You can read ahead up to 110 chapters on my Patreon: spatreon/darkshadow6395
Left with no choice, Lupin resorted to stealthy sabotage.
"What are you doing with your wand?" Ian looked up and saw Lupin in the corner, holding his wand.
"Routine maintenance and upkeep, of course," Lupin replied with a straight face and calm tone. However, the battered appearance of both his wand and himself made that statent incredibly unconvincing.
"You're not tattling again, are you?"
Ian suddenly felt like he'd discovered a core Gryffindor trait. Sure enough, as soon as he finished speaking, Aunt Marilyn burst into the house.
"I knew it! I knew it! No wonder I felt uneasy before I even made it to the front gate!" Aunt Marilyn grabbed a large slotted spoon and imdiately began chasing Ian around the room.
"Damn it!"
Ian ran for his life while flipping off the schadenfreude-filled Lupin behind her back. Lupin, for his part, pretended not to see anything, silently continuing to clean duck down like the dutiful, uncomplaining man he was pretending to be.
"Little Ian! Trying to secretly cook up sothing that tastes like crap and feed it to us again?!" Aunt Marilyn didn't hold back in the slightest.
Her voice carried a genuine sense of horror.
"No, no, I'm totally different now! I've been in school for a whole year, trained for a whole year, I'm confident I can make sothing that beats General Tso's Chicken and Orange Chicken!" Ian protested.
Naturally, his protest earned no trust from Aunt Marilyn.
"You went to school, not culinary training! I've never heard of that Hogwarts of yours being a cooking school!" Aunt Marilyn shouted, kicking Ian, who already had his sauce ingredients prepared, right out of the kitchen. Only after checking that the chicken and duck in the pot had rely been blanched with ginger and scallions did she finally let out a sigh of relief.
"I swear cooking isn't hard for , I'm just trying to make dishes that suit Western tastes," Ian argued as he leaned against the window from outside, continuing to defend himself to Aunt Marilyn.
He wasn't entirely wrong. When making common dishes, he could always make them taste a bit better than your average ho-cooked al. After all, a level 3 [Cooking] skill wasn't just for show.
"You'd better go back to your room and study what you're supposed to be studying. I've told you so many tis, just because a dish looks weird doesn't an it tastes better!" Aunt Marilyn was exhausted. She had once earnestly taught Ian how to cook. With her supervision, he actually did a decent job. But this little rascal had so deeply ingrained cognitive problems, he was even more stubborn than a parrot she once raised. Over ti, she didn't dare let Ian take the lead in the kitchen anymore.
"Then I'll go back to school and cook for my classmates," Ian said as he jumped down from the window. Hearing that, Lupin couldn't help but twitch at the corner of his eye and silently began praying for the students of Hogwarts.
"How is soone this reckless in Ravenclaw?" He couldn't help but echo a question many had likely asked before.
…
Life at the orphanage was always peaceful and calm, wrapped in a comforting sense of ease. After spending so ti playing with the little kids, Ian returned to his room.
Dinner, as usual, was simple but satisfying. Tasty, though not particularly innovative. Everyone ate happily. Ian, despite a bit of regret, still enjoyed it a lot.
Though no longer at Hogwarts, Ian continued his tradition of an evening "mini-class", helping his younger siblings learn the basics of reading and writing had always been part of his Quest.
Of course.
When Ian wasn't around, Ms. Helena and the other adults at the orphanage would also teach the kids. But none of them were as well-received as Ian.
"Whoever can write down ten of the words we learned today will get to hear tell a Resident Evil story tonight!" Ian always had a way of using storytelling to get the kids excited about learning.
Of course.
Compared to the overjoyed children, Lupin, who was about to shut himself in his room, felt a swirl of complicated emotions after hearing Ian's announcent.
He didn't know what Resident Evil was, but any story with that kind of na sounded completely inappropriate for children. It was probably another version of that sewer beast tale.
With that suspicion in mind, Lupin eavesdropped by the door for a while. And finally, he realized that all those terrifying stories he'd heard from the kids before Ian returned, were from Ian all along.
Still, even though he didn't think Ian's stories were suitable for kids, Lupin couldn't help but listen intently from outside.
For a mont…
He even forgot his usual routine of locking himself away at a certain hour.
"And just like that, Ian, the unwilling mutant test subject and Supre Overlord, defeated the evil Umbrella Bio-Corp and tead up with the avenging goddess Alice to roam the world, eliminating mutated monsters."
"It seed like things were finally returning to normal. But in pursuit of a strange Licker, they fell into a Licker nest and began a new tale: Ian and his pendant Alice's dreamy adventure in Wonderland."
"Want to know what happens next? Then tomorrow night, bring 2 jin of sunflower seeds."
Ian, of course, never told stories word for word, he had a talent for spicing them up with his own creative flair.
Naturally.
The kids, eager to hear more, one after another patted their chests and promised to bring the snacks. Seeing the mont was ripe, Ian imdiately pulled out a big bag of sunflower seeds.
"No shelling them with your teeth!"
He went around before bedti, warning every single child in turn.
As night fell, the orphanage gradually quieted down.
Only the occasional barking of dogs in the distance broke the silence. A large Grim lay under a tree not far from the orphanage, growling threateningly at a few stray dogs trying to sneak in with ill intent.
Faced with these particularly English street dogs, the Grim's barks sounded genuinely distressed. Just like it was said before: although under the inertia of fate, Voldemort's soul fragnt was ultimately defeated by the magic of love, so events affected by the butterfly effect had already begun to deviate.
…
Life went on as usual.
The world was still full of vitality and energy.
A new day.
A new beginning.
It was yet another hazy night where Ian failed to enter the Twilight Zone, and as he got up early that morning, he looked a bit gloomy. Once again, he wanted to pull the black-robed skeleton out of the little suitcase and give it a good beating.
However—
The black-robed skeleton seed to have tid everything perfectly. Just as Ian unzipped the little suitcase, one of its pale bony hands would imdiately reach out, grab the zipper, and zip it back up.
Ian pulled it open.
It closed it.
He pulled it open again.
It closed it again.
This tug-of-war lasted all the way until breakfast, only ending when Ian was called away by a knock at the door from Catherine. Muttering curses in his heart, Ian didn't realize that not long after he left, the black-robed skeleton quietly unzipped the suitcase, peeked out to look around, then crawled out and disappeared under Ian's bed.
Who knew if it was planning to jump out and scare Ian that night? Either way, when Ian returned after eating and drinking his fill, he didn't notice anything strange under his bed or with the little suitcase.
"How much longer until I can get back to the Twilight Zone…" Ian sat at his desk, deeply frustrated, a large pile of ssy parts scattered in front of him.
As Ian sighed and tinkered—
Knock knock knock~
A knock ca from outside his room.
(To Be Continued…)
User Comments
0 comments from readers