Xiao Ye glanced back at the empty space behind her, a look of surprise and uncertainty on her face. She looked into the pedestrian street again, but her urgent desire to find her ticket quickly overwhelmed her concern for the strange beggar. Catching her breath, she ran into the pedestrian street…
The camera panned to her back, and whether it was an illusion or not, the music on the pedestrian street seemed to get louder.
"Happiness Commercial Street..."
Hongjie's voice rang out, and the scene shifted to Hongjie holding her daughter Lingling's hand, standing at the street corner, reading the signboard: "How come I never noticed there was such a street before?"
Suddenly, the little girl Lingling's eyes widened, and she pulled Sister Hong back a big step!
"Are you looking for death?" a speeding electric scooter sneered.
"Lingling, what are you doing!" Sister Hong was a little annoyed. She pulled Lingling forward another step, getting closer to the pedestrian street (the scene suggestively showed a side view). "What if I bump into you?"
"Mom, Mom, inside...inside there's something..."
Lingling stutters when she's nervous. Sister Hong chuckled, "What could possibly happen in broad daylight? Come on, let's go inside. We can get home after we cross this street."
"Yes, yes, yes..."
Lingling stammered, almost crying. Seeing this, Sister Hong simply picked her up and carried her into the pedestrian street.
Lingling was being held by Sister Hong, who had her back to the audience, while Lingling faced them. The little girl stretched out her hand to the audience, mouthing "NO," accompanied by slow motion. It was clearly a desperate plea for help, yet it appeared utterly comical.
The director handled the suspense well, finding a balance between horror and excitement. That's a strength, but fast-talking Lao Liu didn't write it down.
The last customer was a deliveryman, the same one who bought the scallion pancake at the beginning of the movie. Without even glancing at the pedestrian street sign, he sped into the street on his motorcycle, yelling, "Boss, what's going on? The scallion pancake you gave me turned into a package of paper! The customer's going to give me a bad review!"
The motorcycle was parked next to the scallion pancake stall, which was completely empty. The griddle for baking the pancakes was as smooth as a mirror. Only a stack of packaging bags containing the pancakes was neatly piled up in one corner of the griddle.
The camera didn't give a close-up of the stack of wrapping paper, but most people noticed that at the beginning, the wrapping paper was white with red lettering; but now, it had changed to a cheerful red background with black lettering, bearing the two large characters for "happiness"...
"Damn it, where is he?!" the deliveryman cursed, started his motorcycle, and drove deeper into the pedestrian street.
The camera gradually zooms out, finally focusing on the outside of the pedestrian street's archway. The three large characters "Happiness Street" on the signboard are adorned with neon lights, flashing with colorful lights even in daylight.
Suddenly, the neon lights flashed, and the word "happiness" went dark.
The moment the word "happiness" went dark, two other words flickered faintly.
That is...
"rule"!
The three characters “Rules Street” became brighter and brighter, eventually transforming into three-dimensional artistic lettering, while the background became blurred. “Please come in!” Four cute artistic characters squeezed in, chasing each other, and finally lined up below “Rules Street”, slightly smaller than “Rules Street”.
Suddenly, a patch shaped like a candy melon flew in from the sky and stuck to the word "rules." The word "rules" struggled for a moment, but was firmly stuck to the candy melon. The word "happiness" then jumped out again and stood on the candy melon.
The word "rules" wasn't completely covered up; a half-hidden tail was still peeking out. Seeing this, the "福" (fu, meaning happiness) radical in "幸福" (xingfu, meaning happiness) bent over, splitting into a golden smiling face that covered the tail.
The title of the film, "Happiness Street, Please Come In!", only appeared at this point.
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