They all pushed me!

If we hold hands, would that be too intimate?

Considering that Liang's palm is obviously smaller than mine, why not just completely wrap Liang's hand in your palm?

Kitagawa Ryo only felt that Hoshino Ai seemed to have a lot of thoughts about his right hand. Her fingertips rubbed against his palm from time to time, as if she was caught in some dilemma. So he simply took the initiative to hold the other person's left hand.

It's just a simple hand holding.

The palms of their hands were placed against each other, and their fingertips pressed against the backs of each other's hands.

It was not the first time that Hoshino Ai held Kitagawa Ryo's hand, but unlike that time in the dark movie theater, under the bright lights of the shopping mall, she was inexplicably nervous, as if she was showing off her treasure in public, and subconsciously moved her hand towards herself.

But Beichuan Liang, who was completely unaware, had already walked a step into the mall. The two of them walked one in front and one behind, and their holding hands were suddenly hanging there, as if they were doing it on purpose for people to see.

"Huh? What's wrong?"

Kitagawa Ryo felt that Hoshino Ai did not move, so he turned around, looked at her in confusion and asked.

It's just holding hands. Children who come to the mall to shop all hold their family members' hands. It takes a little courage to even break free and run a few steps to lie down next to the window of their favorite toys.

At this time, most of the people who come to the mall are couples of various ages. Many girls hold the boys' arms, hanging there like a koala, occasionally laughing softly in his ear and acting coquettishly.

The men and women in love who were sitting on the benches in the rest area seemed to have forgotten the existence of the public area and were entangled with each other like two snakes. Beichuan Ryo even saw a girl who looked like a high school student sitting astride the boy's legs. The two of them hugged each other's necks and kissed passionately as if no one was around.

"It's okay, it's just my first time in such a big mall."

Hoshino Ai answered calmly, then she took two steps forward and asked:

"Does Ryo come here often?"

"It's not that often, probably once every two or three months."

"But I just go there to buy some snacks and stuff. This is my first time buying clothes here."

Beichuan Liang shook his head and explained.

"Eh? Why?"

Hoshino Ai asked curiously.

"Because I still have two long-term endorsements for children's clothing brands."

Beichuan Liang pointed to the clothes he was wearing and explained helplessly:

"Not only for official shows but also for private wear, my wardrobe now only has clothes from these two brands. It's almost like a brand bond. If I'm photographed wearing children's clothing from other brands in private, it will cause some unnecessary stir."

"It also includes the orange-flavored toothpaste that I love. After using it for a few years, I can't stand the smell anymore, so I use other brands privately, but I will tear off the wrapping paper and everything else."

"…So there are so many details to consider."

Hoshino Ai nodded thoughtfully. Unconsciously, she had begun to get used to the hand that Kitagawa Ryo held with hers. When she first held it, she felt it was cold and quiet, like the pebbles at the bottom of a river or a stone step on an autumn morning.

But after holding hands tightly for a long time, her hands and his were connected as at the beginning, hanging weightlessly between the two of them, sharing each other's warmth, their fingertips occasionally brushing over the backs of each other's hands, like fish lips gently passing over the swaying water plants at the bottom of the river.

"Speaking of which, Ai, do you have a favorite type of clothing?"

Kitagawa Ryo asked as he looked around the children's clothing store on this floor. Hoshino Ai only had a few sets of clothes, and they were all gray.

"Dress? Dress? Or something else?"

Hoshino Ai just shook her head blankly. She looked at the brightly dressed peers walking by her, and suddenly felt that the scene in front of her was a little distorted.

"I saw other women in life. What were they like? They got off colorful cars, walked past sweaty policemen busy maintaining order, and went to the Capital Cinema to watch films participating in the International Film Festival. Oh, their faces were moist and smooth, like gifts wrapped in cellophane!"

The lines belonging to Lala in the script naturally emerged in her mind.

"I have no idea."

At this moment, Hoshino Ai suddenly felt that everything around her, including the magnificent crystal chandelier above her head, the dazzling shop windows, and the people who walked past her talking and laughing, all became blurred, like an unreal dream.

But immediately, as if it was an anchor connecting her to the world, Hoshino Ai felt her left hand being slightly grasped for a moment by the person next to her.

"Then try them all."

"Ai is a very cute girl, so whatever she wears should be cute."

Kitagawa Ryo said this as a matter of course.

-------------------------------------

Watching Hoshino Ai walk into the fitting room with the clothes, Kitagawa Ryo and Kaburagi Katsuya breathed a sigh of relief and sat on the bench outside the store.

