Warm and Sincere Laughter

Carlos was upset as he stormed into the room. He had forgotten to snatch his "learning device" before leaving his bedroom, and now his nanny wouldn't let him have it. Terrible! I'm going to complain to Daddy, he thought in anguish. But then he quickly shook his head. No Carlos, that would be mean, he chastised himself.

The so-called learning device he wanted actually hid a lot of games and entertainment behind a very educational mask. The hidden functions would only be activated once Carlos said out loud a password, and they would automatically deactivate once he took his hands off from the device. Carol is a genius! I should get her to make some more cool toys for me for Christmas, Carlos thought with vigor. The holiday is only a few months away.

He looked up excitedly, and found Fei staring at him. The corner of Carlos' mouth twitched. He looked at the pitiful phone that was ignored by her and had an urge to take it away. At least this phone has some smaller, older games that Daddy didn't bother to have people wipe out.

But Carlos resisted against his urge. Fei needs to learn Language A, it's more important. Who knows, maybe we'll be happily communicating by tomorrow.

"Stop looking at me. Look at your screen and quickly learn Language A!" Carlos reprimanded her, pointing at the screen urgently. In response, Fei slowly turned her head and began watching the video. However, as soon as Carlos began moving, her attention was again drawn. She knew that her master wanted her to watch the video he showed her, and she also didn't want to anger him. But she was afraid that Carlos would leave. This thought distracted her from focusing on the video and she couldn't help but pay attention to him. Besides, it is her duty to protect and guard him.

Fei saw her master stomp towards one of the couches and sink into it. Then he stood up again, as if re-energized. But as walked towards the bookshelves, he looked more and more fatigued. When he finally retrieved what seemed to be a notebook bound in leather and returned to the couch, he was wobbly on his knees and looked like he was about to fall.

Fei quickly stood up and walked forward to support him, but Carlos ignored her and again, plunged deep into the cushions of the sofa. At once, it seemed as if he had been recharged and Carlos sat up and stretched his arms. When he saw Fei's face of bewilderment, he stuck out his tongue and scrunched up his nose.

It was a strange sight.

Fei didn't know why, but when she thought of his antics, she began laughing. It was a low chuckle at first, but then it grew louder and more uncontrollable as time ticked by. It was very strange; she couldn't stop. She laughed so hard that she had to support herself from losing balance. So hard that her stomach hurt, and she had to bend over to lessen the pain. It was only after a very long time that Fei finally stopped laughing.

But even then, she couldn't understand exactly what made her laugh.

It wasn't THAT funny, was it? In fact, what is 'funny' anyway?

Carlos was pleasantly surprised and had been stunned into a daze when he saw this scene. He had thought that Fei did not know how to laugh. And a laugh so sincere, and exuberant as well! He yearned to hear more of it.

Carlos tried many tactics to get Fei to laugh like she did before. He told jokes—forgetting the fact that Fei did not understand him—, made funny faces, acted out scenes from comedy shows. But no matter what he did, Fei never laughed again that day. She only gently smiled at him, a terrible, professional smile that told him she didn't understand his words or intentions at all.

Are my comedian skills that terrible? Carlos pouted. "Go learn some Language A. I don't want to play with you anymore." Once again, he pointed at the projection in front of Fei, and started to busy himself with his own learning device as well.

Fei nodded and began focusing on the Language A learning video. This time, she really did focus on the video, but occasionally, she would still peek at her master through the corners of her eyes to see what he was doing.

The device he was using intrigued her.

It looked like a regular book from the outside, but when you touched its pages, a three-dimensional scene would pop up. Apparently, when you touched distinct parts of the page, different scenes would appear. Fei observed in silence. Her master seemed to be terribly bored of the device and would flip through the "book" with lightning speed, only looking at the manifested scene for a few seconds before flipping away.

Currently, a digital depiction of the construction of a sniper rifle was displayed, and Fei was very interested in it. It seemed that Carlos also enjoyed this cinematic, as he finally stopped flipping the pages. Fei kept sneaking looks at it, no longer interested in her own learning material.

She realized that as long as Carlos didn't catch her, he wouldn't be mad and scold her either. It was a grand discovery.

However, one time, he met her eyes by accident. Fei immediately flinched, and looked away, but it was too late. He caught her.

Carlos puffed up his cheeks. "Pay attention to your video!" After some consideration, he continued slyly, "The device that you are using is older than mine, made before this technology was invented, that's why mine can have 3-D videos but yours are only 2-D. If… you don't like it, we can switch."

Carlos thought Fei was interested in how cool the film looked, with the three-dimensional gun flying in the air and all of its parts swishing around. Cuz it looked really cool to him; that's why he stayed on this page in the first place. All the other ones aren't interesting at all.

However, when he saw Fei's signature smile appear again, he understood that what he did was akin to playing the piano to a cow*. Carlos angrily shut down his device and leaned back onto the sofa, preparing to sleep.

In his nap, he dreamt of warm laughter.

Fei was upset as well. I shouldn't have done it behind his back, she thought with regret.

Now, Master is angry at me… She shook her head in sorrow. She decided to make it up to him by focusing on the learning video. At the bottom left corner of the projection, there was a line of tiny white text:

2:56:09 left.

Fei readied herself.