"Harmless."
"No one got hurt because of it."
"Xiao Zhen was fine, too..."
"So Mom and Dad just scolded me a little, made me promise it wouldn't happen again, and that was the end of my punishment."
"By all rights, that should have been the end of it."
"But..."
"Xiao Zhen had a problem."
The woman in a white down jacket furrowed her finely shaped brows as she looked at the boy in a wool hat.
The boy in a wool hat lowered his eyes.
He didn't seem to react at all.
That only made the woman in the white down jacket furrow her already tightly knit brows even more.
"For some reason, Xiao Zhen..."
The woman in a white down jacket paused, her words full of bewilderment.
"He stubbornly believed that the friend I'd made up actually existed."
"No matter what I said, he wouldn't believe me."
"Even Mom and Dad started to have their doubts."
"They asked me again and again."
"I kept assuring them."
"That friend really was something I'd made up."
"There was no such person."
"I promise."
"But I was adamant..."
The woman in a white down jacket smiled bitterly. "Xiao Zhen was just as adamant."
"He said the friend I'd talked about was real."
"They'd spent the whole afternoon playing hide-and-seek."
"Mom and Dad were confused by the two of us."
"I naturally thought what I was saying was true."
"But Xiao Zhen naturally thought what he was saying was true, too."
"So Mom and Dad couldn't tell which of us was telling the truth."
The woman in a white down jacket spoke clearly, even when her words became a bit of a tongue twister.
"I was really confused and anxious at the time."
The woman in a white down jacket