Inside Out reImagined

Exploring the City

Joy was glad that she cut her losses and decided to prioritize Riley, rather than Sadness, because if she ever tried to hit the same brick wall on a day like this one, there wouldn't be much of an emotion left for Dream Duty.

In general, Joy had had a lot of difficulties in overstretching herself as of late. She already showed some signs of cracking when Riley was eleven, and there appeared to be something starting to form in her mind which actively worked against the emotions, including herself.

Incidents like this kept going on and on, and over time, Joy grew resilient in her resolve. She would by no means stop taking a proactive role in Riley's life, and her coworkers sometimes argued that she was taking things too far. Yet, all it took was either a gentle reminder that Riley has always been the shining beacon in the Andersen family's life, or a not-so-gentle one from a classmate wondering if puberty was going to ruin Riley, and the other emotions would immediately stop.

That being said, the move to Shanghai, and the need to manage the other emotions' expectations about the place and Riley's life from now on, stretched Joy thin like nothing else. Not even her usual resort — endless conversations with Sadness about nothing in particular — seemed to be working today.

So, for the time being, for the rest of the day, Joy gave up, only half-heartedly paying attention to what was going on.

Perhaps it was better this way. Today remained an ongoing experiment in a completely new attitude, that would be a lot easier to justify in front of people whom Riley had yet to meet, even if Mom or Dad raised an eyebrow. And if they didn't, well, managing Riley was about to become a whole lot easier.

And in the end, sometimes it was nice to just take a step back and appreciate the day slowly transitioning to the evening.

It wasn't easy to track when Riley and her mother were constantly going in and out of buildings. Yet, some of the telltale signs were definitely there: people slowly started leaving their workplaces, and cars started streaming into the streets.

The new mood of evening life only got accelerated once the sun approached the horizon, and the sky began dimming. One by one, various buildings, or rooms of larger buildings, started turning on the lights, mostly in the boring yellow or white, but occasionally a more enticing blue or red. Sometimes, there would even be a fancy, multicolored logo somewhere along Riley and Mom's path to a place only one of them vaguely knew, and Riley would immediately use the translator app on her favorite Chinese tablet to figure out what it meant — though nothing she found ended up piquing the emotions' curiosity or Riley's innate Imagination as much as "pizza planet".

However, even then, the turning on of street lamps was unmistakable as a "hard point" of the transition. The event was so out of left field for Riley, she instinctively briefly covered her eyes, and the emotions didn't fail to react.

"Ugh! Does anyone know what time..." Halfway through asking the question, Disgust realized that they could just check on Riley's favorite Chinese tablet, and once they did, they found out it happened very close to a whole hour. "...of course."

Rather unfortunately, though, Mom happened to be looking at the same time, and just shook her head, most likely thinking that this tablet addiction had to be dealt with. She's so predictable, was the thought of more than one emotion.

"You know, I don't think I'll be able to do much with offices, they're all starting to close, we could just head home... or we could tour over at the place with all the skyscrapers! What do you say?" Mom asked, and the emotions contemplated.

Sadness and Disgust were the first to react, with Joy glancing at both of them near-simultaneously. Each of them responded in their own way, but Joy already knew that no good news was coming from them.