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“Hey Rain!” Tiger’s familiar mop of hair appeared on the other side of Rain’s kitchen window. “Hide and seek. You coming?”
“Ng, yeah, just lemme grab some stuff and I’ll be out,” Rain yelled back, shoving some of her grandma’s fried pork strips into a basket. These came about every New Year’s and they were always a hit among the neighborhood kids.
“Hurry up or we’re starting without you!”
Rain rolled her eyes with a smirk. “Then I’m not letting you eat this.”
That shut him up nicely.
“Uncle Tranquil!” she called to the nearest adult in the house, “Can I go play with them?”
“Sure thing! Remember to be careful.”
Rain nodded. She was always careful, no matter what. How else were you supposed to live?
•
A couple minutes later, Rain had tracked down the others in the shade of the big gnarly tree. Willow made a show of sniffing the air. “I smell meat!”
“Correct!” Rain proudly pulled off the cloth covering her basket, basking in the excited faces peering at its golden-brown contents. She did some fast math in her head. “Four each, and the winners of the first three rounds each get one extra.”
She exchanged a glance with Bamboo for confirmation as everyone started grabbing their fair share. In terms of academics, the two of them were the smartest kids on the block, and they knew it.
It only took a few moments for the basket to almost-empty. When that happened, Tiger raised his voice. “Alright! Let’s play! Who wants to be it?”
Nobody did, of course. So they pulled out the tried-and-true method of eeny-meeny-meiny-mo (in Chinese, of course). The fates selected Plum as the first “it”, and she was led to the side of a boulder to count to 100.
•
The five kids were back on the city’s cobblestone streets as the sky started to darken. Plum had bought a skewer of candied fruits from a vendor to share between them, and Rain was now happily licking at the sugary shell on her red orb.
“We should do some of those!” Willow pointed out several chains of firecrackers already strung up on poles.
Plum looked a little dubious. “You sure? What’s wrong with watching from, like, a safe distance?”
Tiger was all for making stuff explode, of course, and Bamboo showed considerable enthusiasm too, but Rain privately agreed with Plum.
“What if we used a… really long stick or something? To light em?” she offered as a compromise.
“Oh we’ll be fine!” Tiger ignored the suggestion, charging ahead with Bamboo and Willow in tow.
Rain shrugged, collected Plum, and followed close behind. “Don’t mind if we stick to the courtyard walls and watch you guys explode yourselves.”
•
Tiger was right. It was actually fine. Nobody blew up. It was great.
When it came time to go back to their families for feasting and collecting that shiny shiny money, Rain decided that next year, perhaps she would try lighting her own firecrackers too.