"Boss, your face is longer than Amnesty Bay's coastline. There's no shame in coming home empty-handed. The shame is that you even threw away that tiny fish. Otherwise, we could at least have made a pot of plain fish soup for lunch."
"Why don't you buy a bigger sea fish at the Fish Market, take a picture, and say you caught it yourself? Then you wouldn't have come home empty-handed."
The battered fishing boat slowly pulled ashore. As Selene carried plastic crates full of black grouper off the deck, she kept up her relentless chatter.
Several old fishermen mending their nets nearby clicked their tongues at the sight.
"Good Lord, that boy Arthur's gotten even stronger. Back in my younger days, it would've taken two of us to lift a crate like that!"
"That doctor from the city sure is lucky. He hired Arthur as his guide, and now he's got enough fish to eat for half a month."
Yang Ming stood with both hands in his outdoor jacket's pockets, his gold-rimmed glasses glinting coldly on his nose.
His expression remained dark as he stepped onto the docks without a word. His leather shoes made dull thuds against the fish-scale-covered planks.
"Half your pay next month is gone. So is your performance bonus for the entire year," Yang Ming said coldly.
"What gives you the right?! How is it my fault you couldn't catch anything? Even capitalists aren't as heartless as you! And here I was, cheering you on while you fished!" Selene bristled like a cat whose tail had been stepped on.
"Because you stepped off the boat with your left foot first, and it annoyed me." Without changing his expression, Yang Ming offered an utterly ridiculous excuse.
"Hahahaha!" Arthur casually leaped onto the docks, carrying two hundred pounds