Yinxing walked out of Duoduo Supermarket with a back-basket packed full of items. Diagonally across from it was a large trading market, and the street vendors outside occupied almost half the road.
It was lively.
Her gaze swept across the small stalls displaying various crops. Each stall had a small wooden board erected in front of it with numbers written on them, representing the pollution values of the crops. The numbers were all fairly similar, hovering around a 25% to 30% increase.
It seemed that the chestnuts and bracken she had found, which only had a pollution value in the teens, were indeed quite scarce.
After a glance, nothing caught her interest. She adjusted the straps of her back-basket and stepped toward the station.
“Young lady, want to take a look at my peanuts? They were just dug out yesterday, every single one is plump and full of oil!”
Suddenly, her basket was tugged. She turned around to face an older auntie with a cheerful expression, who didn’t show any strange reactions to Yinxing’s skeleton-like figure.
This piqued Yinxing’s interest.
“Girl, take a look. My peanuts are great! Although the pollution value is a bit high, they yield a lot of oil. Just drop a tiny bit into the pan when stir-frying, it doesn’t affect the eating at all. Plus, mine are cheap and come in a large quantity!”
Yinxing followed the auntie’s hand and caught a whiff of a pungent, stinky odor that made her eyes water. She quickly pushed down the hand that kept reaching forward.
“It’s fine, girl. Looking won’t make you lose any flesh, don’t be shy.”
Yinxing: I really shouldn’t, I really shouldn’t.
Auntie: Come on, take a look, looking is free.
Yinxing was rather helpless. “Auntie, what’s the pollution value on these?”
Taking a closer look, every single peanut in the bag was as big as a cherry tomato, and their skins were a bright red. A casual glance would make it hard to recognize them.
For crops like this, you didn’t even need a tester to know the pollution value must be very high.
The auntie’s expression stiffened for a second, and she smiled awkwardly. “The pollution value is just a tiny bit high, but the peanut oil you squeeze out is only used in small amounts, so it doesn’t affect eating at all.”
Yinxing raised an eyebrow expressionlessly.
She wore an expression that said, ‘I’m just standing here watching you. Let’s see what kind of flowers you can talk into bloom!’
“The pollution value of these peanuts is this much.” The auntie held up four fingers.
40%?
She didn’t believe it. The stinky smell of these peanuts was genuinely stinging her eyes.
Seeing that her expression revealed no emotion, the auntie grew a bit anxious, afraid the peanuts wouldn’t sell and would stay stuck in her hands. She quickly spoke up to salvage the deal.
“Oh, don’t look at the high pollution value, the price is cheap too! This big bag of mine has at least ten-odd jin, take it all for 20 points.”
Yinxing wrinkled her nose. This auntie was trying to rip her off, and she wasn’t new to the safety zone anymore. She had already lived here for three days; she wasn’t the innocent girl she was the day before yesterday.
Besides, she hadn’t originally planned to buy them, but her gaze fell upon the purplish-red root vegetables still caked with mud in the auntie’s other bag—sweet potatoes!
The taste of roasted sweet potatoes was truly lingering in her memory; she really wanted some.
“20 points.” Under the auntie’s expectant gaze, Yinxing pointed to the two sweet potatoes in her other bag. “Throw in these two sweet potatoes, and I’ll take the whole lot.”
“Really?”
Realizing she had spoken too quickly and slipped up, the auntie rushed her words together and shoved the bag straight into Yinxing’s hands.
“I mean, sure! Take them. Auntie is just giving you such a cheap price because we’re fated, little girl. I wouldn’t give them to anyone else even if they wanted them.”
Yinxing almost failed to catch the bag of peanuts, so the auntie simply and efficiently took it back over. “I’ll put it in your back-basket for you, and the sweet potatoes too, tucking them away nicely.”
With that, she looked at her with extremely eager eyes, rubbing her hands together, waiting for her to transfer the points.
Yinxing couldn’t help but find it a bit amusing. She raised her wrist and briskly transferred 20 points to her.
“Thanks for taking care of me! My second uncle’s maternal grandfather still needs me, I’m off!”
In a flash, the auntie vanished into the crowd and disappeared.
Yinxing: ……
Why did she feel like something was a bit off?
Before she could puzzle it out, the bus at the station pulled up, and the ticket-selling older sister on board grabbed a megaphone and roared at the top of her lungs.
“Leaving right now! Anyone taking the bus, hurry up! Hurry, hurry, we’re pulling out immediately, move it, move it—!”
Yinxing tightened her grip on her back-basket and quickened her pace to rush toward the bus. Seeing her state and fearing she might trip, the ticket conductor hurriedly told her to slow down and even took the initiative to step down and help her lift the back-basket.
“Slow down, little girl. 1 point for the ride, just swipe your wrist device directly.”
Thank goodness. She only had 2 points left in her account, leaving her with just 1 point now. Otherwise, walking back on her own two legs might have actually exhausted her to death halfway.
“Thank you, big sister.”
As soon as she got on, quite a few people stared at her like she was a monkey in a zoo, making her feel a bit prickly all over.
“Oh my, little girl, you bought quite a lot!”
An elderly grandmother sitting behind her couldn’t help striking up a conversation, her eyes fixed tightly on Yinxing’s back-basket as if she wanted to stare a hole through it.
Many people were attracted by the sight, but upon seeing the items inside her back-basket, they couldn’t help but curl their lips. What kind of things had she even bought?
Taking another look at the little girl’s skin-and-bones appearance, everyone understood instantly. Yet another pitiful child, who knew where she had fled from as a refugee, and who knew how much suffering she had endured.
“Little girl, come on, have a piece of candy. There’s not much real sugar in it, just a taste.”
Before Yinxing could react, a piece of candy wrapped in white paper had been stuffed into her hand. She stood there in a daze, not knowing how to respond.
“Th-thank you, Grandma.”
“Don’t mention it, don’t mention it.”
She peeled off the paper and popped the white lump inside into her mouth. Just as the grandmother had said, it didn’t taste like much, just some kind of powder mixed with a hint of milk flavor. The sweetness was very, very faint, not particularly delicious.
Then another round object was stuffed into her hand. Looking down, an older grandfather sitting in front had handed her a long green strip; she couldn’t tell what it was.
“Winter melon candy, never had it before, right? It’s good, though winter melon candy these days still can’t compare to the old days.”
“Sigh, the fact that we can survive at all is already pretty good. Life goes on somehow.”
“Ain’t that the truth? Did you guys hear the commotion in the wasteland area yesterday?”
“How could we not hear it? That explosion sound was so huge, my floorboards were shaking, scared me to death.”
As they spoke, another hand reached out from behind and stuffed a handful of melon seeds into Yinxing’s hand.
“Roasted at home, have a taste. Good for passing the time at least.”
Yinxing found herself inexplicably holding a pile of various snacks. The uncles, aunts, grandpas, and grandmas on the bus had all fed her a little bit of whatever they had.
Even though these things all smelled a bit stinky, Yinxing felt a strange sensation in her heart—it felt a bit warm, and why was her nose feeling a little sour?
“Thank you.”
She grabbed a small handful of peanuts from her pocket and applied a tiny, tiny bit of purification. Although they still had a faint odor, they were already much, much better than before.
“Here, have some. Have these, you guys take them.”
Before she could even pull her hand out, she was refused. Who would take food from a little girl? Who would take a little girl’s life-saving rations? How shameless would that be!