"Ooh, look!"
Adam looked up from his phone as his younger sister, Coral, tugged on his arm, pointing at a shop to the left. "It's a magic store!"
Adam wrinkled his nose. The shop was small, tucked away, almost stuffed, between two other stores. Instead of the glossy finishes of other storefronts, it was made of wood, crooked and no doubt riddled with termites or rot. Behind the front, Adam could see the tiny space packed with gaudy items. He tugged his sister. "We're not going in there."
"Aw, why not?" The ten-year-old made puppy dog eyes at her older brother. "Pretty please?"
"Because we need to meet up with Mum, that's why," Adam snapped.
"But we stopped at the store you wanted to stop at," she pointed out.
His face went red. Sure, he had stopped at the old video game store, but this was some backwater hack store. "I had money saved up for that store. You don't."
"Yes, I do!" she cried indignantly, pulling a five dollar note from her pocket. "See? I've been saving up too, and I wanna buy magic!"
"You're not buying anything, and plus, magic isn't real. Now come on, let's go." Adam pulled her roughly away, eyes going back to his phone as he walked in the opposite direction. He was halfway to the exit when he realised that Coral wasn't beside him. Shit, she's gone back to that stupid store, hasn't she?
Quickly, he shoved his phone in his pocket and raced back through the shopping centre until he reached the magic store. He burst in, just as Coral exchanged her five dollars for what looked to be a plain black screen with key pads and joysticks either side. "What the hell do you think you're doing?"
She giggled, and held up her prize. "Look, I got a magic controller!"
"I told you not to buy anything!"
"Ah, so you're the brother, are you?" Adam forgot about his younger sister momentarily, as the man behind the counter turned his gaze on him. "She told me about you. If you do not believe in magic, it will not believe in you."
"And why were you chatting with my ten-year-old sister?"
"Why did you leave your sister unsupervised?" the man countered. "Besides, I like to get to know my customers. It helps me give them the items they need."
Adam raised his eyebrows. "So, you decided that my sister needed to be scammed for a rip-off Switch? Sure. Come on, Coral, let's go."
He grabbed her hand and marched her out of the store, though the strange man's words drifted after him. "Seeing is believing." He huffed. What a load of bullshit.