[Event] Like a real life children's coloring book

Pham Thi Anh Sang

It was a warm summer day but for some reason, it felt just a little cold whenever the breeze swept over her skin. It wasn't too bad, although Anh Sang was attentive enough to hope that she hadn't caught whatever illness Ha Jung had come down with recently. The girl thought that she was probably okay; it wasn't like he had coughed on her a lot or anything and she didn't really touch much of the same things that he did. So there was a good chance that everything was fine. She just had a few chills now and then. And a runny nose. That was annoying but at least she didn't feel sick yet.

Actually, Anh Sang was feeling pretty energetic that day. There was a noticeable bounce in her step that even having the sniffles couldn't diminish. It was one of those I'm really glad to be alive days. And she was with a new friend, too! Which was most likely why she was feeling really happy. Friends were always nice and Sylvia was particularly pretty and nice. The older girl didn't know it but Anh Sang had made it her new life goal to have hair as pretty as hers, too. Sylvia had the prettiest hair in the world, she was sure of it.

At the moment, the two of them were walking about the park, looking for an ice cream cart that Anh Sang knew would be there. Somewhere. There was always an ice cream cart around but it liked moving a lot and some older students had told her once that the man who owned it was really into making it into some kind of game. It was a fun idea but she wasn't sure if she believed that he went and set up his cart on the vertical side of a cliff a few times.

In any case, it had been a while since they had first come to the park and Anh Sang was getting a little annoyed. Her feet had gotten tired of walking maybe ten minutes ago so now she was just standing on a disk of light hovering a few inches off of the ground. "Do you see him?" she asked Sylvia for what was surely not the first time. She had tried really hard not to annoy the older girl since she liked her but Anh Sang did not have a high level of patience. "I still can't see him."

Pham Thi Anh Sang

She sniffed a few times, wiping at her nose with her hand. "Oohh, yeah, there's one behind that," Anh Sang told Sylvia, pointing at small, organized grove of pine trees. "It's not very tall, though, and the trees block most of the stuff." But she had been that way so many times already that it was really kind of boring now. It was just a hill with a picnic table, after all, and she wasn't much of a nature appreciator.

"Maybe we should try by the trail instead?" In the direction opposite of the hill, there was an actual forest. Lots of people liked hiking there but Anh Sang had never gone there herself because her mommy and daddy had told her that she should never go to places like that alone. Technically, they meant that she shouldn't go to anywhere off campus alone but the girl tended to break that rule a little because staying in the same place all the time was dull.

Pham Thi Anh Sang

Normally, Anh Sang liked being complimented and sucked them right up eagerly with childish abandon. Today, though, she just blinked as Sylvia's comment about her being smart and didn't say anything about it for a while. Guilt really could be stronger than pride at times and almost as an indication of that, she could feel the disk of light under her waver for a moment. Wiping her nose, Anh Sang just focused a bit more on keeping it together.

At the fork in the road, the girl thought for a little while. "Left is more lucky," she told Sylvia. "That's what my mommy and daddy tell me. Something about patterns, I think?"

She led the way but they hadn't gone far before Anh Sang suddenly sneezed and the light under her dispersed into butterflies. Butterflies that seemed a little more jagged than they usually did. A lot of them had quite a few visible deformities, which the girl frowned at. That was weird. Mentally, she tried to get them to form back to normal but if anything, they became more misshapen.

"Huh. They don't usually do that."

Pham Thi Anh Sang

The girl sneezed again. "I don't feel really sick," Anh Sang said, taking a butterfly in her hands and attempts to smush it into something else. "Just a little chilly and the sniffles. But it's really not a lot and I've had much, much worse. I don't even have a head ache right now! Ha Jung got really, really sick, though, and had to go to the hospital again."

She frowned as the light formed itself into a poorly made, stick figure like butterfly. The colors on it were sharp and cycling in patches slowly enough to see. It was neat but it was also kind of annoying. "It's too bad. He was only back in school for maybe ten days and now's he's gone back again."

Anh Sang turned to Sylvia as the older girl coughed. "Are you feeling okay?" She wrinkled her nose, appraising Sylvia's appearance. There didn't seem to be much wrong, she thought. But then again, there were plenty of wrong things that people couldn't see normally.

Pham Thi Anh Sang

Before Anh Sang even got a chance to answer, Sylvia broke into a bunch of really bad sounding coughs. Alarmed, she tugged on the other girl's sleave. "Um, um, um oh no! You're sick, too!"

But she seemed fine just a moment ago? Ahhhhh! Maybe I'm spreading it! Yet Anh Sang was so sure that she hadn't even sniffed in the other girl's direction. Probably. Maybe. She really, really hoped that she hadn't gotten Sylvia sick.

"Should we go back then?" she tried to ask when suddenly, a bunch of metal started to materialize around them. With a squeak of fear, the girl backed away as Sylvia became hidden by the giant robot thing that had been in the dinosaur attack.

Dinosaur attack. Oliver attack. Oliver something. She still didn't like thinking about it so Anh Sang convinced herself that the amount of terror she had right then was just some part of an icky illness.

She looked at the robot thing uncertainly, calling out, "Sylvia? Are you okay?" Even though she could hear the other girl's words, Anh Sang still didn't know what to do about it. "Should we find somebody? Should we just stay here? Um?"