Burrito

Remote Chuanggou Village.

At six-thirty in the morning, the bus bound for the county town stopped by the roadside.

Zhen Bei, dressed in an ill-fitting, worn camouflage uniform, boarded with a fertilizer sack full of luggage slung over his shoulder. He waved to his parents outside the bus. The vehicle started, carrying a cloud of dust away with it, while Zhen Bei, seated by the window, tried his best to look back at his ever-receding home.

Zhen Bei was fifteen this year. He had dropped out of school and gone to the city to work.

All the students knew there was a Monster Burrito stand at the school gate.

The burritos were clean, hygienic, delicious, and fairly priced. More importantly, the stall was run by a beautiful young woman who wore dragon horns and pointed ears every day, playing the part of the Little White Dragon. She cooked flatbreads so quickly that no one had to wait long, and before long she had become one of the school's famous top ten vendors.

Life settled into a routine. She closed her stall in the middle of the night, returned to her rented room to sleep and play on her phone, then headed to the vegetable wholesale market before dawn to buy ingredients before coming back to push her cart out and set up shop.

It was another morning.

With music playing, she pushed her cart outside the school and drove the long dragon spear into a crack between the paving tiles.

She hung up the flag and laid out the ingredients and paper bags. First, she had to preheat the griddle, lest slow heating make the temperature difficult to control and affect business. She turned on the gas tank and stove switch, then snapped her fingers.

Snap~ The stove ignited