(With Singles' Day upon us, I originally wanted to celebrate by taking a day off...)
After dinner that evening, Qian Qian couldn't sit still at home anymore. She dragged me outside by force to go shopping. Seeing that it was still early—half past eight was just the time for an evening stroll through the night market—I went with her.
Although Earth's cities couldn't compare to somewhere like Shadow City, judging by Qian Qian's excitement along the way, I figured that as long as I was with her, Girl could get just as thrilled wandering through a neighborhood park as she would in the Amazon Basin.
Come to think of it, I ran all over the place every day, covering an unimaginable distance on my strolls. I'd even taken a trip to the God Realm just earlier, yet it had been a long time since I'd walked around my own neighborhood. The moment I stepped outside today, I even felt a brief sense of unfamiliarity. The owner of the little street-corner supermarket enthusiastically greeted me. "Hey! Haven't seen you in ages. Back from a business trip?"
...He'd actually hit the truth right on the head.
Just like every other time we went shopping, Qian Qian ran ahead. Our destination constantly changed with her wandering attention. She might linger at a roadside snack stall for half an hour, or suddenly decide to go count stars in the park, or get excited halfway through counting stars and run off to watch bearded uncles in brightly colored clothes selling Tibetan knives. Wherever she went, all I had to do was follow along cheerfully and firmly veto suggestions like, "How about we go scare Obama at the White House?"
Girl possessed a magical power: anyone around her involuntarily felt as though they had been drawn