The children's clothing store they chose was located opposite a bookstore, and among the promotional banners hanging outside, Beichuan Liang saw at a glance the parenting classic "written" by his adoptive parents, which he had signed a few days ago.

In fact, after getting the initial sample book, Kitagawa Ryo also read it through himself. It must be said that the ghostwriter hired by the couple was quite good. He combined many classic arguments in child psychology and compiled a whole book of nonsense.

But some of the theoretical knowledge involved is indeed quite practical.

Beichuan Liang propped up his head and looked at the banner that read [Recommended by Swiss child psychologist Jean Piaget and American child psychologist James Dobson! The little knowledge about child education that you must know in your life! ], and remembered a message he saw on the title page of the book.

"Psychology originates neither from innate maturity nor from acquired experience, but from action, that is, action is the source of cognition and the medium of interaction between subject and object. The earliest action is an innate unconditional reflex. Children respond to external stimuli with a variety of unconditional reflexes at birth, send out signals of their needs, interact with the surrounding environment, and thus construct their psychology, which is then expressed through action." - Jean Piaget

During the nearly one year of getting along with each other, Kitagawa Ryo has already noticed some unique psychological and behavioral characteristics hidden in Hoshino Ai, including but not limited to excessive obsession with so-called "love" and repressed self-destructive tendencies.

Then today, Beichuan Liang noticed something else.

That is, Hoshino Ai seems to be too sensitive to external voices.

Beichuan Liang had seen her live performance. At first, he just thought that she had a good sense of voice, but as they spent more time together, it seemed that this was not the case.

Just now when the two people were looking for a suitable store, a customer on the other side accidentally lost his grip on his water cup and it smashed to the ground with a bang. However, the staff handled it promptly and cleaned up the glass fragments and water stains in less than a minute.

In fact, many people were attracted by the crisp sound, but Kitagawa Ryo, who was holding Hoshino Ai's left hand, could clearly feel that at that moment, Hoshino Ai had an obvious body tremor.

It was clearly quite far away, but it seemed to explode right next to her ears.

Kitagawa Ryo remembered that Kindaichi Toshiro once mentioned to him that Hoshino Ai's background was not exactly the same as his. Before being sent to an orphanage, she was a child from a single-parent family. In other words, she spent a long period of her childhood with her mother.

After her mother was imprisoned for theft, Hoshino Ai was temporarily transferred to an orphanage. However, because the mother disappeared directly after being released from prison, Hoshino Ai stayed in the orphanage until a year ago when she was taken away by Saito, the president of Berry Pro, as a foster child.

What does mother mean to Hoshino Ai?

Beichuan Ryo didn't know, because in fact he himself couldn't answer this question.

He had never seen his mother, either in his previous life or in this life.

That's why, when he was in the hospital, he cared so much about other people's mothers, those of twenty, forty, sixty and eighty years old, as if he had seen so many other people's mothers that he could draw a vague image of them in his own mind.

I remember that at that time I talked a lot about this topic with Sarina. Thinking about it now, it still feels like it happened yesterday.

To this day, Kitagawa Ryo has not watched any of the content of the exclusive behind-the-scenes program of the movie "He Once Lived".

Memories are really a strange thing. If one side is missing, you will feel that all your past events have fallen into the black hole of time along with her. Every word and every sentence is like the corpse left by time, worthless.

But if it is widely exposed to others, it will feel like the white earth after the snow has been randomly stepped on, or like one's own treasure has been picked up high with a pole and anyone can say whatever they want about it.

Dead people are the most respected and least respected beings on the Internet.

So in the past few months, Kitagawa Ryo didn't dare to search for anything related to Sarina.

Now that he thinks about it, the reason why he made up his mind to send the Kitagawa couple to prison during this period might have been partly because of this incident.

He had already thought it through since the other party was able to say "your guardian and her guardian both agreed".

If this wish could really come true one day, he would probably visit Sarina's grave again.

"How about it?"

Hoshino Ai pushed open the door of the fitting room and appeared in front of Kitagawa Ryo like a magic Cinderella.

"Well, it's beautiful."

Beichuan Liang responded with a smile.

Hoshino Ai and Tendouji Sarina used to be children of the same age.

But not anymore.

Each of them is thirteen years old, and will be fourteen, fifteen, and sixteen in the future.

One is always twelve years old.

-------------------------------------

"Haha... you're wrong."

"It's not cold."

He typed out this reply mechanically.

Kitagawa Rumi turned off her cell phone as if to escape reality and covered her head with the quilt.

Chapter 17: Locked!

This is not the first time that Hoshino Ai has worn makeup.

In the past year of their idol career, before each live performance, there would be a dedicated female makeup artist to do the makeup for the members of B-Komachi.

