Walking around the 3^rd mall that day with your friend, Yun, you think, Man, this place has waay too many malls… I swear that everywhere you turn there is one.

         “Why are there so many malls!! Don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of cute stores, BUT DUDE, WHY SO MANY MALLS?” I turned to Yun, asking in exasperation.

         “I dunno.” He shrugs. “Beijing. That’s all I gotta say. But hey, you got stuff.”

         I look down to the two bags I was holding. “Well… Yeah, but they aren’t even for me… You know, I don’t think I have even bought anything that was for me while I’ve been here…” Realizing this made me try to think of things that I’ve bought here for myself other than food… Nope… Just food… Wow, I’m a glutton… Whatever, I find it more fun buying stuff for other people than myself. I don’t need much. Haha.

         We start walking around the outside of the vast mall. While looking around, I saw a bunch of cameramen around this one girl at the top of the stairs. “I’m guessing they’re doing a photoshoot.” I said to Yun. “I don’t like it… She looks too forced… Not natural at all… She actually seems kinda pretentious…”

         “Well…” He started to reply, but was interrupted when I stopped. Someone who was about 2 feet tall ran into me. I look down and it was a little girl, who seemed as if she was only two, was crying. “Why are you crying？Where are your parents?” I ask while wiping away the little girl’s tears. She looks at me and in-between sobs goes, “I don’t know. She told me to wait here and never came back.”

         Hoping that it wasn’t a case of someone abandoning their child, I say, “Okay, okay. Don’t cry. Let’s go find your mom, okay?” The little girl solemnly nodded. I picked her up and we started walking with Yun at our side. “What is your name?” I ask her, trying to take her mind off of the thought that she might have been abandoned.

         “MeiHua.” She sniffled.

         “Wah, That’s a pretty name. My name is MeiFang” I replied and continued, “Okay, well Meihua, when we see your mom, tell me okay?” She nods and starts to look around. Not even a minute later, she points and goes, “I found my mommy!” I follow her pointing to the seemingly pretentious model. You’ve got to be kidding me… This really better not come into reality. I thought to myself. “Okay. Let’s go return you to your mommy, okay?” The little girl vigorously nodded. “What’s your mommy’s name?” I asked.

         “WeiJing” The little girl replied. I nodded and went to one of the photographers to ask for the model’s name. It was the same… A feeling of sadness swept over me for a bit, until I met eyes with this said WeiJing. She looked at me, then towards the girl. Her eyes widened and she tried to avoid eye contact. This is leaving a terrible taste in my mouth… I thought. I look over to Yun with the face full of sadness. Seeing this, he knew exactly what I was thinking and even thought the same.

         It seems the model went on a 5 minute break. During this time, we approached her with her daughter. “OMG. MEIHUA. WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?!” She said full of blatantly fake worry. I look at her with a raised eyebrow. She took her daughter into her arms and thanked us. I was quite skeptical of it all… “MeiHua-ah. Do you want to take photos with mommy?” The little nodded her head vigorously with excitement. I look towards Yun and he shrugs. I wave bye to MeiHua and Yun and I went on our way down the stairs. Just as we get right below where the photoshoot was happening, I look up one more time to look at MeiHua. What I saw, brought panic into every nerve in my body. WeiJing had placed her at the edge of the wall so that she could “take pictures with her mommy.” I see WeiJing subtly and softly tug at MeiHua’s clothes backwards, causing MeiHua to fall off the ledge. Getting into stance, I hold out my arms, getting ready to soften the little girl’s impact with my body. I feel the weight in my arms and I move to lighten the force. I end up on the floor, on my back, cradling MeiHua.

         A sudden rush of anger coursed through my veins. I got up, whispering and quietly comforting MeiHua, who was bawling from the fright. I passed her to Yun, “Watch her. I’ll be right back.” I started to run off back to the stupid so-called mother. “MEIFANG, WAIT. WHAT’RE YOU DOING?!” Yun yelled out to me. I ignore everything and only see red. My blood is boiling and I know exactly what I have to do to release the anger.