(Brain depository- Don’t worry, Mr.
Lockhart will keep it safe and ‘clean’ while you enjoy the story..) ____ September 1, 1992, 11:00 AM.
I must be sick.
How else could I have seen a car flying in the sky?
King’s Cross Station was bustling today, probably because the new school term had begun.
Many parents were leading their children into the station and coming out alone.
They must be sending them off to boarding school.
Having lived a second life, John was not surprised by such scenes.
What really left him stunned was seeing a light blue Ford sedan suddenly rise into the air in broad daylight before vanishing after flying over the station’s clock tower.
Standing by the window, John rubbed his forehead.
He had a slight headache.
Had he been watching too much television lately?
These hallucinations were happening more and more often.
Last time, he had seen someone appear out of thin air on the street with a loud pop, yet none of the passersby seemed to notice.
Another time, he saw two people in strange clothes walk straight through a wall and disappear at the end of the street.
No one paid any attention to that either.
Combined with today’s event, John was becoming more and more convinced that he was ill.
John Merrick.
That was his name in this life.
In his previous life, he had been an ordinary office worker.
One morning on his way to work, he tried to save a child from a hundred-ton truck.
In the end, he failed to save himself.
In the blink of an eye, he had arrived in late 20th-century Britain.
At first, he hoped this might be a different parallel world, but ten years of observation showed him that this world was no different from his last one.
Besides the recent hallucinations, he also felt something strange stirring inside his body.
He kept it suppressed, because he had a feeling that if he let it out, something terrible would happen.
While John was lost in thought, the sound of the front door opening reached him.
His parents had returned.
His father was an engineer and his mother was a nurse.
Their family was quite well-off for this era, which was why they could afford a house near King’s Cross Station.
They were both supposed to be at work today, but they had taken the day off because of John’s school situation.
They had gone to visit the London private school he used to attend.
“Sorry, John.
Your father and I spoke with the school administration… they still won’t lift your suspension.” Mrs.
Merrick walked over and stroked her son’s head, her voice full of apology.
“I told you, instead of sending John back to that school, we should just transfer him somewhere else.
Distance doesn’t matter.” Mr.
Merrick loosened his tie as he entered the house and spoke irritably.
Of course, his anger was not aimed at John or his wife.
It was because of what had happened that morning.
As mentioned before, this world was no different from his previous one, including the common occurrence of school bullying.
John had originally planned to study hard and behave well.
He hoped to avoid becoming an office worker again and make money early by taking advantage of future trends.
But unfortunately, he was too well-behaved.
Someone saw him as an easy target and wanted to feel superior by bullying him.
In the end, the school bully cornered John in the restroom.
And..
John fought back by shoving the bully’s face into the toilet bowl!
Quite a few students had been watching, and the commotion quickly drew the teachers and school administration.
That alone might not have been enough to get John suspended.
The real reason was something else.
The principal turned out to be related to the bully.
He protected the bully and accused John of being the aggressor instead.
At the time, John’s actions really did look like he was bullying a classmate.
After that, John received a suspension.
However, many students spoke up for him.
They reported the principal together for abusing his power for personal gain.
Although the principal was later suspended for investigation by the board of governors, the fact that John had attacked a classmate could not be denied.
Even after his parents appealed to the school governors, they could not overturn his suspension.
Today was the first day of the new semester.
His parents had gone to the school early in the morning to deal with this matter, but they still received no positive response.
That was why Mr.
Merrick came home looking so angry.
“John wasn’t the one in the wrong.
Why should he be punished?
This is too much.
I’m going to sue them!” Mrs.
Merrick spoke with clear indignation.
After learning that John had been bullied, she naturally stood firmly on her son’s side.
It wasn’t that she thought the school was particularly good.
She simply felt that this kind of suspension was too humiliating.
The one who was clearly in the wrong wasn’t her child, yet her child was the one being punished.
She felt very upset about it.
“It’s okay, Mom.
There’s no point in arguing with them forever.
You don’t need to keep talking to the school for me.” John took his mother’s hand and comforted her.
“It’s fine, John!
Mom and I will figure something out about your schooling.
You can rest for a while.
Back in my day, your old man would have done anything to skip school.” Seeing how sensible his son was, Mr.
Merrick felt comforted.
He placed a hand on John’s shoulder and smiled.
John had been sensible since he was young and never caused them any worry.
He was excellent in both character and studies.
Other parents always praised him.
He also fully supported John’s retaliation against the bully.
That was how a real man should act.
“By the way, John, have you been in your room the whole time?
Did you see a car fly up near the station outside the window?” “Your mother keeps saying my eyes were playing tricks on me because I was angry, but how could that be?
My eyesight is excellent.
I could even draw the exact shape of that car!” Mr.
Merrick did not want to dwell on the unpleasant topic, so he changed the subject and asked his son about the strange sight he had witnessed earlier.
When he came back, he had clearly seen a light blue sedan take flight downstairs, but it vanished in an instant.
His wife refused to believe him.
Now he was asking if John had seen it too.
“Ah?” Hearing this, John was stunned.
Had his dad started having hallucinations too?
But that didn’t make sense.
How could their hallucinations be exactly the same?
“I told you it’s impossible.
How could a car fly?
You must have imagined it.” Seeing John’s reaction, Mrs.
Merrick assumed he didn’t believe it either.
She tapped her husband’s forehead with her finger and teased him.
Mr.
Merrick scratched his head and muttered, “It’s impossible.
I couldn’t have seen it wrong…” “Dad, was the car you saw a Ford?” John decided to test him with the question.
Upon hearing it, Mr.
Merrick frowned as he tried to recall.
His eyes suddenly widened.
“Yes!
It was a Ford Anglia 105E!
John, you saw it too!
I knew I wasn’t seeing things!” Mr.
Merrick immediately recognized the model from John’s hint.
Since his son had seen the same thing, it proved he wasn’t mistaken.
A car really had flown.
It was simply unbelievable.
John lowered his head and frowned.
If even his dad had seen the flying car, then it probably wasn’t a hallucination.
In that case, were the strange things he had seen before not hallucinations either?
“Could it have been some kind of car-shaped balloon?
A flying car is unrealistic no matter how you look at it.” Even though her son had also seen it, Mrs.
Merrick still couldn’t believe a car could fly and offered another explanation.
However, John felt it was real.
When the car took off, it had wobbled, and he clearly saw two silhouettes inside.
They were too far away to make out clearly, but there were definitely people in the car.
They couldn’t have been filming a movie, right?
Mr.
Merrick wasn’t entirely sure.
He had only caught a brief glimpse.
The car vanished after flying over the clock tower, and its shaky movement really did look like a balloon drifting in the wind.
His mother couldn’t be bothered to keep arguing with her imaginative husband and said she was going to prepare lunch.
Mr.
Merrick didn’t dwell on it either.
Whether it was real or not didn’t matter much.
If someone had truly invented a flying car, the whole world would hear about it soon enough.
If they had simply seen it wrong, it mattered even less.
The family thought the matter would end there and prepared to enjoy this rare day off together.
But shortly after lunch, someone knocked on their front door.
“Good afternoon, Mr.
Merrick.
We are from the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes at the British Ministry of Magic.”