After a bit of playful wrestling like a pair of prairie dogs, the two of them finally stopped. Aizahár, panting, wiped the dust from her face and resumed her mentor-like posture in front of Bianka.
"Now we are both pitiful and helpless little girls, right?" Aizahár's chest heaved as she spoke.
Bianka, who wasn't even out of breath, let alone red-faced, thought for a moment and then nodded in agreement.
In a sense, what Aizahár said was not wrong.
Seeing that the teaching progress had finally made some headway, Aizahár let out a long sigh of relief and stabilized her breathing.
"Then tell me, if a kind person saw a helpless little girl like us, would they lend a helping hand?"
Bianka nodded again.
A kind person... she should be one, right? When she first met Aizahár, didn't she lend a helping hand and buy a paper flower with a hundred milliliters of water?
Wait, why was it a hundred milliliters?
Bianka suddenly realized a problem, her brows furrowed, and her eyes went blank.
But Aizahár was still immersed in the fact that Bianka was finally cooperating with her instead of continuing to ask those tricky questions.
"Then what would these kind people want? A flower?" The two consecutive rhetorical questions made Bianka a little confused.
What a strange question... since they were here to buy flowers, what else could they want but flowers?
Aizahár could tell what Bianka was thinking just by looking at her expression. She sighed with a hint of amusement in the silence.
"Of course not. What those kind people want is not a paper flower, but for us to sell one more," Aizahár looked back at the direction where the Western European girl had left, her tone softening slightly.
After the commotion just now, the Western European girl had long since disappeared, but Aizahá still firmly remembered the direction she had left.
"Because the more paper flowers we sell, the greater our hope of survival, and the better our lives will be. So they will think... what if they are the one missing?
"If I only need to sell one more flower to survive today, and she is absent..."
"Wait!" Bianka suddenly interrupted Aizahár, her eyes looking at her with a hint of panic. "Isn't this... mo... mo..."
"Moral blackmail, right?" Aizahár helped Bianka finish her sentence, she just smiled. "Yes... if you're being strict about it, this is moral blackmail...
"My life and death have nothing to do with them. Even if I really die at home because I sold one less paper flower, they don't need to blame themselves at all, because they didn't do anything, they just lived their normal lives."
"But they still do it... even though it's not necessary, they still do this kind of thing, and even see it as something they have to do, and will see other people's misfortune as their own fault..."
"Do you think... people like this are very stupid?" The words Aizahár said were demeaning, but the look of envy and admiration on her face was not fake.
Were these people stupid? A little... at least in the eyes of those so-called "smart people," people who didn't know how to be good to themselves were more or less a little stupid.
After all, they had all heard the saying: "If a man does not seek for himself, Heaven and Earth will destroy him."
But among these self-proclaimed smart people, how many knew that the "seek" in this sentence was a rising tone, not the downward,龌龊 (wòchuò - dirty) tone they imagined?
Bianka felt that she was being scolded, but at the same time, there was a warm feeling in her heart, as if she was being praised. She felt that there might be something wrong with her.
"If there are only these good people in the world who are giving, and they get nothing in return, then they might really become the fools that those people talk about.
"But I don't have the ability... I can only make them understand that what they do is useful, let them know that what they do is actually right, so that when they stand before God, they can confidently say—'I am a good person'..."
"Perhaps I don't really need their help, but at least, in their hearts, they have saved a child in difficulty, brought joy and hope to a timid child..."
"This is... the scam... I want to maintain."
In the end, Aizahár's voice was as faint as a mosquito's buzz. On the noisy street, a normal person would not be able to hear such a sound.
But Bianka could. She listened attentively to every word Aizahár said, including her expression, her emotional changes, and even her innermost thoughts... Bianka could feel it all.
This was a "lie" that Aizahár had chosen for herself, but... it had a strange purpose, completely different from the mistakes that Bianka believed should never be made.
"I understand," Bianka took a deep breath and placed a hand on Aizahár's shoulder. "When I was helping you, I was indeed very happy."
It's just that a hundred milliliters was indeed a bit expensive...
Bianka, who knew the prices, said this with tears in her heart. She didn't have any regrets, but... she still felt that she had been ripped off.
Forget it, as long as I'm happy.
Since what she was doing had such an unusual meaning, then she couldn't hesitate anymore!
Bianka made up her mind, picked up another paper flower, and then began to search for her first target with her sharp eyes.
No, I can't find one!
Bianka returned to Aizahár's side, frustrated, and squatted down with her head in her hands. "I still can't do it... lying is too difficult..."
Even the paper flower she had brought with her came back wilted.
Aizahár looked speechlessly at Bianka, who had "left with a great laugh, but returned leaning on her staff and sighing to herself." She sighed helplessly and took a paper flower for herself.
"Forget it, you do your best..." Aizahár felt that she might be crazy. She still couldn't make a pampered young lady do something she had never done before just with a few words.
Aizahár walked away, leaving Bianka squatting on the ground with the wilted flower, struggling with herself.
Just as she was hesitating, Bianka noticed two figures stop in front of her.
The moment Bianka looked up alertly, two exclamations came from the front.
"Is that a cat?"
"Wow! I can't believe I can see a cat here?!"