Her heart suddenly seized, like a dying patient jolted by a defibrillator.
The girl shuddered violently, and the hellish scene before her eyes vanished in an instant.
The icy air drilled into her lungs, carrying a bone-chilling cold, yet she still breathed in great, heaving gasps, like a drowning person.
“Hah… hah…!”
The feeling of suffocation was receding like a tide.
Hui Jin felt as if all the strength had been drained from her body.
She slid down the wall, slowly kneeling and sitting on the ground.
It had always been like this in the past.
Whenever he was in unbearable pain and wanted to seek death, An Wan’s words would echo in her ears, over and over, until she gave up that idea.
“…For Xiao Chi, live on.”
In other words, wait until Xiao Chi could stand on her own…
That day should be soon.
Sadness and anger wouldn’t subside with time.
She couldn’t live on, numb and just scraping by.
Her breathing gradually steadied.
Hui Jin thought of the half-day she had spent with Ye Xiao Chi and Xia Che and couldn’t help but sigh.
What was she doing…
Someone like her didn’t deserve happiness or joy.
She was the one who should have died long ago.
That newly sprouted, nameless emotion was suppressed by Hui Jin.
She took another deep breath, and only after completing a full breathing cycle did her five senses finally return to normal.
The pedestrian street was still bustling.
No one paid attention to the girl in the corner.
She slowly looked up, her eyes reddened from physiological tears, and gazed at the tall building diagonally across the street.
On its facade was a curved display screen, currently playing an advertisement for the currently hottest virtual reality game, “Super Hero Smash”:
The cool “Super Hero Smash” title flashed by, and Candy’s figure appeared on the screen.
She was wearing a gorgeous formal dress, different from her usual combat suit.
After releasing her signature skill “Ultimate Rainbow,” she struck a seductive pose.
The ad copy, voiced by herself, seamlessly inserted:
“Master, even battles should be resolved with flair! Magical Girl Candy’s all-new form: ‘Candy: Gorgeous Gown (6★),’ now available!”
Hui Jin suddenly remembered that when she walked into Ye Xiao Chi’s room that day, she was watching Candy’s livestream.
“Does she like Candy…?”
The girl murmured, then suddenly noticed a row of white claw machines neatly lined up in an alley not far away.
The blind boxes inside these machines were replaced with a new batch every so often, and occasionally they collaborated with various IPs.
For example, the current collaboration was with Candy from Super Hero Smash.
Due to the high difficulty of grabbing them, the blind box dolls with higher rarity often sold for very high prices, with the rarest being the hidden edition.
Hidden editions had limited releases.
There were thousands of these claw machines across the city, but generally only a few dozen hidden editions existed.
Their price naturally went without saying.
Taking this Candy batch as an example, the hidden edition “Candy: Gorgeous Gown” had already skyrocketed to nearly a hundred thousand yuan.
Those otaku without money who still wanted a complete collection could only run all over the streets, inquiring everywhere for information about the hidden edition, or trying every single claw machine, ultimately handing over their hard-earned meager wages to the operators.
It was all a sinister conspiracy by the evil operators.
Not only did you have to grab, but you also had to gacha.
This kind of luck-based game was simply a bottomless pit, so Hui Jin had never touched it.
But when she realized Ye Xiao Chi might like it, her gaze involuntarily focused over there.
That young couple would still be eating for a while.
There should be enough time.
Thinking this, Hui Jin struggled to push herself up from her weakened body and whispered:
“Let’s go take a look. I won’t grab anything anyway…”
Her steps were unsteady as she crossed the pedestrian crossing, floating over to the front of this row of claw machines like a ghost.
Each one was filled to the brim with blind boxes.
People couldn’t even judge the doll inside by weight like they could in a blind box store.
But Hui Jin was a Magical Girl, born with powerful (even if she was still the weakest among Magical Girls) perception.
She noticed a distinct magical fluctuation coming from a machine in the corner.
Could it be the hidden edition?
The hidden edition doll for this batch, “Candy: Gorgeous Gown,” had a real pink magic stone embedded in its chest, serving as a gimmick to attract people to grab the blind boxes.
If it really was the hidden edition, giving it to Xiao Chi… she’d probably be very happy.
Hui Jin suddenly realized that in seven years, she had never given her daughter a single gift.
She looked at the hidden edition buried at the very bottom under a pile of blind boxes, took two steps closer, and placed her small hand against the glass window.
The hot air from her breath fogged up a circle of condensation on the glass.
The claw machine played a cheerful tune.
The display on its back panel showed the debut animation for “Candy: Gorgeous Gown,” with the draw probabilities for the different doll styles displayed beside it.
Everything, everything, was to lure people into scanning the payment QR code pasted on the glass.
Well… I’m not far from death anyway.
Let’s try a grab…
Hui Jin opened her phone.
With a beep, it jumped to the payment interface.
Seeing the price for one try, she couldn’t help but pause:
“Thirty yuan for one try? That’s really expensive…”
Young people’s hobbies were truly incomprehensible.
You could just buy it directly, so why spend so much money on gacha?
Even if you get it, if you spent too much money, wouldn’t you feel unhappy instead?
Her heart full of doubts, Hui Jin’s fair, delicate index finger touched the screen, selecting payment.
Beep beep!
The moment she pressed confirm, the attempt counter over there changed from “00” to “01,” and the background music became even more cheerful.
Hui Jin pushed the joystick, positioning the claw over a suitable spot, and pressed the grab button.
The claw descended slowly with a “Diu~” sound effect, firmly grabbing the four corners of the blind box.
Good, got it.
“It’s not that hard either…”
Before Hui Jin could finish her sentence, the claw went limp and opened, dropping the blind box with a thud.
At the same time, the claw machine let out a mocking “Hiahiahia!” laugh.
“Wh…”
Hui Jin stared in disbelief at the little imp on the screen constantly making faces at her, and couldn’t help but clench her fist.
It was so close just now.
One more try…
The girl opened her phone to scan the code again, quickly starting her second attempt.
But this time was even worse than the first.
The claw retracted before it even lifted the box.
Listening to the mocking laughter echoing in her ears, her hand holding the phone trembled slightly.
One last time.
This time for sure…
Thud!
The blind box hit the prize chute and bounced off.
Failure.
O-One more time! Really the last time!
Thud!
This time, it dropped the moment it was lifted.
Failure.
“H-How can this be? This is impossible? The angle was perfect…” the girl muttered softly.
She… couldn’t even manage a claw machine?
As was well known, Magical Girls were creatures very susceptible to emotional influence.
Hui Jin, having just recovered from a PTSD episode, was on the verge of emotional collapse.
Now, this string of failures left her at a loss, even causing some self-doubt.
“Damn it…!”
Hui Jin punched the glass, causing the entire claw machine to shake.
She glared angrily at the imp on the screen, who was now sticking out its butt and tongue at her, and for a moment, she actually felt… a little… wronged…?
The girl bit her lip until it turned pale, stubbornly intending to try one more time, when a greasy voice sounded by her ear:
“Oh dear, little miss, why are you all alone here? Can’t get the doll? Do you want big brother to help you out?”