Chapter 50 Do You Like Eating McDonald's?

The silvery-white radiance grew increasingly dazzling, surpassing even the brightness of the moon as it cast a layer of frost across the dim, dilapidated tenement room. Following that, under Elijah’s watchful eyes, the winding English letters on the paper 'stood up' and spontaneously shifted their shapes, combining into a two-dimensional linear stick figure suspended in mid-air. It was only about the size of an adult’s palm, and its construction reminded Elijah of Bob’s true form, yet it was even simpler than Bob—if Bob was a carefully designed stick drawing, the line figure before Elijah could only be called a child's doodle.

This doodle blinked its solid dot eyes, tidied up the messy hairstyle on its head, raised its hand, and said to Elijah cheerfully in the language of the Book of Destiny: "Hi, Destiny, my old friend! Long time no see!"

Elijah froze slightly. Before he could reply, the line figure had already scrambled up his hand, stood on his wrist, and asked, "How have you been all these years? Is your English any better? Have your relationships with the kids improved? What about your work? Oh right, I suppose this counts as fulfilling our promise, so there shouldn't be anything important—ah! No, wait, I forgot something!"

The little figure hopped in place and said with annoyance, "I forgot that you might not remember me! Ahem, sorry, I slept too long, my head is still a bit dizzy right after waking up... Let me introduce myself, I am Simon Hathaway, the current owner of this diary."

Oh no, Batman was right.

Elijah thought to himself.

'He' actually really knew Simon Hathaway, and judging by this, it wasn't just a casual meeting.

"Excuse me," he asked, "when did we meet?"

Hearing this, Simon Hathaway, who had been hanging his head in self-reproach on Elijah's wrist, looked up and answered without hesitation, "Forty-two years, eight months, and three days ago. Back then I was only twenty years old, just a greenhorn, and you looked exactly the same as you do today.

"I can still recall the events of that day, because over the past forty-two years, the scenes of us meeting have constantly lingered in my mind. Even when recalling them at this moment, they remain as clear as if they happened only yesterday... You were like today, no, wait, I should say roughly like today, wearing a simple gray robe, holding a silvery-white book in your hands, coming before me like a phantom stepping out of the light, and saying to me—"

Elijah couldn't help but brace himself. He felt that the 'Destiny' in Simon Hathaway's description had a rather high-and-mighty aura. Although he didn't have this memory, listening to it like a story wasn't bad either.

Simon Hathaway took a deep breath and repeated what the Lord of Destiny had said to him back then: "'Simon Hathaway, do you like eating McDonald's?'"

Elijah: "……?"

Suppressing the urge to rub his ears, he looked at the other person in astonishment, suspecting that he had once again misunderstood the meaning of 'McDonald's', or perhaps Simon Hathaway was actually talking about someone named 'Donald'... But the line figure looked at him seriously, as if discovering that he didn't believe it, and repeated, "You asked me, 'Do you like eating McDonald's?'"

Elijah couldn't help but start wondering if the Lord of Destiny had some serious mental issues. After pondering back and forth for quite a while without a clue, he humbly asked, "What does that mean?"

"I don't know," Simon Hathaway answered candidly. "The me of forty-two years ago was stunned.

"You can imagine the kind of family I lived in: my father was once involved in a terrifying cult ritual. He was terrified, almost frightened into a half-mad state. After barely escaping, he came to this unfamiliar soil of America, becoming a gloomy, paranoid, disease-ridden, and knowledge-hating despairing illiterate in the eyes of others.

"In England, my father had been a doctor. However, after experiencing that magical ritual, he could not bear to see any books or words appear before him, as if those letters might crawl out of the paper and slit his throat. He couldn't sleep night after night, guarding the bedroom door in the dark, and when I was a child, there wasn't a single book, newspaper, or magazine in our home... I could only leave my books and homework at school—fortunately, he didn't stop me from going to school."

Elijah muttered under his breath, "A blessing in disguise."

Hearing this, Simon Hathaway agreed, "Indeed so! At first, I didn't know what he was guarding against, but later, as I grew older, I learned that he was actually worried that those books harbored magic. Look, how absurd is that. Just because he was the one who, out of sheer ignorance, handed the *Book of Magdalene* inscribed with spells to an English wizard, ultimately causing that magical ritual to happen, he developed a psychological trauma toward all books from that day on, flying into a rage even at a brief glance at anything shaped like a book..."

At this point, he sighed and shook his head: "To be honest, I deeply respect and love my father. I am not his biological son; his true son died in a naval battle, and later he adopted me, raising me into adulthood without asking for anything in return... I have always been grateful for that. But his mind was indeed not quite right, which resulted in me being a 'freak' before I turned twenty, raised by him.

"I had no friends, did not participate in social activities, and poured all my energy into reading. The more my father resisted things, the more I wanted to touch them, with no particular reason."

He thought for a moment, not knowing how to describe it.

"Perhaps everyone goes through a period of cynicism and rebellion in their youth."

"Then, on my twentieth birthday, I had a fight with my father."

