statue, as if his brain had not yet caught up with what had just happened.
At the same time, the web spread to the robber’s hands, clinging tightly and rendering his fingers immobile. Its fibers wrapped around his wrists and palms, binding them with merciless strength, pressing down on his joints without giving him any chance to resist.
I immediately yanked his arm toward me and drove my fist into his face with considerable force, channeling my entire momentum into a single, short, precisely measured punch.
The impact produced a sharp, dull thud, and his body instantly went limp. His head and shoulders snapped back first, completely losing balance.
His body slammed into the floor with a heavy, muted sound, leaving a small echo that bounced off the walls of the empty bank hall, the noise sounding far louder amid the tense silence.
This, of course, shocked the two robbers holding the bags of money. Their eyes widened as if they had just seen a ghost. Their faces drained of color in an instant, their breaths caught in their throats.
One of them trembled violently, the sack in his hands nearly slipping free, the fabric scraping against the floor as his grip faltered.
Without a second thought, I kicked one of the robbers in the head, sending him flying through the air. His body lifted as if defying gravity for a moment before crashing down with a heavy sound. The movement was brutal but necessary, and when he hit the floor, it shuddered faintly beneath the force of his fall.
At the same time, I spun around and struck the other robber squarely on the chin. The swift motion snapped his head backward before he collapsed. His jaw clamped shut hard, his eyes rolling briefly before his body gave in completely.
The clatter of the money bags hitting the floor added to the brief chaos, their contents rattling loudly like metal waves crashing into one another.
I then looked around, only to be surprised to see more than ten bank staff sitting on the floor, staring at me with stunned expressions.
There was a woman covering her mouth, a man hugging his knees tightly, and another woman frozen in place, unblinking, as if afraid that even the slightest movement would shatter the strange reality they had just witnessed.
Even though I was satisfied with their reactions, I had to stay focused. I quickly collected the robbers’ firearms, picking them up one by one and tossing them a short distance away so they would be out of reach.
The metal of the guns felt cold in my hands, and the sharp clatter as they struck the floor sounded decisive, marking the end of the most dangerous threat.
I fired webbing at their mouths, hands, and legs, making sure they would not cause any more trouble.
The webs wrapped around their bodies swiftly, binding their limbs and silencing their screams, leaving the three robbers completely helpless, able to produce nothing more than muffled sounds.
Then I turned toward the bank staff, placing my index finger against my lips, trying to convey—briefly but clearly—that everything was safe and that they all needed to stay quiet and not say a word. A few of them nodded faintly, their eyes still tracking my every movement with a mix of relief and disbelief. After that, I promptly walked out of the bank through the main entrance.
My footsteps echoed lightly against the polished floor, and as the automatic doors slid open, a gust of outside air brushed against my face. The night air felt fresher, as if it were pulling the last remnants of tension from my lungs.
Before finally firing a web and swinging my way home, I didn’t care about what would happen inside that bank afterward. What mattered to me was that everything was over—at least for today.
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Later, I stopped on the rooftop of a building overlooking a narrow alley. It was already night—more precisely, a little past six twenty—and the sky had begun to sink into a dull, dark blue.
The city lights had just flickered on, and the night air carried a thin but biting chill. I intended to head down and change clothes immediately, but my movement halted when a shocking scene unfolded in the alley below.
A woman was being roughly pinned against the wall of a building by two men. One of them pressed her body hard against the brick, his arm forcefully locking her shoulder and arm in place.
The other man stood beside them, gripping a knife that reflected the streetlight with a cold, sharp glint. The sight left me stunned, like a scene that should never have existed in a place like this.
The dim streetlight illuminated only half of the alley, while the rest sank into deep shadow. Its pale yellow glow flickered weakly, as if on the verge of dying, making the entire scene resemble a grim moment caught under a broken spotlight. The damp brick walls cast distorted shadows, intensifying the sense that something was deeply wrong.
The breaths of the two men came out rough and uneven, clearly audible even from my position above. Meanwhile, the woman struggled to hold back her sobs, her lips trembling, her voice trapped in her throat.
Her body shook in small, helpless tremors—not from the cold, but from fear tightening its grip around her. Part of her face was swallowed by shadow, but I could still see the tension in her jaw and her wide, panicked eyes, like a cornered animal with no escape.
Was I in the wrong place? Had I somehow ended up in Hell’s Kitchen? How could Forest Hill have crime like this, resembling some dark district riddled with criminals?
Those questions slammed into my head one after another. The comparison made no sense—Forest Hill was known for being quiet, full of families, a neat and peaceful neighborhood, not a place where two bastards would pin a woman to a wall with a knife in hand. This place was supposed to be safe. At least, that was what everyone believed.
The entire atmosphere felt wrong, like a fragment of another city that had been forcibly grafted onto the wrong neighborhood. As if reality had slipped for a moment, leaving a dark stain in an area meant to be clean and orderly.
Forget it. It seemed the universe was determined to cause trouble for me today. From bank robbers when all I wanted was to go home in peace, to now—when I only wanted to change clothes—I instead found a woman being robbed in an alley, under a threat that clearly pointed toward something far worse.
It was unbelievably irritating. Was this what they called the Spider-Man curse? Wherever I went, trouble always found its own way to me.
It felt like every step I took today triggered another incident. Even the night air seemed to mock my fate—cold and heavy, pressing against my chest with bitter irony.