"But I still want to pick up more shells..."
Once the sun went down, the beachside amusement park closed, and Qiu Wuji stood there clutching a big handful of shells, unable to tear herself away.
"Why does a beach have to close at all?" The old lady could not understand it one bit.
"The risk of accidents goes up at night. If someone gets swept out to sea, or eats too much and swims out too far, the rescue crew might not spot them in time, and the rescue itself gets a lot harder... Closing is reasonable."
Chu Ge had to fight a smile at the face she was making. Earlier she'd acted like nothing in the world interested her, and in the end she'd done exactly what the children did—down to lingering on the way out, unwilling to stop picking up shells.
So much for "a heart as still as water."
What use are all those shells going to be, anyway...? Chu Ge had far too much experience with this sort of thing. As a kid he'd loved collecting them, dragged a pile home, had nowhere to put them and they weren't even pretty, and in the end hadn't he thrown them all out anyway...
Qiu Wuji guessed what he was thinking and huffed, "There's a trick to the shells I picked! It's not what you think!"