Mornings in the Kent household were never exactly peaceful.
But young Mr. Kent's school life, at least, was still fairly calm.
In the classroom, sunlight slanted through the windows and spilled across the desks. Ian pushed up the new glasses on his nose and turned to look at his blonde deskmate, who always showed up at the exact last second.
"Good morning, ma'am."
He deliberately lowered his voice and kept it polite.
However,
Madison's expression turned strange.
"Okay, nerd, what are you up to now?" She glanced at Ian's slightly changed face. "You want me to compliment your new glasses? They don't even look like a stylish designer brand."
When it came to mainstream luxury brands, Madison basically had a PhD. So she was absolutely certain the glasses Ian was wearing were no different from the cheap mass-market frames you could buy on the street for a few dozen bucks.
"Sigh..."
Ian had already tried more than ten times today, and he still had not managed to use his old man's glasses successfully even once. He strongly suspected these stupid things had some kind of owner-recognition setting built into them.
"Or maybe it's because I don't have a bioelectric aura."
The boy thought that to himself with some regret.
Madison seemed long used to Ian's unpredictability. After dropping into her chair, she immediately started taking out makeup. She spent the entire morning adjusting her look in tiny increments.
The teacher paid no attention whatsoever.
"I've got an audition after school."
The girl said it proudly, clearly wanting to share something about her life with a friend.
However,
[You seriously practiced drawing and picked up some writing techniques. Student class EXP +1]
[You seriously practiced drawing and picked up some writing techniques. Student class EXP +1]
...
Ian was grinding.
He wanted The Boys to hit the market as soon as possible, just to see whether it might unlock a Homelander-type class template. He did not even pretend to be listening, and that left Madison completely speechless.
"What are you drawing?"
She leaned over to look at Ian's sketchbook.
On the page,
a character who looked suspiciously like Superman was using...
Moon Fang Cross Blast.
"Damn."
Madison sucked in a sharp breath.
"Aren't you worried Superman's going to come after you for slandering his image like this?" Honestly, she thought the comic looked pretty original, but she was still a little concerned for Ian's safety.
Superman obviously would not kill a kid.
That did not mean Superman would not beat one up.
"Don't worry... Superman is incredibly broad-minded. His son can vouch for that."
Ian did not even look up. He just kept working on his creation.
He did not dare inject too many of his own ideas into it, worried it might affect the class-unlocking result. That left him feeling like the work was lacking just a tiny, tiny bit of artistic genius.
"Uh, Superman has a son? That rumor is insane. The gossip I see online sounds less ridiculous than that."
Madison obviously was not buying Ian's nonsense.
And just like that,
while they talked,
time flew by.
Very soon, it was lunchtime.
In the cafeteria,
Sam Winchester, from the next class over, whose family was full of hunters and anything but ordinary, snuck over and sat across from Ian. After glancing around furtively, he slid over a wrinkled sheet of paper.
"This has everything my family knows about reapers on it."
He spoke quietly.
"Okay. Thanks, Sam."
Ian took the paper, stuffed it casually into his pocket, and went right back to attacking the mashed potatoes on his tray.
"You're not going to read it?"
Sam looked a little surprised.
Ian's face stiffened slightly.
"I've achieved enlightenment. Real enlightenment. So now I suddenly feel a lot less interested in violence. I think reapers' lives matter too."
He answered vaguely.
"????"
Sam looked completely lost.
Like he had not understood a single word Ian had just said.
Right then,
Ian spotted a poorly dressed student from the class next door, and suddenly seemed to remember something. He set down his fork.
"By the way, are you interested in a premium lunch loan?"
This was one of Ian's core businesses at school.
It had a broad customer base.
Sam clearly froze for a second after hearing that.
"No thanks. My family has credit cards."
He declined. As a traditional hunter family, they never paid for food with their own money. Credit card fraud was one of their core survival skills.
"Fair enough."
Ian nodded regretfully.
"Uh... so my dad's okay now, right? You're not going to go after him anymore, are you?"
After hesitating for a while, Sam finally worked up the courage to ask.
"Of course not. I'm not some school bully."
