The little schemer opened with money.
He wanted to rope Ian in as his tax advisor.
However,
Ian shook his head warily at the proposal.
"Wouldn't that make me your accomplice?" He was a truly law-abiding citizen. He would not stop a crime, but he also had no intention of becoming any kind of accomplice, even in name.
What a joke.
He was Ian.
Ian Kent.
Superman's son absolutely could not sink to the level of criminals.
That was the basic logic, at least as far as Ian was concerned, and in his mind it did not conflict at all with coming back for a refund.
A refund.
The one losing out would only be the insurance company. Evil capitalism. In other words, it was basically striking a righteous blow on behalf of the working masses. Seen that way, it also happened to align with his old man's superhero spirit in some abstract sense.
The logic formed a perfect closed loop.
Ian refused decisively.
However,
"Hurry up and calculate it for me, you damned brat!"
The robber obviously had no way of guessing what Ian was thinking. He waved the handgun in his hand and threatened Ian again.
"Knowledge shouldn't be used like this."
And just as Ian shook his head again,
woo woo woo! woo woo woo!
all of a sudden,
sirens blared outside the store.
Police cars were clearly approaching.
"??????"
The robber was instantly startled. He turned toward Ian in a rage.
"It was you! You called the cops, didn't you?! So you were stalling me the whole time!"
"I already agreed to refund you, and you still screwed me over?!"
The robber sounded like the real victim, his grievance and fury peaking on the spot.
Someone who did not know better would have thought he had just suffered some outrageous betrayal.
"Huh?"
Ian blinked.
"I didn't!"
He was telling the truth.
"You didn't? Then who else could it have been?!"
The robber stared silently at Ian for a moment.
Then both of them turned at the same time to look at the cashier.
The cashier reacted fast. He grabbed the register in front of him and smashed it straight into the robber.
The robber fell hard to the ground, and the little bang-bang in his hand flew away. The cashier vaulted out from behind the counter and kicked the gun under the shelves in one swift motion.
That was not all.
He also started stomping hard on the robber's head. Even after the robber passed out, he still did not stop. Only when Ian rushed over and pulled him back was a robbery prevented from escalating into murder.
"He really was about to get kicked to death."
Ian crouched down and checked the robber's breathing, confirming that his own merit points had genuinely gone up by one. Then he looked up at the young cashier, who was leaning against a shelf and still trembling.
"Are you shaking because you're scared or because you're excited?"
Ian fell into thought.
"Haa..."
The cashier let out a huge breath.
"Of course I'm scared! That was dangerous as hell. We really almost died just now."
He started marveling at how good it felt to still be alive, his face full of the relief of someone who had just survived disaster.
"Uh."
Ian glanced at the unconscious robber.
"Actually, nobody was going to die. Not even close... He was carrying a fake gun. Didn't you notice?"
That was right.
The reason Ian had gone in and out three times
was because he had already noticed that detail, the one thing that guaranteed his safety.
However,
"??????"
The cashier froze on the spot.
He had clearly only just learned that.
"You could tell? No way!"
The young man hurried over to the shelves, dropped to the floor, and fished the gun out from underneath them.
After a quick inspection,
"Hiss, you were right! It really is fake! The craftsmanship's so good it feels more expensive than a real one!"
The cashier turned toward Ian in amazement.
"Does your family sell guns or something? How could you spot that?"
He was extremely curious. Apparently, that was the only explanation he could think of.
"Hm? Isn't that just a basic life skill in Metropolis?"
Ian looked puzzled. His perfectly matter-of-fact tone immediately left the cashier speechless.
Basic life skill, my ass.
What normal person learns something like that?
It was not like they lived in the city next door.
"..."
The atmosphere turned awkward.
The two of them stared at each other for a full minute. After thinking it over, Ian finally took the thirty dollars and forty-five cents out of his pocket and returned it.
Be an honest person.
Even when it came to taking advantage of things, Ian had standards of his own. Now that the robber had gone down, the perfect three-way win he had envisioned obviously no longer had any room to exist.
"Keep it."
The cashier did not take the money back. He walked to the register, bundled up the cash he had already sorted, and placed it into a lockbox.
"My name's Tate Langdon."
Maybe it was because they had just gone through a robbery together, but the cashier introduced himself. He already seemed to regard Ian as a comrade who had survived hardship beside him.
"Nice to meet you, Tate."
Ian was polite, though he did not introduce himself in return. Tate did not seem to mind. He simply went to the shelves and grabbed several boxes of expensive family-planning supplies.
"Actually, this store belongs to my dad."
