Selling River Snails
Great-Granny was a little surprised to see her come running downstairs. She hadn't expected the stubborn girl to know how to run, too.
Lin Er smiled at her a little sheepishly, completely unaware of what Great-Granny was thinking, then ran off without looking back.
It was broad daylight, so she couldn't use her broom. By the time she had run all the way to town, her head was covered in sweat. She pulled out a towel and wiped it off, then mentally prepared herself before carrying the tin bucket onto the bus to the city.
The bucket was tightly covered with a plastic bag, and two packs of disposable plastic cups hung from the handle—the large kind used for drinks.
She had no other way to make money. In the novels she'd read, protagonists who transmigrated or were reborn always made money easily online or from opportunities around them.
But the reality was that she had never written a novel before, and she wasn't about to become a writer without being taught.
Besides, she had nowhere to write. An internet café was out of the question: she couldn't produce several thousand words a day, and a teacher might randomly appear and catch her.
Some people also said you could make a living collecting bottles. Ha! These days, in the countryside, people waited to collect even the disposable bowls thrown away after banquets. Apart from at school, she could forget about finding any unclaimed bottles.
Would she have the nerve to pick them up at school?
Without her wand, she might have, but now she really didn't.
As for the skills from her previous life...
She couldn't imagine any employer being desperate enough to hire a twelve-year-old as an unlicensed part-time accountant.
Selling things was the quickest way to make money, and since she had no supply channels, she could only sell things sourced locally in the countryside.
Spells weren't all-powerful-or rather, their limitations were enormous. There was very little she could do.
Being able to clean river snails with them had been an unexpected bonus.
It would be a few more years before river snails found a place at night markets. Right now, nobody in the countryside ate them; preparing them took too much oil, salt, and seasoning.
Lin Er had used about three jin of oil for this bucket, along with spices, aromatics, chilies, rock sugar, and other seasonings that most families wouldn't even buy.
The ingredients alone had cost thirty or forty yuan.
She'd worked it out: the bucket would fill more than a hundred disposable cups.
Outside elementary schools, a bag of ten or so sold for fifty cents. Hers were freshly made and came in a big cup, so she had to charge at least a yuan.
She could live with that profit.
Of the high schools in the city, only Experimental High was on break now. No. 2 Middle School and No. 3 Middle School wouldn't be off until tomorrow afternoon.
After getting off the bus, Lin Er rested for a while before carrying the bucket to the school gate. She took a folding stool out of her old schoolbag, the old-fashioned kind with a seat made of cloth strips.
As soon as she opened the plastic bag, the rich, spicy aroma of the river snails wafted out.
It was almost four by then, and students on break were starting to return to school in a steady trickle. Lin Er was sitting in a conspicuous spot, and soon someone came over to have a look.
"Are these river snails clean?"
The boy who asked swallowed. Not only were the snails big, they smelled amazing!
"Of course they're clean. I washed them very carefully and let them purge their sand for a whole week. If you find even one snail with algae on it, you don't have to pay!"
"All right, give me two cups!"
Lin Er's sign made the price perfectly clear: one yuan a cup. She didn't need to explain much. Maybe not everyone at the school gate could read, but 99 percent of them could.
Once the first customer bought some, others followed. Lin Er was small, and though her face was red as she sold her snails, her manner was open and confident.
She gave clear, well-organized answers to anyone who asked questions, and some people stopped for a while just to tease her.
The crowd around her grew larger and larger. People who came over out of curiosity smelled the snails and, if they had money, bought a cup to try.
River snails were genuinely uncommon at the time, and Lin Er hadn't skimped on the seasonings, so many people who tried them came back for more.
By the time the bucket was empty, she'd gone through three packs of plastic cups. She'd run short halfway through and had to buy more on the spot from the little shop beside the school.
She couldn't exactly pull them straight out of her schoolbag. There had been people around her the whole time.
Even after the snails sold out, repeat customers kept coming. They only let Lin Er go after she promised to return next week. High school students had more money than she'd thought.
No wonder the stalls outside the school stretched on for dozens of meters. There were several selling fried rice and fried skewers alone.
She checked the time. It was already five, just in time for her little pen pal's breakfast, so she spent ten yuan on two portions of stir-fried rice noodles nearby and put one in her schoolbag to send to him.
With their mealtimes out of sync, it really was easy to miss each other. It was better when she was at school.
She only had to send him breakfast when she ate dinner, then lunch after evening study. If she got up to do something at one or two in the morning, she'd send him dinner too.
If she didn't get up in the middle of the night, the kid ate snacks. Lin Er had also bought him an electric kettle and instant noodles.
At this point, she wasn't worrying about whether it was nutritious. As long as he didn't go hungry, that was enough.
Besides, Lin Er usually gave them both extra food between meals.
Heating food in her schoolbag was fine, but cooking produced too much smoke and too strong a smell, so she did it on the roof with a stove.
She only knew how to make ordinary home cooking, but she didn't skimp on the seasonings, so the meat she cooked didn't taste bad.
They also had fruit, little cakes, biscuits, and other things every day, so they really didn't need to worry about nutrition.
The only problem was how quickly the money went.
Lin Er sighed. She used to think her parents gave her too little spending money, but now she was supporting a child herself. Even though she was only feeding and clothing him, she was already marveling at how quickly the money went.
It was still too early to go back, and the sky was still a little light. Lin Er found a place to stuff the bucket back into her schoolbag, then started browsing again.
She still had more than three thousand yuan, so there was no need to be that frugal. Besides, today's bucket of snails had brought in at least a hundred-odd yuan, with a clear profit of at least a hundred.
She couldn't come tomorrow because they had to go to school for evening study in the afternoon. If she came here, she wouldn't have time to get back.
Besides, she was out of snails. She'd only brought them today to give it a try, and now that she knew they would sell, tomorrow was the perfect time to go collect some from the river.
After a round of shopping, she'd added another big chunk of meat and a grass carp to her stock, and sent her pen pal a pile of food. As soon as the magic book stopped, the person on the other side made a request of his own, which was rare.
[Notebook and pen] [OK]
She understood that. Her little pen pal was much more motivated than she was; even after being showered with such a huge pile of snacks, he'd still remembered to study.
While buying the notebook, she saw a pile of dictionaries: dictionaries of various kinds, English-Chinese translation dictionaries, and an Oxford dictionary that was obviously pirated. At least, the ones her classmates used weren't this thin.
Her little pen pal clearly had no trouble reading or writing English now. Even his beginner's book was so specialized, and he seemed much smarter than she was.
Whenever she saw an English word now, she had to look it up, and when she wrote, she had to copy it. Maybe her little pen pal could learn a second writing system before she did?
Paying no attention to the fact that he knew nothing about Chinese and had no teacher, Lin Er, with money to spare, bought one of each and sent them all to him through the magic book.
She waited a while, and when her little pen pal didn't angrily throw the books back in her face, Lin Er happily took that as his tacit consent.
She skipped out, and even the sun gradually setting in the west seemed exceptionally beautiful. Even the five-yuan note in the corridor looked especially pretty!
Five... yuan!?
Lin Er stopped in her tracks. Students returning to school had been passing by in a sparse but steady stream, and the bookshop was right beside the school gate. If she bent down, wouldn't everyone immediately know she'd picked up money?