Ian gave him a strange look, clearly finding the question overly cautious.
"Uh..."
Sam did not believe him at all.
In the entire school, probably only Ian believed he was not a bully. Still, Sam's limited emotional intelligence kicked in at the right moment, and he chose not to say that out loud. Instead, he stood up and left, looking like a huge weight had finally been lifted off his chest.
After watching Sam walk away, Ian quickly pressed his hands together, closed his eyes, and whispered devoutly,
"Thank you, great Lady Death, for blessing me with today's wonderful lunch..."
He was testing whether the goddess of death had been secretly spying on him earlier.
The response came quickly, as usual.
"So because you got a wonderful lunch, that means you have to interrupt mine?"
There was annoyance in the voice. Irritation too. But after hearing it, Ian offered no reply.
The test had already been done.
Today's emotional bonding session was complete.
No need to overdo it.
"And thank you to my godfather as well."
Ian treated both sides equally.
After lunch came afternoon gym class. Ian ran with the crowd, deliberately controlling his pace so he stayed somewhere in the middle of the pack.
"Ian! Help me up!"
Emily, the pathetic simp girl, fell right in front of him.
Ian took one long stride
and cleanly jumped over the obstacle.
He understood very well that this was how a superhero hid his extraordinary nature in plain sight.
"..."
This time, Emily had genuinely fallen, and she was completely numb from disbelief.
She ended up getting ruthlessly mocked by Madison and a few other girls who followed her lead.
During free activity time, most students picked a sport and did something active. But Ian firmly believed in the body-building power of technology, and after school he planned to hit the gym and buy a few plates to experiment with.
So instead,
he found a quiet set of steps and sat down, pulled a thick stack of crumpled bills from his pocket, and started counting them one by one. Madison, who clearly did not like exercise either, seemed to have just finished a fight with someone.
Her hair was messy.
There were a few scratches on her face from someone's nails.
"What are you doing here?" Madison saw Ian writing something into a little notebook. She sat down beside him and casually stole his Coke.
"Accounting."
When Ian was serious, he did not like looking up.
"You're actually tracking how much money you've collected?" Madison sounded shocked. She had glanced at the cash in Ian's hands, and there had to be at least a few thousand dollars there.
That was a huge amount of money.
Even for an adult.
"It's for tax reporting."
Ian let out a long breath and finished calculating the minimum amount he needed to declare.
"Oh my God, you're unbelievable. You're collecting protection money at school and you're actually worried about taxes?"
This was clearly the first time Madison had ever encountered something like this.
Her eyes went wide.
She looked at Ian like he was some kind of alien.
"First of all, this is labor income, not protection money. Second, what exactly do I have to do for people to believe I'm one of America's truly law-abiding citizens?"
Ian gave Madison an equally strange look.
Not because he thought she looked like an alien too, but because he suddenly had a vivid image of her getting dragged away by the IRS for tax evasion.
"..."
The delinquent girl had absolutely no comeback.
And just then,
BOOM!!!
A deafening explosion suddenly erupted from inside the school. Even the ground shook. Students panicked and started looking around in all directions, quickly realizing the blast had come from the academic building.
Thick smoke was pouring out of one of the windows.
"That's... our chemistry classroom?"
Madison raised a hand to block the sun and narrowed her eyes toward the building.
"Let me see."
Ian looked up too, then started counting seriously.
"One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven..."
His behavior left Madison deeply confused.
"What are you counting?"
She widened her eyes and still could not see anything in the smoke.
"I'm counting our chemistry teachers."
Ian counted a few times to make sure.
There was definitely no saving their chemistry teacher, Walter White. In the smoke, Ian could see a reaper dressed in black, and beside the reaper there seemed to be a blue-haired girl.
"Huh? Don't we only have one chemistry teacher?"
This was exactly why she was a delinquent with bad grades. Madison very clearly still had no idea what Ian was counting.
"Now we have more than one."
Ian answered calmly.
His eyes remained fixed on the direction of the school building.
The reaper and the girl were talking.
Pretty intensely.
Ian was already looking forward to seeing them start pulling each other's hair.
(End of Chapter)
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