When Michelle Fuller heard the little girl, she wasn’t happy. "Hey, you can’t talk like that, kid. We’re just concerned about you."
"That’s right. Who said we weren’t buying any? I’ll take them all." Sean Fuller gave a grand wave of his hand. "Tell me how much it is."
Hearing this, a look of excitement spread across the little boy’s gaunt face. "Really? You’re going to buy all of them?"
"That’s right." Sean Fuller nodded, his tone growing a little more serious. "Once you sell out, you go back to school, understand?"
The little boy furrowed his brow and muttered, "But Dad won’t let me and my sister go to school."
The little girl shushed him. "Stop talking and start bagging the pomegranates."
The brother and sister filled four bags with pomegranates, which weighed out to forty-eight pounds.
The little girl looked at Sean Fuller and called out, "Sir, it’s forty-eight pounds total. At five yuan a pound, that comes to two hundred and forty yuan."
"Do you have a QR code for payment?" Sean Fuller asked.
The little girl pulled a piece of paper from her pocket and handed it to him. It had a printed QR code for payment on it.
Sean Fuller scanned the code and sent three hundred yuan. "Alright, hurry on home."
The little girl nodded and efficiently packed up her stall.
She picked up their things and said to the little boy, "Glenn, let’s go home."
Renee Jennings and the others watched the siblings leave.
Just then, the woman from the neighboring vegetable stall sidled over. "Oh, dear, you’ve been had!"
"Had?" Michelle Fuller looked at her in confusion. "What do you mean?"
Everyone turned to look at the woman, puzzled.
The woman said conspiratorially, "Those two kids are con artists. The pomegranates they sell are rotten."
"Rotten?" Renee Jennings frowned. "How would you know?"
"I’ve seen lots of people buy from them, and they all come back to complain. They say the pomegranates look fine on the outside, but they’re all rotten inside when they get home and cut them open."
"For real?" Sean Fuller said, surprised. "Let me see."
He grabbed one at random and broke it open, finding that the inside did indeed look rotten. "Huh, it really is spoiled."
"See? I wasn’t lying, was I!" The woman’s face was full of smug satisfaction. She pointed at the siblings’ retreating figures. "You should hurry up and go after them!"
Sean Fuller tossed the rotten pomegranate back into the bag, unconcerned. "Forget it. It’s only three hundred yuan."
He was used to being tricked by girls, but this was the first time one had been this young.
"You’re just going to let three hundred yuan go?" The woman was stunned. She blurted out, "Young man, want to buy some bitter melon?"
Sean Fuller shook his head. "Sorry, I don’t like bitter melon."
The woman pouted, disappointed.
"Should I just toss all the pomegranates?" Sean Fuller asked, looking at the others.
"Hold on, let’s open a few more," Rhea Dempsey said. She picked a pomegranate from the bag, broke it open, and sure enough, it was rotten too.
Just then, Inky flew over to greet Renee Jennings.
"Renee, are you here grocery shopping?"
Renee Jennings’s eyes brightened as she held out her hand to the bird. "Yes. Want to come over for dinner tonight?"
Inky landed on the web of her hand between her thumb and forefinger, chirping happily. "Yes, yes!"
"Oh, right. Can you do me a favor?"
"Of course!" Inky agreed without hesitation.
Renee Jennings asked it to follow the brother and sister from earlier and see what their home situation was really like—why their parents wouldn’t let them get an education.
"Understood! Robin guarantees mission accomplished!" Inky chirped brightly, then with a powerful flap of its wings, flew off toward its target.
Renee Jennings looked away from the bird, and when she turned back, she saw Rhea Dempsey and the other two still trying to break open pomegranates.
Michelle Fuller was struggling, her face red with effort.
Renee Jennings: "..."
She said with an amused laugh, "Stop doing that, you’re going to hurt your hands."
"No way," said Sean Fuller. "Aunt Rae said to check if there are any good ones."
"That’s right." Rhea Dempsey was habitually frugal, and her face was contorted with the effort. "What if there’s just one good one?"
Even Michelle Fuller, who was normally a big spender, chimed in, "Exactly! We can’t be wasteful!"
Renee Jennings: "..."
She pressed her lips together and suggested, "Well, we drove here anyway. Wouldn’t it be much easier to take them home and use a knife?"
Everyone agreed that made sense. They tossed the opened, rotten pomegranates into a trash can, and Sean Fuller carried the remaining bags to the trunk of the car.
Rhea Dempsey bought fried dough sticks and soy milk from a familiar breakfast stand, and the group ate their breakfast standing by the roadside at the wholesale market.
For Sean Fuller, this was a novel experience.