I have few friends, but many childhood sweethearts.

Chapter 16. Totoro
There were many similar matryoshka doll stalls on the fourth floor. Xu Qingfan led Xia Xiaoxiao around for a while, but they couldn't find the stall from their previous life.

[It must have appeared later.] he thought to himself.

Unfortunately, this trendy way of getting dolls by writing numbers isn't available here yet.

He wasn't very good at either ring toss or bamboo stick throwing. Even though one yuan could buy ten bamboo rings, without any guarantee, Xu Qingfan felt that going to play was just giving them money away.

Xu Qingfan grabbed Xia Xiaoxiao's hand and prepared to leave, but Xiaoxiao seemed to be frozen in place, standing motionless.

"You want to play?"

The little girl stared intently at a plush toy; Xu Qingfan looked over and saw it was a large Totoro.

Then he looked at the games on the stall and tried throwing beer bottles with chopsticks. He won the grand prize if he hit nine bottles.

Even a dog would shake its head at this. Five dollars for one round, even if you sold me, I still couldn't hit nine!
"What anime is that?" Xia Xiaoxiao asked.

"Totoro, there are real-life animals like that."

Xia Xiaoxiao opened her mouth in surprise, forming an 'O' shape.
"Why haven't I seen it at the zoo?"

"It seems to be a foreign animal, and it hasn't been introduced to China yet."

"Wow, little kid, you know so much! Want to play a round? I'll give you a discount." The shopkeeper noticed the two little kids had been standing in front of his stall for so long, so he couldn't help but eavesdrop on their conversation.

Xu Qingfan glanced at the boss sideways. He was wicked; he even tried to swindle money from children!

"We have no money."

"Oh, then next time your parents will bring you here to play." The shopkeeper sat back down, crossed his legs, and started eating sunflower seeds.

Xu Qingfan led Xia Xiaoxiao away, and the little girl looked back every three steps.

"Stop looking at it, I'll take you to the computer mall to buy the DVD of this anime."

"Was that Totoro anime from just now?" Xia Xiaoxiao excitedly turned her head to look at Xu Qingfan.

"Correct."

"Go, go, go!"

The two went up from the fourth floor to the fifth floor and stopped at a shop selling pirated CDs.

A large pile of CDs was carelessly left at the entrance by the owner, who wrote a sign that said "three for ten yuan" and then ignored it.

Xu Qingfan had more than 20 yuan left, and after buying three CDs, he would still have more than 10 yuan left as emergency funds.

He carefully flipped through the pages from beginning to end, and finally couldn't stop, picking out six that interested him.

Two of the photos are from Jay Chou's A Chinese Odyssey series: one is from My Neighbor Totoro, and the other is from Spirited Away. To make up the numbers, he also picked up two more that people often mention: The Shawshank Redemption and Forrest Gump.

When he finished selecting the discs and was about to pay, he discovered that there was a hidden secret inside.

They even sold CDs inside, with the cover of the top one featuring two completely naked blonde women.

Xia Xiaoxiao was so frightened that she quickly covered her eyes, but Xu Qingfan only glanced at her and didn't take it to heart.

Just kidding. Although I can't watch anime frame by frame, as a seasoned viewer, I've seen all the scenes that come with it.

Neither her husband, fast asleep in the bedroom, nor the indifferent passengers on the tram, nor the teacher, desperately trying to escape the rain in the classroom, could break Xu Qingfan's iron will.

After paying the huge sum of twenty yuan, Xia Xiaoxiao grabbed Xu Qingfan's hand and ran out as if fleeing.

After running all the way to the elevator, Xia Xiaoxiao asked breathlessly, "Let's go home quickly, I'm never coming here again!" [Do children really know these things?] Xu ​​Qingfan wondered.

"Why?" he asked.

"That...that woman in the DVD...she's not wearing any clothes!" Xia Xiaoxiao stammered. "My mom says a girl's body shouldn't be shown to others!"

"What if they see it? I heard from my mom that we used to bathe together when we were little, and I even have photos of it at home!"

"That doesn't count! My mom said it doesn't count when I was little, it only counts now that I'm grown up!" Xia Xiaoxiao glared angrily at Xu Qingfan.

He thought to himself that Aunt Lin's early education was really early, considering that he didn't understand anything when he was six years old.

Xu Qingfan remembers one thing very clearly: when he was in the second year of junior high school and living in a dormitory, one of his roommates asked him with a lewd look on his face if he had ever masturbated.

Xu Qingfan thought to himself, "I've never even been on a plane, how could I have ever hit one? I can't afford to pay for the damage."

He told the truth, and the whole dorm burst into laughter.

Later, during high school, a rich kid brought an MP4 player with lots of resources back to school, and that's when Xu Qingfan opened the door to a new world.

"Let's go, let's go back." With over a million yuan still in his pocket, Xu Qingfan didn't dare linger in the square for too long.

Twenty minutes later, the two little legs finally returned to the Lotus Courtyard.

Xia Xiaoxiao pestered Xu Qingfan to play the Totoro DVD for her. Helpless, Xu Qingfan had to help her first before returning home to hide the lottery ticket he had bought.

"Totoro, Totoro~"

The song "My Neighbor's Totoro" seemed to instantly transport him back to his childhood in a past life.

No matter how many years have passed, the theme song of My Neighbor Totoro is still just as beautiful.

There's also a piece called "The Path of the Wind," which was once his favorite instrumental music to listen to while doing practice problems in high school.

My Neighbor Totoro is a magical anime; it seems to have a kind of magic that can calm people down and soften their hearts.

Looking back on the Totoro storyline twenty years later, it can be described as uninteresting or even tedious.

But it remains popular because it reflects our childhood—finding joy in the simple things we do every day.

It's like a cool summer night, sitting under a banyan tree, looking up at the moon.

It's like early autumn, when the wheat fields are golden. Sitting by the field, under the setting sun, adults are busy harvesting wheat, while children chase and play in the fields.

Are real-life Totoro cats this big?

The TV showed the female protagonist and Totoro waiting for the bus when it started raining, and the little girl lent her umbrella to Totoro.

“It’s not that big, just a little bigger than Big Yellow’s head.” Xu Qingfan thought for a moment and used the large yellow dog downstairs as an example.

The arrival of the Totoro Bus caught Xia Xiaoxiao's attention, and she ignored Xu Qingfan.

The movie was only 90 minutes long, and when the end credits rolled, both of them felt a sense of wanting more.

"I wish I could have a Totoro too," Xia Xiaoxiao said.

It's a very innocent thought. Who didn't dream of having a Totoro, a baby dinosaur, or a Doraemon to help them solve all sorts of problems when they were young?
Remembering the water bottle Xia Xiaoxiao had given him, Xu Qingfan said, "It's okay, I'll have Lin Wanning draw one for you!"

Xia Xiaoxiao: ? ? ?

(End of this chapter)