Oh, well, of course I want to participate! [Huaisang smiles up at him with bright cheer, angling his body so as to exclude the people behind them from his attention and also to project 'this is my dear friend' all the more clearly even without physical contact.] Isn't it all so festive?

You see, in October, there was Halloween at the end of the month. [His voice stays chipper and just a little too loud as he talks about what he remembers.] There was a countdown, too. This song and a commercial on the telly-vision, and every day it counted down--twenty-two days to Halloween! So all of the houses got these large vegetables, they're sort of like gourds or melons, and carved faces on them like demons, and put them out front of their steps with a candle lit inside.

[His voice quiets, more thoughtful rather than overtly cheerful, but without anything to draw attention to it.] So that way when the drowned children came on Halloween, they didn't go to the houses that had the vegetable lanterns. You could hear the screams, and a girl came to me for refuge, covered in blood.

I had the lantern out front, you see. It's important to participate, after all. To have festive spirit.