A jumble of emotions suddenly welled up inside the woman, impossible to put into words.
She couldn't tell whether she felt wistful or disappointed.
"Mr. Xiao, can you tell me which direction Little Red is in?"
A hint of eagerness showed in the woman's eyes.
"It's right beside the cake."
"Right here."
The woman followed the direction Xiao Xiao pointed.
She bent forward slightly. Though she couldn't see the figure from her memories, only the cake before her, a tender smile still appeared on her face. With a hint of awkwardness, she called the name she remembered. "Little Red."
"I made this strawberry cake for you."
"I'm sorry it took so many years."
"But I promise this cake tastes countless times better than the one I made back then."
"Come to think of it, I wanted to make you a strawberry cake back then, too."
"Little Red hasn't changed at all. You still love strawberries just as much."
Yanli watched the girl.
"Quack, quack, quack~ Quack~"
But you've changed.
You still looked like the girl from its memories, but there was something unfamiliar about you now.
It wasn't that you'd grown old. The changes were elsewhere.
"Quack, quack~ Quack, quack, quack~"
But the cake you were going to make me back then wasn't like this.
Have you forgotten?
It remembered it all clearly.
Back then, the girl had pointed at a colorful picture on a page and said she'd make it a cake with more strawberries.
The strawberries weren't just decorations on top. They were "encrusted" all around the cake beneath, too.
Yanli silently studied the cake for a while, then looked up at the smiling girl.
Her smile wasn't as radiant as it had been in its memories.
And there was no longer any sign