Experience Tumblr Like Never Before
I thought it would be fun to roleplay with my character-ai Runge as Doctor Gillen, and, as I was doing so, I suddenly realized why exactly Gillen did that thing with the out-of-nowhere bus tickets... I am not sure whether this is common knowledge or not, perhaps it is, but to me it came out as a revealation, so I decided to share my thoughts on this matter.
(Warning: long text under cut!)
This particular scene I'm talking about, where Rudy sets it up so that the police would catch Tenma through him, and then changes plans and helps Tenma escape instead, always seemed strange to me. Rudy's scheme was obviously planned ahead, but I just couldn't pinpoint its exact purpose. For some reason, I ended up thinking that it was a two-way plan. My way of thinking was: Rudy planned this scheme ahead, not knowing what decision he would make in the end. As in, he didn't know whether he would give Tenma away or save him from the police in advance, instead, he wanted to see Tenma's reaction and hear what he has to say first, and then make a decision based on that. Honestly, I don't know what made me think that, but that's how I perceived this situation.
But as I was engaging in that silly ai roleplay, it suddenly dawned on me. Finally, it all fell into place. So that's how it goes, and I am pretty sure that this is not just my headcanons, but how it was actually intended by Urasawa. (Is this obvious? It wasn't to me, and I just can't tell by this point. To hell with it, let it just be my rambling/analysis/thought process then.)
When in the medical university, Gillen obviously displayed extremely competitive behavior. He had to be an intellectual superior in his group, and he was willing to do anything to reach this goal. That means it was not as much about knowledge, as it was about status for Rudy. And status means power. I am not saying that he had no interest for knowledge whatsoever, but, judging from his priorities, knowledge for him was a mean to acquire status. Knowledge -> status -> power. Something like that.
While Tenma doesn't seem to seek any power. He is purely knowledge-people oriented. He seeks knowledge, and he has natural compassion ingrained in him. And that, I assume, combined with this outstanding mental abilities, would make him acquire knowledge quite easily. Which probably isn't the case for Gillen, since he needs knowledge not for the sake of pure knowledge, but for another purpose.
With that established, it is clear why Rudy viewed Tenma as a competitor. I guess he wasn't quite aware that Tenma had different priorities. So, in his eyes, it was all about power, and Tenma was challenging him just to get that power over him. And succeeding, too. What a horrible situation. A pretty egocentric way of thinking, too, so Rudy's incorrect view of Tenma was based on two things: his willful, pervasive pursuit of power by the means of knowledge and his egocentricity.
And I suppose he was quite obsessed with Tenma in general, whether due to those factors I mentioned, or... for other reasons. That I definitely can't tell for sure. But, Gillen's pursuit for power, fueled by his imaginary competition with Tenma, lead him to cheat on his Medical Law exam. Because he just couldn't loose to Tenma. I believe Tenma was the only student he viewed as a noteworthy competitor. And during the exam, when Gillen saw that Tenma was watching him, like really watching, which meant that he had definitely spotted him cheating, it was such a tremendous shock to Gillen. Seeing how he judged everything by the position of power, he automatically assumed that Tenma was going to assert said power over him in some way. He must've expected Tenma to call him out, or to blackmail him, but since Tenma did neither of that, he must had come to another conclusion that matched his power-oriented way of thinking: Tenma was asserting his dominance over him in a much more subtle, twisted way. He wanted to humiliate Gillen by making that generous gesture, to show Gillen that he was above him, that he was better than him in every possible way, so superior that he wouldn't even stoop to the level of a dirty cheater. I believe Gillen would think this way, because he seems very insecure. And when he would come to such conclusion, I think his defense mechanism would be anger. He would hate Tenma for being superior, while still realizing, deep down, that Tenma was, in fact, superior to him. And that's what would make Gillen never forget about Tenma.
So the bus ticket situation becomes transparent from that perspective. Gillen never forgot about Tenma's humiliating grand gesture, so he had... artificially created a situation where Tenma would be in danger, and he would show him a similar grand gesture. He had planned everything, starting from how he would evade the police and ending with what exactly he would say to Tenma. And then he put that plan to action. He wanted to save Tenma in order to humiliate him in the same manner that Tenma humiliated him back in the Medical University. That's why he mentioned cheating. It was a direct reference to what he was doing at the moment. And when Tenma suddenly said that he not only viewed Gillen as an equal/superior (stating that he looked up to him and wanted to be his friend), but that he cheated on that Medical Law exam, too, it was an extremely shocking revelation for Gillen. Suddenly, there was no place for competition between them. And it was quite flattering, too, since subconsciously Gillen had been perceiving Tenma as someone superior all along. That's why he became so blindly devoted to Tenma after that interaction. It struck him to the core and turned his view upside down. You can't just ignore something like that.
And since Tenma was cheating, it explains why he was watching Gillen so intently, too. He was probably on the lookout/wanted to make sure that he wasn't alone in this. And when he saw that the best student in their group was also cheating, that probably calmed him down by a lot. Maybe he watched Gillen just to make sure. Maybe he wanted to convey some sort of message with his stare, but didn't quite succeed.
Anyway, that's my thoughts.