A Bizarre Scene...(Fourth Update! Please Subscribe!)
Baicao Town.
This was a small town nestled among the mountains. Only one rugged mountain road led to the outside world, and the journey was treacherous, with miasma rife along the way. As a result, the townsfolk rarely had any dealings with the outside.
The entire town had only one street.
At that moment, cooking smoke curled into the sky. Amid the crowing of roosters and barking of dogs, a group of children played in the street.
"One, two, three, four, five..." As the children counted in their clear, childish voices, several boys surrounded a little girl with her hair in twin buns and a worn floral jacket. Round-faced and big-eyed, she focused intently on kicking a colorful shuttlecock.
"Twenty-nine, thirty, thirty-one..."
"...Fifty-seven, fifty-eight, fifty-nine... Oh no!"
The children all cried out in dismay as the colorful shuttlecock flew off at an angle and dropped into the roadside ditch.
"Glug."
They watched the shuttlecock sink into the filthy water and vanish. The children exchanged bewildered looks.
One of them asked blankly, "The shuttlecock's gone. What do we do?"
The little girl with twin buns tilted her head, then smiled. "It's okay!"
She immediately raised her hands, plucked off her own head, and tossed it forward. As it fell, she bent one knee, swung her leg to the side, and kicked it high into the air.
Thump, thump, thump...
As the kicks sounded slightly more muffled than before, the head giggled. "See? Isn't this just as good?"
"Yeah, yeah!" The children nodded happily and gathered around again to count. "One, two, three... Seventeen, eighteen, nineteen... Whoa! It fell! It's my turn..."
Their laughter and playful shouts passed through several courtyard walls and reached a household in one of the town's alleys.
The mistress of the