He first explained why he had fought back against the robber, then proceeded to explain exactly what he was doing now.
"You were right earlier. My dad really does have insurance."
After a brief pause, Tate grabbed several packs of Camel cigarettes too. In America, they were basically the local equivalent of a premium domestic brand.
"..."
Ian looked around for cameras and, finding none, immediately understood what the guy was doing.
He was looting his own store under cover of the robbery.
The honest-looking glasses guy was not honest at all. He was clearly planning to pin everything on the robber who had already been "taken down."
Damn.
He really was the lone white lotus in all of Metropolis.
That robbery had failed to become a three-way win and had only ended as a two-way win. The only world left rewritten was the one where the robber got framed for even more than he had actually done.
"That's impressive."
Ian was honestly shaken. His understanding of ordinary daily life in Metropolis had once again deepened. He was even beginning to wonder whether the store owner really was Tate's father.
And just then,
"Everyone inside! Hands where I can see them!"
The sirens had been blaring for quite a while. The robber had been lying on the floor long enough to nearly catch a cold, yet the police had only just arrived. This was not the first time Ian had encountered after-the-fact police.
To be fair,
they seemed to possess some kind of supernatural ability to predict exactly when everything was already over.
"We're victims! We need blankets!"
Tate raised both hands and spoke to the armed officers entering the store. He had already hidden a considerable amount of his "extra compensation."
His experience dealing with robberies seemed much richer than Ian had expected.
"I'm traumatized! I need a ride home!"
Ian learned on the spot, raising both hands as well while taking the chance to try to secure some free transportation back to his house.
...
Police generally did not act as good people.
However, under the added effect of a face that made everything seem reasonable, Ian ultimately did receive the kind help of a female officer.
The police car stopped at his front door.
"Thanks."
Ian said goodbye to the officer, who had spent the drive repeatedly telling him he ought to try his luck in Hollywood.
He patted his pocket and discovered that he actually had one dollar more than he had before buying food.
That was right.
Tate had refunded Ian the full thirty dollars and forty-five cents, but had forgotten that earlier he had already given Ian one dollar in change after the purchase.
Ian's actual spending had only been twenty-nine dollars and forty-five cents.
What could one say?
The facts proved that while Tate may have had a certain sort of cunning, his mathematical talent was very much at the average American level.
"So basically, someone spent one dollar treating me to a huge pile of processed food!"
Ian once again completed a flawless internal logic loop.
He looked at the front door of his house in the distance and hesitated slightly. It was not that he had not figured out how to explain coming home so late. He was actually hesitating over whether he should bring the evil spirit back into his house at all.
It was not just dangerous. It would also be bad if his Superman dad discovered something like that. More than anything, Ian had still not figured out how he was supposed to explain coming home carrying an evil spirit.
Should he use the power-fantasy version where his natural talent led him to accidentally stumble into a secret mage sanctuary on the street and then get accepted as a disciple by the Supreme Sorcerer What-the-Hell?
Or should he go with the innocent fool version where he thought he had picked up some kind of magic lamp?
No matter how he looked at it, both sounded suspiciously plagiarized.
"Where's my writing talent? Start moving! Think of a believable origin story for me!"
Ian racked his brain.
He knew he could hide his changes for a day or two, but not forever.
As for whether he should simply tell the truth, that was not something he had failed to consider. It was just that, compared with saying he was a transmigrator who also had a system, he felt his origin story should at least show a little respect for the current version of reality.
"Still, getting tricked and dragged away by Constantine's companion is definitely something worth reporting..."
Thinking that, Ian pulled out the thermos Charles had used earlier to smash him with.
The dents all over the metal were proof of just how hard his skull really was.
"My head is still throbbing a little, and that evil spirit was a real pain too... Wait, what's going on?!"
Ian had originally wanted to shake the spirit in the thermos a few more times to vent his frustration, but he suddenly realized that the thermos seemed to have lost its effect. Not only had the inscriptions on it gone blurry,
the evil spirit inside was gone too.
"Where the hell did my huge evil spirit go?! It escaped?"
Ian was stunned. He pressed one eye up to the glass to peer inside, but there really was nothing there anymore.
Was it some trick of the spirit?
Or had it really escaped?
Just as Ian continued to wonder,
"Hm?"
He unexpectedly noticed a flicker from his chest.
And apparently it had been flickering for some time.
Ian hurriedly pulled out the object hidden beneath his shirt.
Madison's pendant.
At that very moment, it was emitting a dark black glow.
Exactly the same color as the evil spirit.
(End of Chapter)
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