The atmosphere inside the ruined wooden house turned a little strange.
Faced with the boy's completely self-righteous lecture,
both Charles and Constantine were left somewhat stunned.
"Who exactly is America's sun?" Constantine looked utterly baffled. He did not understand Ian's words. He could understand every individual word, but once they were put together, the meaning became incomprehensible.
"Obviously General MacArthur."
Ian answered without even thinking. After living in Metropolis for so many years, he had learned enough about life in America to know that Americans had their own version of a universally quotable authority figure.
Basically, if you wanted to say something from a position of moral high ground, pinning it on General MacArthur was always a safe bet. Hardly anyone would bother questioning whether he had actually said it.
And sure enough,
Constantine and Charles both suffered from not having read enough. The two looked at each other, but neither questioned him. They only felt that the generation gap between them and modern kids had somehow become enormous.
"So kids nowadays worship war heroes from World War II? That's really different from our time, when all we cared about were beauty queens with long legs." Charles even sounded a little emotional about it.
While the two of them were getting thoroughly tangled up in Ian's words,
gurgle.
Ian lowered his head and looked at the thermos in his hands. By his rough estimate, he could still get at least one more point of attribute gain out of the thing. He swallowed expectantly.
"Hiss!!!"
The evil spirit did not know exactly what he was thinking, but that did not mean it could not sense the boy's malicious intent. It immediately started wildly pounding on the transparent lid of the thermos.
"Constantine! Don't give up on me! You have to take me with you!"
"I know many secrets of Hell! I know how to save your soul!"
"Quick! Take me back!"
...
The evil spirit screamed frantically.
Constantine only felt that the entire situation was becoming more and more absurd. He had seen all kinds of strange things, but even he had rarely seen something from Hell fear a human this much.
It was genuinely hard to imagine.
What kind of mental state did an evil spirit have to be in before it started begging an exorcist for help?
"I'm serious! I can help redeem your soul!" the evil spirit continued tempting Constantine in a frenzy. It was truly terrified. Only something that had fed on others as nourishment could understand how miserable it was to become someone else's nourishment.
"I'm serious too. You're not getting away."
Ian shoved the thermos directly into his coat. He looked at Constantine warily, only to find that the man did not seem intent on demanding it back anymore.
"All right. It's yours."
Constantine had not fallen for the evil spirit's temptation. In fact, the moment it started calling out to him for rescue, he had given up any thought of taking it back from the boy.
"Hm?"
Even Ian was thrown off by the sudden shift in attitude.
Constantine gave him a long, deep look.
"Charles, there's still the poor woman upstairs who died horribly. To be safe, we need to bury her properly." Constantine turned and started walking toward the stairs.
He raised one hand, still marked by the burn from earlier. Thinking of the pendant the boy was wearing, the exorcist decided that Ian definitely had some kind of unusual background.
"Coming."
Charles snapped back to himself and prepared to follow him upstairs, but Ian glanced outside at the sky and directly stepped in front of him.
"You need to drive me home."
Ian spoke in a completely serious tone. He had no intention of walking all the way back to the city on his own. This place was a very long distance away.
"Wait a bit. I need to help my friend first." Charles did not refuse outright, but he still planned to finish everything here before taking this unusual passenger back.
"..."
Ian watched as Charles walked around him and hurried up the stairs. He looked at his watch. If he did not get back soon, his parents would probably start worrying about where he was.
His gaze turned toward the wreckage scattered all around the house, and he began thinking.
Very soon, just as Constantine and Charles reached the second floor and prepared to open the room with the giant hole smashed into it,
vroooom!
The roar of an engine suddenly rang out.
Then,
Charles's expression changed drastically. He frantically reached into his pocket. The keys were still clearly on him, yet from downstairs there was no mistaking the sound of his heavily damaged beloved car coming to life.
"Oh no!"
Charles's heart leaped straight into his throat. He rushed into the hallway and looked down over the railing.
Sure enough,
that stubborn taxi had really started up.
Hotwiring it
was no challenge at all for Ian.
This was exactly why learning science and math mattered.
"What are you doing?! Damn it! Stop! Stop the car!"
Charles watched in complete panic as Ian slammed on the gas, backed the taxi out like a savage, and used the rear of the car to smash yet another hole through the already wrecked house.
He was frantic, but he also knew that even if he jumped over the railing right now, human legs were never going to catch a speeding car.
And so,
Charles and Constantine, who arrived just a step later, could only stand there by the enlarged hole in the wall from the second impact, helplessly watching the still-somewhat-valuable taxi disappear into the distance.
"I can't wait for you guys even one second longer! You can find your car near the bus stop tomorrow!"
Ian even stretched a hand out of the window and waved goodbye.
He felt that since he had told them where he would leave the car, this technically should not count as theft.
There was no helping it. If he got home any later, he would definitely be grilled hard about where he had gone after school.
Out in a place this remote, he was truly grateful for the existence of this automatic transmission taxi. Tough, durable, and simple enough to operate. It was so easy that Ian felt like he could probably go take a driving test tomorrow.
"Driving really isn't that hard after all."
Ian kept his eyes fixed intently on the road ahead. One foot rested on the brake, the other on the gas, and just like that, he drove the battered taxi away until it vanished from the sight of the exorcist and the exorcist's assistant.
"..."
"..."
Constantine and Charles looked at one another in silence.
After a strange pause,
"So... are we walking back to the city today?" Constantine perfectly demonstrated what it meant to be completely unbothered. His attention was very clearly not on Charles's property loss.
After all, it was not his car.
"That's the only thing I had left after the divorce..."
Charles, already miserable enough, looked even more miserable after hearing that.
"If you can't talk properly, then talk less!"
He glared furiously at Constantine, but Constantine only smiled indifferently. With a showy flourish, the exorcist flipped one hand and revealed a card.
"Relax. Your car can be found."
It turned out that, at some unknown point, Constantine had silently lifted Ian's student ID right off him.
Seeing that,
Charles immediately let out a sigh of relief.
He looked at the student ID in Constantine's hand.
"Constantine, I think the weirdness around that kid is worth investigating." Charles spoke with great caution. This absolutely had nothing to do with him still being bitter about the theft of his vehicle.
"Agreed. Our little boy definitely has some very remarkable secrets on him." Constantine fell into thought and lowered his eyes to the card in his hand.
And just then,
suddenly,
a powerful gust of wind swept through the empty wooden house without the slightest warning. Constantine's vision blurred for a split second. Before he even saw what had happened, the student ID had vanished from his hand.
As if the wind had carried it off.
Or as if someone had simply snatched it away by force.
(End of Chapter)
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