Chapter 97: The Date (2) 

Riding the roller coaster was just as terrifying as An Ling had imagined.

The sudden weightlessness and the force shoving her back into the seat could lift a person’s heart straight into their throat.

Would they really not fly off the tracks?

Would the seatbelt really not come loose?

Would the safety bar really not malfunction and pop open?

The roller coaster began its screaming plunge.

An Ling felt her tears were about to come out and experience the world.

But then Li Yang noticed her trembling.

He noticed her unease.

He tightly gripped her faintly shaking hand.

Time seemed to slow at that moment.

The slope the roller coaster dove down didn’t feel that shaky anymore.

An Ling had thought this slope was about ten-something stories high, but now it looked a lot shorter in front of her eyes.

That heart-lifting weightlessness seemed to exist only to make the magic of this heartbeat.

That’s right!

An Ling felt this was just like magic.

Li Yang definitely knew magic.

The moment he held her hand, the magic happened to her.

An Ling felt that if, in this moment, Li Yang told her he was a hero who had come to save the world and save her, she would believe him.

And she would pick up a magic wand and go save the world with him.

Riding the roller coaster didn’t seem as terrifying as An Ling had thought.

Even if she flew out, Li Yang would pull her back.

The roller coaster gradually pulled up to the platform.

The safety bar popped open.

“How do you feel?” Li Yang was smiling.

An Ling’s legs were a little physiologically weak, but she wasn’t that scared anymore.

Her heartbeat, though, was ridiculously fast.

She felt she must have been scared stupid.

Otherwise why was her heart beating this fast?

So she shook her head and softly said a single sentence.

“Scared… my legs are weak.”

If it was like that, the girl had already handed him the opportunity.

How could Li Yang possibly not seize it?

He scooped the girl up in one motion, practiced and familiar.

Anyone could see that their relationship was different.

An Ling’s heartbeat grew even faster.

She could only bury her little face, red from fright, in Li Yang’s chest.

Li Yang held the girl and, while he was at it, collected the backpack they had left at the storage counter.

He sat down on a long bench.

Li Yang felt the warmth in his arms and looked at the gazes around them, some curious, some jealous, some envious.

He felt that success in life was nothing more than this.

His ambitions weren’t high.

Having one person to lean against was enough.

“Alright, alright. You can’t be that scared, can you?” Li Yang said.

An Ling shook her head.

She just wanted to lean together like this a little more, and a little more.

“Miss An Ling wouldn’t be acting like this because she wants to linger in my arms a bit longer, would she?”

Li Yang started teasing the girl like usual, wanting to see that adorable little face go completely red from shyness.

But this time An Ling didn’t even lift her head.

She nodded against his chest.

She didn’t want to leave that wondrous magic world yet.

She wanted to feel the warm magic a little longer.

In that moment the boy’s face was hit by the girl’s magic in return and also turned completely red.

If An Ling had lifted her head, she would have been able to see this rare scenery too, and then she would have had extra ammunition for later bickering.

“Ahem, ahem.” The boy pretended to cough twice and pressed down the heat in his heart.

The girl’s sudden honesty really had caught him a little off guard.

Maybe their actions were too intimate.

Maybe the way the girl leaned in the boy’s arms was too cute.

Maybe it was peak hours and there were even more people in the amusement park.

Anyway the girl’s cute tail and ears were very eye-catching as well.

Beastkin this small were always rare in this old city.

In any case more and more people looked over.

A lot of them sighed that this was the flavor of youth.

Li Yang suddenly wanted to tell the world that he was holding the girl in his arms.

“We still have other attractions to ride. Didn’t you say not to waste the money?”

The girl finally lifted her head.

That cute, tender-red little face was finally exposed.

Around them there were even more envious gazes.

How do you get to eat this well?

“So what else are we riding?” An Ling asked.

She had already been addled by the magic.

The gazes of the people around her had long since gone blurry and unclear.

“How about whack-a-mole? I still like that game even now.”

“Mm-hmm.” The girl nodded.

She liked it too.

In a world with magic she liked everything.

***

“Hit that one! Hit that one! One popped up over there. Hit another and we’ll break the record!”

Following the girl’s directions, the boy brought the mallet down on a mole.

The two of them cooperating easily broke the record they had set as children.

“Yeah!” 

“Yeah!”

The boy and the girl high-fived happily.

After that the two of them revisited every little attraction they had often played as kids, breaking the records they themselves had left behind again and again, sticking new labels onto the memories.

Darts at balloons.

The girl went from hitting zero as a child to finally not missing the board at all, and she hit two.

Bumper cars.

The boy held back and nearly got launched by the girl, so he laughed and counterattacked.

In the end he also received the girl’s revenge little fists after the match.

On the coffee-cup spinner the boy wildly spun the wheel while the girl desperately tried to stop him.

After they got off, neither of them could even get water down.

The girl mocked the boy, so the girl lost the free cotton candy.

Though in the end, after paying the price of a red face and acting cute, she got it back again.

An Ling wanted to name this place Magic Paradise.

But the magic hadn’t made the flow of time slow down either.

Too much mana had been consumed, so time jumped forward very quickly as well.

“Last attraction. How about the Ferris wheel? The timing is just right. We’ll be able to see the sky and the city dyed by the sunset.”

“Then the Ferris wheel!” The girl who had learned magic agreed openly.

In her hand she now had one more sugar painting with two bites taken out of it.

Sweet magic drifted through the air.