Like a treasure chest in a fairy tale, the makeup artist's bag is filled with all kinds of dazzling cosmetics. Unlike other members of B Komachi, Hoshino Ai knows nothing about these bottles and jars and the English letters on them.

The only memory she had of the concept of "cosmetics" was when her mother put powder on her body after giving her a bath when she was very young.

This unknown brand of prickly heat powder is no longer available, but Hoshino Ai can always remember the cheap scent, as if it had melted into her bones.

When she put on makeup for the first time, she just watched with some trepidation as the makeup artist carefully selected a lipstick from the bag. More than a dozen lipsticks stood upright there, like soldiers ready to go.

Hoshino Ai can't tell the difference between these colors. In her eyes, they are all a touch of bright red, a red that is meant to attract other people's attention. In terms of function, it is essentially no different from the red on the top of the red-crowned crane's head.

But the makeup artist solemnly put the lipstick on her lips. The thin red makeup fell on her fair face, like a red plum blossom in the snow, but it unnaturally revealed an aura that did not belong to this age, as if to cover up this immaturity. Under the instructions of the makeup artist, Hoshino Ai pursed her lips slightly in front of the mirror.

Then, the other party lightly applied a layer of foundation on her cheeks, and naturally the eyebrows and eye shadow would not be left out. Hoshino Ai opened her purple pupils wide, and her eyelashes were very long, fluttering like a butterfly spreading its wings. The makeup artist carefully drew her eyebrows and applied a thin layer of eye shadow.

Finally, she combed the long hair like a waterfall, almost patiently combing each hair one by one, until the bangs in front of the forehead finally showed the most perfect fluffy feeling.

Trying hard to recall every step the other person took at that time, Hoshino Ai smiled at herself in the mirror.

In the small, dark rental house, a few brand new sweatshirts and dresses hanging on hangers on the wall are rare bright spots.

Then, Hoshino Ai took out a lipstick from the drawer.

That was a gift from President Saito's wife, Saito Kyoko, because she helped bring a handwritten autograph from Kitagawa Ryo to her.

The slanted lipstick passed over the edge of her lips. The girl, who was applying lipstick for the first time, obviously had no experience and completely forgot all the steps of applying primer, balm and concealer.

She applied it heavily, and under the dim light, the red color even looked a little frightening.

cold.

Hoshino Ai played with the lipstick in her hand, propped up her head and looked at herself in the mirror, and gently said the name.

It's been almost a year.

But Hoshino Ai still doesn't understand.

In the end, she was relying on lies to maintain her love for him.

Or is he still relying on his love to maintain...the ability to lie.

-------------------------------------

In the editorial department of Baoyunsha's "Weekly Entertainment Live", several editors who were working overtime late at night were discussing the content of the next issue of the newspaper.

Everyone has a strong curiosity, especially about those people in the entertainment industry who appear on the screen. Even their most favorite and restrained fans will unconsciously want to know more. This curiosity that grows wildly day by day has led to the emergence of tabloids that expose industry secrets.

In order to satisfy their bloodthirsty curiosity and for their own interests, quite a number of journalists would like to turn into insects and drill into the blood vessels of every celebrity in order to spy on deeper and darker secrets.

"There doesn't seem to be any explosive news in the past two weeks. Both the sales of physical items and the number of readers of the online public account have continued to decline."

A middle-aged editor who was already half bald wailed while holding his head.

"There's no news coming from the press club at the district police station either... Really, can the prostitution team help out a bit? They've been left four points behind by the cheating team and the secret marriage team."

Another editor shouted in despair.

Although it is a tabloid that reports on scandals and secrets within the industry, the content of the reports still needs to be based on authenticity, so it cannot be completely fabricated or based on hearsay.

"Come to think of it, the only news of some value in the past two weeks seems to be the new book launch of Beichuan Liang's parents and the trailer for the new play of the LALALAI Theater Company."

As one of the hottest stars nowadays, Kitagawa Ryo is also one of the darlings of this type of tabloids, and the information related to him is absolutely priceless.

"But the two things you mentioned are not secrets at all. Everyone who should know has already known them. If we report such content, we are no different from other newspapers."

The bald editor curled his lips and rejected it.

At this moment, a reporter in a hurry suddenly pushed open the door of the editorial office, holding up the camera in his hand with an excited look on his face and shouted:

"Editor-in-chief! Editor-in-chief! I took a picture of Kitagawa Ryo in the Ueno shopping mall tonight, and there were other girls with him!"

However, there was no immediate commotion in the editorial office as he had imagined, with people scrambling to grab his camera. Instead, everyone continued to sit calmly in their seats.