By the time they left the amusement park, the evening sky had shifted from pink to an almost inky blue. Behind them, the park lights glowed like a sea of colors, and music and laughter drifted toward them on the night breeze, like a song slowly fading into the distance.
"Where to next?" she asked indistinctly, taking a bite of her crepe.
Zhiyan thought for a moment.
"The movies."
Shoko nodded, stuffed the last bite of crepe into her mouth, chewed, swallowed, then licked the cream from the corner of her lips.
"Is the theater far?"
"Not far," Zhiyan said. "About twenty minutes on foot."
Shoko glanced at him, then at their joined hands, and smiled.
"Let's walk, then."
Zhiyan had no objections.
They followed the street outside the amusement park toward the city center.
The night breeze felt lovely. Neither cold nor warm, it carried a faint coolness and a mingling of scents-the sweetness of cotton candy drifting from the amusement park, the savory aroma of grilled meat from roadside restaurants, and the fragrance of flowers from somewhere nearby.
The trees lining the street cast patches of dappled shadow beneath the streetlights. Those shadows swayed gently in the breeze, like countless dancing hands. Occasionally, a taxi passed them, its headlights tracing a bright arc through the night before disappearing at the end of the street. Now and then, a few pedestrians approached from the opposite direction, their footsteps echoing along the empty street before gradually fading away.
Zhiyan watched those pedestrians, those shadows, those lights, and the signs swaying gently in the night breeze.
Suddenly, he felt that the street looked different today.
It wasn't the street that had changed-it was the way he looked at it.
Before, whenever he walked down this street, his mind had been full