Lu  hadn't always been a walker. As a boy, he thought walking was the most useless boring thing one could do. Now, Lu saw it differently. Now, Lu notice things when he walked. He noticed an old lady with a young boy; a bird flying in a mad pattern as if trying to fight back its own gravitational pull; a young couple in love; a sad old man staring at what used to be his street, his life; a young man who understands it all, or so he thinks; a beautiful young woman who sees through this young man and doesn't care; an old sundry store being converted into a cell phone shop; an old cd-store decaying into the earth; a drunk compassionately petting a cat; a prostitute laughing at a construction worker; shoes on a wire; the rain. 

Lu ran into the pub to escape the storm, a sudden onslaught of torrential thunder and God delivered smite. He surveyed the landscape an saw nothing at first. Then, he saw movement from underneath a red children's slide. The body shivered, but it did not look scared. Instead, he saw the town's fortuneteller trying to escape the rain and survive the threat of pneumonia. For a second, Lu thought of helping her. It wasn't that he didn't want to rescue her from the rain, but it wasn't the rain that killed her. Years later, Lu would still remember seeing her there, soaked from head to toe, an easy look in her eyes but sad nonetheless. For years, Lu had thought exactly about what had killed, why She had to die instead of someone else. The only explanation that Lu came with had to do with her clairvoyance. This lady made a living predicting the future, and most of the time she was correct. Maybe she was comforted in total knowledge, or maybe she was deeply troubled by the divine insight. Either way, Lu took from her death a overarching sense of irony. She could see everything, but in those last seconds of death, her she wore a face not of acceptance or understanding but surprise. Surprise! She made a living predicting all the insignificant details of courtship and gossip, but the most important and tragic nugget of knowledge never came to her. 

Lu took her death and grew from it. He saw what he didn't like in himself. He didn't like how no one had ever affected him like the fortuneteller did when she died. He wanted to be affected, and he wanted to affect others. He used to be deeply afraid of the uncertainty in his life, the things he didn't understand. He understood more now, and what he didn't understand he didn't fear. Besides that, he just wanted to be a nice store owner. The ancient Chinese proverb says, "Don't open a shop unless you like to smile."