There was no heroic rescue, nor any act of justice. After staying up all night playing video games, Li Jie woke up and realized something was off—because the moment he opened his eyes, he saw a burly white man holding him and smiling foolishly, looking very happy.
"Yes, a big white guy—literally big," Li Jie thought. From the looks of it, his head might actually be bigger than the guy's.
Just as Li Jie was about to speak, all that came out of his mouth were babbling sounds. That's when he finally realized—he might have turned into a child?
The strong man looked flustered when he heard Li Jie babbling. He nervously shook his arms and kept repeating the same sentence.
Li Jie's English wasn't very good—just barely at the "hao are ou" level. So he had no idea what the big guy was saying. And when the man saw he wasn't making any progress, he raised his voice.
Having no better solution, the man handed Li Jie over to a white woman. Then, Li Jie saw the woman bring a milk bottle toward him—he was force-fed.
Ten years passed. And during those ten years, Li Jie figured out a lot of things.
For instance, he had a very special name—Clark Kent. The first time Li Jie learned his name, the word "hat" popped into his mind.
Because Li Jie had some memory of that name. It belonged to a character in DC—Superman.
So he assumed he had crossed into the DC comic universe and become Superman. At first, Li Jie—or rather, Clark—was overjoyed.
Because while the DC world is dangerous and practically hell for ordinary people, it's not that hard for someone like Superman. It's practically an easy mode.
But that excitement didn't last long. Soon after, Clark met his "father"—the same white man who had hugged him. It turned out that he wasn't a farmer, but a police officer. That's when Clark realized he had probably overthought things. He wasn't in the DC universe. He wasn't Superman.
As he grew older and understood more English, Clark began to piece things together. He finally understood why he was named Clark Kent.
His adoptive father—John Kent—just happened to have the surname Kent. And when he was younger, John had been a huge Superman fan. After watching the Superman movie with his wife, he swore that if they had a son, he'd be named Clark. If a daughter, she'd be named Kara.
When Clark learned this, all his hopes of being Superman crumbled. At first, he had thought maybe his time-traveling had altered the timeline, changing Superman's dad from a farmer to a cop. But nope—he had no powers, no Krypton, no nothing.
And just when he thought things couldn't get worse, they visited a history museum on a school field trip.
Guess what Clark saw?
A wax figure. But not just any wax figure—it was Captain America, World War II hero Steve Rogers.
At first, Clark thought they'd placed a movie figure in the wrong place. He figured it belonged in a theater, not a war museum.
But then he remembered—it was still 1996, and the Captain America movie hadn't been released yet. Plus, the name on the statue wasn't an actor's name—it was Steve Rogers.
After listening to the teacher explain Captain America's heroic feats to the class, Clark finally realized—he hadn't landed in a comic world. He was in the Marvel Universe.
To be honest, Clark had only seen a few Marvel movies.
Stuff like Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, and the Avengers. He knew there was a big purple guy who could wipe out half the universe with a snap.
Marvel's danger level was just as high as DC's. Maybe even worse. Sure, things were peaceful now, but ever since Iron Man showed up, things started speeding up—aliens, world-ending villains… they were all showing up.
And to make things worse, Clark lived in New York.
Specifically, Manhattan—yes, the same Manhattan that the Chitauri invaded in the Avengers.
And his dad was a cop. In Marvel, cops are often cannon fodder when villains appear.
After returning from the museum, Clark actually wanted to beg his father to quit. He even considered selling the house and moving far away. After all, Marvel's epicenter was always New York, and disasters constantly happened there.
Even though he shared the name Clark Kent, he didn't have any powers. As an ordinary person, living in this city that got bombed every other week, he had no control over anything. It was terrifying.
But when his dad came home, Clark didn't know how to bring it up. How could he say, "I'm a time traveler and I know the future, so we need to move"?
He figured if he did that, he'd be sent to a psychiatric hospital. So in the end, he said nothing. After all, the big events in the Marvel timeline wouldn't start for another decade or so.
He could only hope that when he grew up, he'd find a way to leave—maybe for school or work.
Ten days after the museum trip, Clark celebrated his 10th birthday. Since his dad had been promoted to police chief that year, the celebration was quite grand. But Clark wasn't too interested in mingling with his dad's coworkers.
Later that night, after the party, Clark went to bed—but started feeling weird.
As he fell asleep, he began hearing voices—people talking, car horns, opera singing, planes rumbling—it was like a thousand different sounds were ringing right next to his ears.
"Ugh, this is awful," he groaned.
All the noise made him feel like he was spinning in his dreams. Every time he turned, he heard something new. It made him dizzy. He finally opened his eyes.
But when he did, things only got worse. He clutched his ears, trying to block it out—but the sounds weren't coming from the outside.
Even when he covered his ears, the noises didn't stop. It was like they were echoing directly inside his brain.