Translator: Sparrow Translations Editor: Sparrow Translations
Nighttime, Lu Shu was sitting on a sofa with Lu Xiaoyu watching a re-broadcast of the celebration of the new year while thinking of how to spend his distress points. Although 2000 plus points seemed like quite a lot, at least more than in the past, Lu Shu felt that he should use this amount wisely and cautiously.
In this system, the current shop only showed one item, who knew what would appear in the shop in future?
He also didn’t know how these items appeared.
The host in the television smiled brightly, “The lunar new year festival show, brought to you by my favorite Chinese TV channel of 2010, will end its voting at 12 am tomorrow. Hopefully, everyone will cast their precious vote. Up next, enjoy this magic performance magician Liu Qian has prepared for everyone.”
Lu Shu shot Xiaoyu a look, “You’ve watched it three times, haven’t you watched enough? What’s so nice about it…”
“Don’t care about me,” Lu Xiaoyu said, with her eyes glued to the screen.
Lu Shu opened his chat app on his smartphone. He camped at the class group, waiting to get some red packets. There were still some generous classmates of his.
He suddenly saw a message a male classmate sent, “I’m home, everyone on the road stay safe.”
“I’m home too! Haha!”
Lu Shu raised his head and found out that Lu Xiaoyu was not watching the television anymore, but looking at his phone, “They left you out of a class gathering again?”
Lu Shu replied indifferently, “They know that I don’t have so much extra money to go out for fun with them. It’s very normal not to ask me out.”
Lu Xiaoyu stared at him, “You can tolerate that?”
“You don’t know our expenses at this age. Wait till you’re 16 and have to go to high school. School fees are very expensive.” Lu Shu said seriously, “If we don’t save now, we’ll be in trouble then. Electricity, water, they all need money. If not for the vegetables we plant in the garden, we wouldn’t even be able to afford vegetables in the market during winter.”
Lu Shu lied on the sofa, not knowing when he could actually earn money.
“Lu Shu, let’s buy a lottery ticket?” Suggested Lu Xiaoyu with a pair of gleaming eyes. She had been like that ever since she heard on the news that someone had won tens of millions of dollars from the lottery.
“It was all rigged alright?” Lu Shu, slightly annoyed, said, “The lottery is merely an additional tax for the poor people.”
“What if we win 10 thousand dollars?” Lu Xiaoyu refused to concede, “If others can win, why can’t us? I would be able to buy so much potato chips then.”
In Lu Xiaoyu’s eyes, money is for food, and at this stage, her favorite food was potato chips.
Hearing the words potato chips, Lu Shu went to the back of the house. He took out a pack of tomato-flavored potato chips and tore it open. He took out a few pieces of chips and threw them, piece by piece, into his mouth, crunching them one by one.
Lu Xiaoyu’s eyes widened, “Lu Shu, are the chips crisp?”
Lu Shu looked at her and said, “Oh, how about you listen to me eat one.”
“From Lu Xiaoyu’s distress, +299…”
Lu Shu almost spat his potato chip out from his mouth. Why so much unhappiness from Lu Xiaoyu…
“Here, have it. Went out to buy tidbits for you this morning, it was originally for you,” Lu Shu passed the chips over to Lu Xiaoyu. He had taken some time out to go to the mall at Shachang road that morning. In fact, it was not far from where they stayed, and the public bus only took three stops to get there.
Seeing that there was nothing at the scene, he came back and conveniently bought a pack of Lu Xiaoyu’s favorite potato chips for her.
The greatest flaw of this child was that whatever advertisement was on display on the television, she would crave it. The television had been frequently broadcasting commercials of potato chips recently…
They only had each other, and it was quite satisfying to give Lu Xiaoyu something to be so elated about occasionally.
Moreover, it was so simple to make her happy. Just good food.
Most people find it harder to become happier, as their desires grow consistently.
Lu Xiaoyu could stay so loyal and engaged to food, food itself can make her so happy. Lu Shu felt that Lu Xiaoyu wasn’t like any other girl.”
Someone from the class group suddenly said, “Did you guys hear about the fire at the mall?”
“Heard of it, why?”
“That fire was really scary, it burnt down the entire mall. Luckily there were only 4 fatalities, 3 security guards who did not have time to react and a warehouse manager.”
“Wait a minute,” The classmate who mentioned this at the start replied, “I wasn’t talking about the fire!”
“Didn’t you mention the fire at the start…?”
“Do you guys know what caused the fire?” The male classmate said mysteriously.
“Wasn’t it caused by some negligence of a flammable object in the warehouse?” Someone asked curiously, “Was it not?”
“Of course not. My dad was there in the morning and he said he saw footage on someone’s phone very clearly. A person seemed to have a special ability and could emit huge flames just by waving his hands!” The classmate finally said what he had on his mind.
“Is it true?” Everyone in the group was shocked, “Could it be an edited video? The quality of edited videos at this age is extremely high.”
“It can’t be. The fire started the previous night and the video was already seen the very next morning. You think anyone could create such a high-quality video at such a short amount of time? I think even the world’s best video editing company can’t accomplish it.”
“That makes sense… there’s really too little time, and there’s no reason for anyone to create a fake video.”
“Do special abilities really exist?”
Once this message appeared, everyone stayed silent.
Who didn’t have any childish fantasies when they were young? If special abilities really exist, then the recent disappearing videos of special occurrences, as well as disappearing forums and chats, were not groundless.
Some classmates have seen the videos, and what left the deepest impression to people was someone who said: perhaps more people would, under different circumstances and conditions, activate and awaken their special abilities in the future. These conditions could be extreme joy, extreme anger or grief, or it could even be an ability cultivation technique. Everything was possible.
“Haha, do you think anyone in our class would have an ability?”
“This is something no one could guess accurately. Whoever awakens an ability please tell me beforehand, I’ll be good to you…”
“Don’t say too soon, I really have a feeling someone in our class would awaken a special ability!”
“Who do you reckon it’ll be?”
“It has to be me, hahaha!”
“Forget it, I think it’s more probable to go search for a highly trained master and learn some skills from him. Didn’t some people see a higher being inhaling and exhaling clouds at the top of the mountains? I think this is more reliable!”
Lu Shu looked at the chat log and stayed silent as if he was not part of it at all. This group of people never accepted him to their group, and he had never wanted to join them.
They were like strangers who were familiar with each other.
Special abilities might be far and unrelatable to his classmates. To Lu Shu, however, it was in plain sight.
It was a bigger and different world. One which he felt he could rise up and above into the clouds with one step.