At this, Simon Hathaway showed a slightly embarrassed expression. "We argued very fiercely, but I can no longer remember the exact cause of the argument. I only remember my father driving me out of the house and threatening to kill me—he occasionally said such things, though thinking back now, those were just angry words spoken in the heat of the moment. At the time, however, I wasn't as sensible as I later became; I was furious and terrified.

"That very night, I left home alone and stayed at a nearby inn. For the first half of the night, I remained trapped in my emotions and even drank a little alcohol, leaving my mind in a daze. Until midnight, when I wanted to go out for a walk to get some fresh air, and as I walked to the door, I saw a book."

The stick figure extended its circular hands and gestured with difficulty: "It was about this big, appearing out of thin air on the carpet in front of my hotel room door. Both the cover and the pages were entirely silvery-white, radiating a serene and distant brilliance. A thought flashed through my mind at that moment: this book must have existed since the dawn of the universe, and its light had never been extinguished. It was definitely an extraordinary thing, and I could be certain of that. So, under the influence of the alcohol and the intense resentment toward my father, I unhesitatingly reached out and opened the book.

"I only had time to see that it was filled with countless writings I had never laid eyes on before, and the next moment, you appeared before me.

"You claimed to be 'Destiny', immediately calling out my name and asking me that strange question. The astonishment in my heart outweighed the fear I should have felt, and I suppose I must have been paralyzed at that time... You asked me whatever you liked, and I answered whatever you asked. I said, 'I hate McDonald's'."

Hearing this, Elijah had no idea what expression to make. Simon Hathaway, who had long been accustomed to it, smiled and continued: "After hearing that, you nodded, as if you had understood something, picked up that book, walked over to me, and asked me a second question: 'Do you want to learn magic?'

"You can probably guess my answer. At twenty years old, I already knew why my father feared books, and the more he opposed them, the more I wanted to do them. So even though you didn't look quite human, and even though the whole thing reeked of bizarreness, I still impulsively agreed... Thinking back later, I really was far too impulsive at that time."

He let out a breath, looking a bit dejected, and a genuine sense of regret appeared on his stick-figured face: "How could the me of back then have anticipated that you, who looked so much like a grand archmage, were actually completely terrible at magic!!"

Elijah: "……"

Unable to hold back any longer, he spoke up with a solemn expression: "Wait a minute, there might be some misunderstanding here."

Simon Hathaway looked at him deeply and asked, "Can you finish chanting a spell longer than five words nowadays without stuttering?"

"..." But he could bludgeon every single enemy's skull with a magic staff!

A vein throbbing at Elijah's temple ached. He raised a hand to rub his temples, resignedly changing the subject: "And then? What else did 'I' do?"

"I studied magic with you for five years." Simon Hathaway held out his hand, and Elijah guessed he probably wanted to use five fingers to represent the number 'five', yet because he only had a circular line for a hand, the gesture ended up looking rather comical. "During those five years, you took me traveling around the world, and it was from that time on that we established our friendship. Then, on my twenty-fifth birthday, you brought me back to Gotham City, back to my hometown—

"Following that, I discovered that those past five years had actually been an illusion."

Elijah frowned: "What do you mean?"

"I mean, the moment I returned home, I found that time had still remained frozen on the night of my twentieth birthday. I had just finished arguing with my father, ran away from home, and checked into the inn. I stood in front of the hotel room door, maintaining the motion of wanting to open it; there was no silvery-white book on the floor, and there was nothing around. I rushed into the bathroom, saw that the reflection of myself in the mirror was my appearance from five years ago, wearing the clothes from five years ago, carrying the suitcase from five years ago, and the calendar showed the date from five years ago... As if only my brain had experienced the passage of those five years.

"I called out your name and asked every staff member in the hotel about your whereabouts, but they knew nothing about you whatsoever. I was filled with utmost despair and almost suspected I had gone mad from drinking... But soon, I found a diary that didn't belong to me inside my suitcase."

Simon Hathaway raised his chin to gesture toward Elijah: "It's the very one you're holding in your hand right now. You even wrote a sentence on the first page of this notebook, and it was this sentence that made me convinced the 'Lord of Destiny' in my memories truly existed."

Hearing this, Elijah turned the diary to the first page. Just moments ago, it had been completely blank, but now a line of text gradually emerged within his field of vision:

*'Destiny has already been altered.'*

Elijah's breathing slowed down as he stared at it for a long time. Then, without a change in expression, he closed the diary and looked back at Simon Hathaway: "After that, you returned to a normal life? Then how did you end up like this?"

"I... can't really say I returned to a 'normal' life."

Simon Hathaway scratched his head, emphasizing the word 'normal'. "After all, who could go through these events and still pretend to be completely oblivious to the extraordinary side of the world? Upon returning home, I reconciled with my father and devoted myself to magic over the following decades. I had a bit of talent in this area—at least I wouldn't bite my tongue when chanting spells—though I never planned to use magic to achieve any grand ambitions. To me, study was study, and research was research. I didn't want to become a superhero, nor did I wish to use it for crime. So from a macro perspective, I truly lived a very ordinary and plain life."