Baby you're a firework
Who: Valdi, Zhi
Where: Morong Street, Huayuan
When: backdated to 28th December 2010
What: This is not Hong Kong. Not Iceland. And certainly not anywhere where letting off firecrackers in the middle of the street is legal
Rating: Entirely platonic HS bromance
It wasn't by accident that Valdi found himself wandering the streets of Huayuan, drifting in and out of each store as a living embodiment of everything it wasn't. With each entrance he was greeted with the same patient smile, as ebony eyes met violet and employees shuffled over to help him navigate through a store that was in every way foreign to him.
And with each exit- "No sorry, sorry, we do not have fireworks here"- he was beginning to give up hope.
It didn't make sense; how could they not sell fireworks so close to New Years? Sindre mentioned something about it possibly not being legal here but, so far no one he'd asked had had any idea about that. (Or they didn't understand him, but Valdi was quite confident in both his and their ability to speak English. And google had told him it was perfectly legal.)
He was about to give up and go home when fate finally decided to give him a hand. Something brushed against his leg and Valdi instinctively looked down to find a small child no more than 8, who- clinging tightly to his mother's arm- pushed on through with the woman apologizing incessantly in tow.
"Fi-re-works! Fi-re-works!”
Valdi followed the boy's bee-line path to finally lay eyes on what he was looking for. Slipping through the crowds of impatient and tired families he was literally pushed into the store.
Right. Fireworks. A huge variety of fireworks, and none of them had a word of English on them.
He'd never bought them by himself before, and after well...the trouble with Puffin, Valdi wasn't sure he was confident choosing one at random.
Today's just to look anyway. I'll get some with Sindre later.
He didn't realise just how clueless and out of place he looked.