Classic Literature
Now that she had clothes, she had to buy shoes too. There was a shoe shop right next door.
Unlike clothes, shoes couldn't be too far off in size.
Lin Er drew a picture of a shoe and wrote "long" next to it.
A little while later, a twig came through from the other side.
Lin Er understood and used the twig to pick out shoes.
She didn't buy many shoes. For her pen pal, she got two pairs of regular shoes, two pairs of sneakers, and two pairs of fur-lined boots. For herself, she got two pairs of sneakers, one pair of fur-lined boots, and two pairs of cat shoes. She liked the handmade cloth shoes she had at home well enough, so she didn't need to buy regular shoes.
The cat shoes were super thick and a new style that year. Each shoe was shaped like a cat and looked warm just from the outside. They were very casual shoes, unsuitable for walking or exercise.
Lin Er planned to wear them in the classroom during winter. Their area was close to the north, but it wasn't cold enough for the government to install heating, so they simply had to tough out the winter cold.
She didn't buy any for her younger sister or grandparents, since she didn't know their sizes.
The eleven pairs of shoes cost another three hundred-odd yuan. The shop threw in a big handful of socks and a pair of sandals, too. A strap on the sandals she was wearing had broken, and she had sewn it back on with a needle, so she took them off and threw them away.
At the end of the street was a shopping plaza. Lin Er checked the time and went in with her backpack on.
After looking around and finding no lockers, Lin Er went back out.
She couldn't leave her backpack unattended. If someone with itchy fingers casually opened it and found what looked like a black hole inside, that wouldn't be funny at all.
Outside the supermarket, there were fruit shops and restaurants right next door, and a hospital farther ahead. The area had a fairly complete range of facilities.
She rubbed her stomach. The urge to vomit was completely gone, and that little bit of bread and water hadn't filled her up at all. She was starving now.
Judging by the time, her early-rising pen pal ought to be having breakfast. Lin Er ordered each of them a serving of stir-fried rice noodles, adding both egg and meat. Even so, each serving was only six yuan.
The portions were so huge that the disposable foam boxes couldn't even close.
She couldn't pass the fruit shop without buying anything, either. The owner glanced at her several times as she put a bunch of bananas and a bag of pears into her backpack, perhaps surprised that it could hold so much.
But the internet wasn't very developed yet, and the owner's imagination wasn't quite wild enough, so she didn't think much of it.
On her way back, she passed No. 2 Middle School. Lin Er had already gone past it when she turned around and headed to the novel rental shop next to the school.
As a bookworm of twenty years, she always felt something was missing if she didn't have anything to read. But she didn't like the subjects of the novels available now, either. After looking through them, she ended up buying just a few sets of classic literature.
They were fifty yuan a set. Though she had no idea how many hands they had passed through, the pages were intact, the print was clear, and they looked like legitimate editions. They were so cheap she could hardly believe it.
In the end, she also got the owner to throw in a Harry Potter book.
Her pen pal was a wizard! How could she not be curious about how they differed from the ones in the novel?
So far, judging by her golden-finger spells, all her spells came from the settings in this book. She didn't know what it was like for her pen pal.
Looking at it that way, maybe the author was a witch, just as some people said that those who wrote cultivation techniques and chants in fantasy novels might actually be fellow Daoists.
Next door to the novel shop was a bakery that also made cakes to order. Unlike later, when snack shops sprang up everywhere, a cake shop like this still did reasonably well.
Freshly made bread like this could keep for a few days. Thinking of her pen pal, who had a hard time even getting a hot meal, Lin Er went in and bought a big bag of it.
It was colder where he was, so it would keep a little longer. Besides, foreigners probably preferred bread, right?
Actually, she should have realized from the start that her pen pal wasn't very old. If he had been an adult and knew she needed to borrow magic, how could he have agreed to trade it for just a little food?
Now that she knew the person on the other side was a seven-year-old child, she couldn't help feeling a sort of illusory affection, as if she were raising a child remotely.
Before, when she had no money, she could only afford enough food for herself. Now that she had money, even she wanted some snacks, let alone the child on the other side.
They both had pockets she had enchanted, so how easy would it be to hide some snacks and eat them slowly!
As she was leaving, someone came to pick up a cake for a child's tenth birthday. Its three tiers of piped cream flowers looked beautiful.
The shop also had an enormous box of little red cakes. Each came in a red plastic box, with a small piece of sponge cake topped with white cream and decorated with red flowers and green leaves.
Lin Er wanted some. Once she grew up, it seemed no shops made these little cakes anymore.
"Boss, do you have any more of these little cakes?"
"Three left, two yuan each!"
It wasn't much money, so Lin Er bought them all. That worked out perfectly: she could take one back for her sister, too. To keep her sister from following her today, she had promised to buy her spicy strips on the way back.
Now that she had the little cakes, she could even tell her sister not to follow her tomorrow.
By the time she reached the bus station, she hadn't even boarded, but the smell from the bus was already enough to make her reluctant to go near it.
She looked at the sky. It was still early, but this was probably the last bus back to town.
Lin Er decided to stay in the city a while longer.
She wasn't taking the bus. Wouldn't riding a broom in warm weather be much better?
She only needed to wait for the light to fade a little, and then she could use the Disillusionment Charm and ride her broom home.
Come to think of it, because Harry Potter had the Invisibility Cloak, there wasn't a single spell in it that could make someone completely invisible.
At best, the Disillusionment Charm could make a person nearly transparent or blend into the surroundings like a chameleon, but it couldn't make them completely invisible.
So she could only use it when it was a little darker and visibility was poorer.
When the time came, she could ride her broom a little faster. Even if someone happened to see her, they would only think their eyes were playing tricks on them.
The road from their city back to town wound through the mountains. Once you rounded a bend, you couldn't see anything behind you.
She added up her expenses. She hadn't even spent a thousand yuan on this trip to the city, so she turned around and went to the afternoon market to buy a big piece of meat.
At seven yuan, the pork was cheap enough that she didn't begrudge the expense at all. It didn't matter that they had no refrigerator; she could preserve it in a jar.
But she couldn't use the tools at home. After thinking it over, she also bought pots, bowls, ladles, basins, and a small stove.
She carried her purchases into an alley, one load at a time. The people at the market assumed her family had just moved in, and someone even recommended coal briquettes to her.
But the stove she bought could burn both firewood and coal. The countryside might lack other things, but it certainly didn't lack firewood, so she declined.
On her way out from the city center, she stopped at a fishing tackle shop. Even her little worn-out net caught her two or three fish a day. With proper gear, at least she wouldn't lack fish to eat in the future.
After she left the city, the sky gradually began to darken.
The city's location was a little like a valley surrounded by mountains. Once outside it, all she could see were mountain passes of every kind.
She found a relatively secluded patch of woods, cast the Disillusionment Charm, and took off on her broom.
She couldn't afford not to hurry. If she still wasn't home when it got completely dark, her grandmother would stand on the mountaintop and start shouting curses.
A mesh bag hung from the front of her broom, with a carp and a fishing net inside.
She would be using those things often, so she couldn't keep them entirely out of sight at home. She might as well let her family know about them from the start.