"Uh, yes, that's exactly what I was about to... I mean, you're absolutely right!"
The taxi driver spoke awkwardly. He, too, realized that a taxi capable of repairing itself was a little too far beyond the bounds of reason!
Besides, what country would use such advanced technology in a taxi?!
Yet Li Wei nodded dubiously, seeming to believe most of the taxi driver's explanation.
"Has the happy-go-lucky approach to education abroad really gotten this bad?"
"So everything they said on television before the Union collapsed was true!"
Seeing that Li Wei seemed largely convinced, the taxi driver finally breathed a sigh of relief!
But he failed to notice that Hermione, the witch also sitting in the back seat, looked utterly bewildered as she listened to their conversation.
Perhaps because the atmosphere was too awkward, the taxi driver switched on the car radio, and lilting Russian music filled the car.
As the notes drifted through the taxi, the chaotic atmosphere gradually settled down!
The dull yellow taxi traveled along the uneven, crumbling asphalt road. They had already covered more than half of the hundred-and-twenty-kilometer journey.
The music playing on the radio gradually shifted from ordinary Russian folk tunes to a low, oppressive horror soundtrack, as though some monster were creeping ever closer!
"You know, I once had a wife who loved me very, very much..."
Against the eerie soundtrack, the taxi driver began recounting his past in a hollow voice. With that music behind him, it sounded as though he were telling a ghost story!
"The two of us were very... crunch... crunch!"
Immersed in his own story, the taxi driver heard the noise Li Wei and Hermione were making in the back seat. Humiliated and angry, he turned toward the two of them, who were eating apples, and snapped:
"Could