The night wind was strong, only a few emergency lights illuminated the rooftop of the building.
Mother Tang and Clark sat side by side by the guardrail, with several empty beer cans at their feet. Clark was clearly drunk today, slurring his words a bit, but still looking serious.
"Believe it or not," he pointed at the bottomless darkness beneath his feet, "if you jump from here, before you even hit the ground, there’ll be a net on the third floor that catches you and pulls you back up."
Mother Tang 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 fell, Clark directly vaulted over the guardrail and leaped.
Mother Tang was so scared that half her drunkenness sobered up. Rushing to the side to look—sure enough, Clark was on the third floor, caught steadily by a suddenly opened safety net, his whole body bouncing twice, then he got up easily 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 insane...” Tang Mu stared at him, her gaze shifting from shock to envy, “There really is a net?”
Clark shook the beer can: “You try it too?”
Mother Tang hesitated for a few seconds. Alcohol lowered his judgment, and the successful demonstration he had just witnessed was too convincing. He gritted his teeth, climbed over the guardrail, and jumped down following Clark's example.
The night wind howled in my ears.
However, there was nothing on the third floor.
No net, no buffer, 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 maniac whenever you drink!”
On the rooftop, Clark (Superman) rubbed his reddened eyes, looked down at the flustered crowd below, let out a drunken hiccup, and muttered quietly:
“...I remember I put the net away.”
The night wind continued to blow.
The empty beer can rolled to the side, emitting a crisp sound.
Some jokes, a drunk Superman can afford to make, but ordinary people can't handle.
After landing, Superman did not fly away immediately.
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 shout still echoed in his ears—“You turn into a lunatic whenever you drink”—a sentence that felt like a nail driven into the reflection system he usually rarely activated.
When Mother Tang's body was being carried into the ambulance, Superman instinctively wanted to go down and help, but was restrained by his remaining rationality. He knew that appearing in public in his current state would only make things worse. So he chose to become invisible, quietly hovering in the night, watching the entire chaos gradually subside.
When I returned to my apartment on the city's edge, it was almost dawn.
Clark Kent casually threw that familiar blue-and-red uniform onto the sofa, while he himself sank into the chair. There was still half a bottle of wine left on the table, and he stared at it for a long time before finally reaching out and pouring it away.
“What am I even doing...” he said quietly 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, making him let his guard down for once. The result was that a stupid joke originally meant to boast 'I have a safety net' directly cost an ordinary person their life.
He closed his eyes, and in his mind he replayed over and over the hesitant yet excited expression on Mother Tang’s face before she jumped.
“That’s insane.”
"You try it too?"
Just two short sentences sent someone down a path of no return.
The next few days, newspapers and social media were filled with news about the 'rooftop man's fatal fall.' The police preliminarily determined it was an accidental fall due to intoxication; no one connected Superman to the incident. Although the security guard shouted that night, due to the chaotic scene and insufficient evidence, it was ultimately 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 breeze blew, he would still remember the sound of beer cans rolling on the rooftop and the words, 'Some jokes, a drunk Superman can handle, but ordinary people can't catch.'
A week later, he made a decision.
As Clark Kent, he anonymously mailed a sum of money to Tom's family, enough to cover the funeral expenses and part of their subsequent living costs. No signature, no explanation, only one line 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 shine into 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 joked that he "dared to curse Superman," while others suspected he had seen things wrong. Lao Wang himself, however, became increasingly silent. He repeatedly described the scene to the police—on the rooftop, two figures, one jumped first and was caught by "something," then the other jumped after and there was no surviving—but most listeners only thought he had been traumatized.
"How could Superman possibly get drunk?" A colleague tried to persuade him. "Stop overthinking it. If he's dead, then he's dead. Don't make trouble for yourself."
Old Wang didn't argue anymore. He just made sure to take an extra look at the guardrail every 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 himself knew that the smell of beer from that night seemed to linger in his senses. Once, he was dealing with a potential jumper on a rooftop; the person was already on the edge. He instinctively wanted to say, 'There's a net below,' but he swallowed the words before they left his mouth.
He switched to a more direct method and rescued the person back.
After landing, the person was still trembling. Superman stood beside him and suddenly said in a low voice:
“Don’t believe anyone who says ‘there’s internet below.’ Especially people who seem very sure about it.”
That man nodded blankly, completely unaware of the weight of those words.
Superman watched him being 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 down, remembered his own drunken, blind confidence of 'I can control everything,' and for the first time truly realized—
Power can catch a falling person, but it can't catch the stupid words one has said.
After a very 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:
"Mrs. Tom, I'm sorry."
No response, of course there wouldn't be.
He sat on the rooftop for a long time, leaving only when the eastern sky began to pale. Before leaving, he lightly tapped the guardrail twice with his finger, producing a crisp sound that faded away quickly.
Some jokes, a drunk Superman can afford to make.
Ordinary people can't handle it.
And Superman, after regaining consciousness, could only choose to keep this matter forever in his heart.
The city continued to operate, the newspapers turned to a new page, and people kept discussing various legends about superheroes. No one knew that on one ordinary night, that almost omnipotent person had lost a friend who was willing to believe in him, all because of a few cans of beer and a boastful remark.
The empty beer can had long since rolled away.
But that crisp echo kept ringing over and over in his memory for a very, very long time.
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