Grocery Shopping

The cool breeze kissed the flower petals of the plum blossom tree. People flow in and out of malls, restaurants, supermarkets, and the surrounding tea shops. Within this bustling city, a boy and a girl walked along the streets carrying white bags.

"Brother, can we get a cup of bubble tea?"

"Sure"

The two walk into a nearby bubble tea shop.

"What do you think Bai and Lan would want?" the boy asked

"Hmmmm, maybe a Mango Passion Tea for big sis Bai and a Strawberry Kiwi Tea for Lan?" the girl said

"What do you want then?" asked the boy

"I want the peach tea"

"Cool, then I'll get the watermelon slush. Excuse me, can I get a Mango passion tea, a Strawberry Kiwi Tea, a Peach tea and one watermelon slush?

The boy ordered the drinks and after getting the drinks, they continued on their way.

"Hong, we've got to hurry. The bus will arrive any minute." the boy said while starting to run

"Got it. Keep up brother!" Hong said as she started running ahead towards the bus stop.

As they sprinted towards the bus stop, a white oblong rectangle with a neon blue strip, windows, and an angular front floated past them.

"Bro, step on the gas! The bus is coming!" Hong said as she rushed her brother along.

"Coming!" He called. 

He then tightened his grip on the bags and then started sprinting. As he sprinted towards the bus stop, he was just slightly slower than the bus. As the bus started to slow down he was catching up to the bus and was even slightly faster. He reached the bus stop a couple of moments just before the bus arrived.

"Made it. Man, I'm exhausted." He exclaimed as he heaved.

"Brother, let's get on." 

She grabbed some of the bags from him and got on the bus. He followed her on and they found a seat.

"Bro, you're gonna have a martial arts practical right after winter break ends right?"

"Yup, it shouldn't be much of a problem though. Anyways, what do you want for dinner?..."

They chatted while the bus travelled along its route and it eventually arrived at their stop. They got off and walked home. 

As they got to their front door, the door of the house next door opened up and a girl with black hair tied in a ponytail, blue eyes, and snow white skin in shorts and a loose fitting t-shirt walked out. 

She turned towards them and walked over.

"Sis!" Hong exclaimed

"Little Hong, you seem happy." she said with a bright smile

"We got tea on the way back!" Hong said with a bright smile as she lifted up the bag with the drinks for display."We got you and Lanhua some too."

"Oh, thank you." she said. "Long, how is your body tempering going, have you gotten to the intermediate stage yet?"

"Nope, I just got to the second stage of muscle strengthening a couple of days ago," he replied. 

"Are you guys joining us for dinner tonight, Bai?" he asked as he shuffled through the door with his bags of groceries.

"Yup, we'll be coming over later." Bai said as she crossed her arms behind her back fidgeting about while she looked at the floor. 

Long didn't notice as he trudged deeper into the house, heading towards the refrigerator and cabinets to place all the groceries into storage.

"Great, it'll take a minute so you guys can enjoy the drinks for now" he said as he put on an apron and started up the stove.

…

After dinner Bai walks down stairs into the basement. She sees Long swinging a rubber covered staff around.

"You're working hard" she says standing at the bottom of the stairs.

Long finishes his set, places the staff back on to the weapons rack and \walks towards her.

"It's just practice. We're going to have a Martial Technical examination along with the practical when school starts so I might as well brush up on it." he says

He grabs two bottles out of the mini fridge.

"Here" he hands Bai a drink as they sit on a bench by the wall."I need practice since i'm not as far along as you in muscle strengthening."

"But your grade in the technical portion is the top of the class. You just need to work on the practical portion." Bai said

"Look at this," Long says as he holds up his wrist. There was a silver metallic bracelet on his wrist with a blue stripe down the middle. At the top of the bracelet is a diamond where the stripe stops at the diamond's points. The Diamond glows blue and a blue holographic screen pops out.

⌜￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣

[Tian Long] [Age: 15]

[Stage: 1] [Level 3]

[Cultivation: Muscle Strengthening third stage]

Progress: (Perfection)

[Techniques:

]

___________________________________________________⌟

"So you've reached the peak of the third stage. Why not breakthrough to the fourth stage?" Bai asked

"I've been stuck on this part for a while now. Why else do you think I'm still on stage 3 rather than on stage 5 like the rest of the class." Long said

As he said that, Bai noticed that he was gripping the bottle really tightly, slightly crushing the bottle.

"Maybe some rest and relaxation would help you break the barrier. You've been pushing yourself non stop cultivating and taking care of your sister since your parents died." she said

"Maybe you're right. We have three days till school starts back up on January 4th. I'll just take the next day off and then get back to it." 

"Then what do you want to do tomorrow?" she asked

"Hmmm, maybe play some games. You wanna join" Long asked

"S-sure, That seems fun" Bai stuttered

Long didn't notice. As he got up, he said "Great, I'll see you tomorrow then. I'm gonna head to bed. Good night."

"Good night" Bai said softly.