Child's Mom froze. "It disappeared?"
"Hey, your own child said it disappeared."
The server breathed a sigh of relief and immediately spoke up. "If this thing's gone, you'll have to pay for it."
"Mommy~"
The child looked on the verge of tears, both pitiful and aggrieved. "The plane disappeared~"
"I just—"
The child's waving hand stopped. He remembered. "I just threw it out!"
As he spoke, he followed the direction he remembered throwing the plane.
But—
"It's not here~"
The child turned around frantically. His foot caught on something, and he started to topple sideways.
"Careful!"
Child's Mom caught him in time. Only after seeing that he was all right did she slowly let the anxious look fade from her face.
"Crying again."
She wiped his face, her tone fondly chiding. "Linlin, you really are a crybaby."
"I'm not."
His muffled voice was thick with tears. Linlin immediately clamped his mouth shut, eyes wide, looking like a frog with puffed-out cheeks.
Child's Mom found it rather amusing.
She poked his chubby cheek. "Linlin, why did you throw the plane?"
"Don't you like planes?"
"Piggy!"
The child clutched his mother's clothes again, his little face full of fear. He stammered, "A... a huge, scary piggy!"
"Piggy... coming over. Linlin doesn't want it to come over."
"So Linlin threw the plane away."
"The plane, the plane was taken by the piggy!"
The child was frantic and scared, and tears clung to his long eyelashes again.
"Piggy?"
Child's Mom was surprised, but not very surprised.
She had already vaguely suspected as much.
The way her child had acted when he was scared was exactly the same as the first time the piggy had frightened him into tears.
"Is the piggy still here?"
If her child had been the only one to see the