mynovelonline Chapter 32 A Crash Course in Arguing at the Vegetable Market
Chapter 32 A Crash Course in Arguing at the Vegetable Market
The next morning at nine o'clock, at the West Gate Vegetable Market in Changxiang City.
This is the most vibrant and chaotic part of the city.
The damp ground was littered with rotten vegetable leaves and fish scales, and the air was filled with the smells of live poultry, the aroma of braised vegetables, and the noisy chatter of middle-aged women haggling over prices, creating a vibrant symphony of everyday life.
For ordinary people, this is life.
For Lin Zhou, this was hell.
He wore a baseball cap pulled low over his shoulders, his hands in his pockets, standing at the entrance of the market like an incongruous statue.
Every sound was like an awl, piercing his eardrums with pinpoint accuracy.
The crisp sound of the tofu vendor's spoon hitting the bucket wall as he scooped the tofu pudding, the dull thud of the live fish vendor stunning a grass carp with the back of his knife, the neighboring fruit stall owner's loudspeaker playing "Honeydew Melon is Sweeter Than First Love"... these sounds were amplified infinitely by his ears, churning in his mind like a pot of boiling porridge.
He wanted to escape.
This instinctive fear made his legs go weak.
He recalled Wang Minyu's words: "Come find me again when you feel that arguing with someone is easier than being tortured to death by their voice."
Lin Zhou closed his eyes and took a deep breath.
The air, a mixture of various smells, made him cough, but it also brought a sliver of clarity to his confused mind.
Just die.
He took stiff steps and stepped into the vortex of sound.
Not far away, behind a vegetable stall, Li Siyuan and Zhao Na were pretending to pick out vegetables, but their phone cameras were secretly pointed at Lin Zhou.
"Senior brother, look at him, he looks like he's going to the execution ground," Zhao Na muttered softly. "Can he really get into a fight? I feel sorry for him just watching him."
"Break down the old to build up the new. How can we ignite his will to survive if we don't push him to the brink?" Li Siyuan said with a mysterious expression, holding a wilted cucumber in his hand as if he were holding a scalpel. "Dr. Wang, this is called 'putting him in a desperate situation to survive.' We'll just have to watch."
Lin Zhou wandered aimlessly through the market, like a ghost.
His brain was working overtime, trying to process the explosive flow of information.
He passed a pork stall, and the sound of the vendor chopping ribs made his heart skip a beat.
He passed by a live poultry shop, and the clucking of the chickens and ducks made his scalp tingle.
He needs to find someone to argue with.
He set his sights on a kind-looking scallion-selling woman.
The woman was picking scallions while chatting with the stall owner next to her.
Lin Zhou mustered all the courage he had in his life, walked over, picked up a bunch of scallions, and said in a voice barely audible, "Auntie... how much are these scallions?"
"Two yuan fifty a pound, handsome, want some?" The aunt didn't even look up.
"Can...can you make it cheaper?" Lin Zhou's voice was even softer.
"Oh dear, it's a small business, no bargaining." The aunt finally glanced at him, and seeing his timid appearance, casually dismissed him.
"Then...never mind." Lin Zhou put down the scallions and fled in panic.
First attempt, failed.
"Pfft." Zhao Na couldn't help but laugh out loud from a distance. "Senior, this isn't an argument, it's more like a failed attempt to pick up a girl!"
Li Siyuan was also a little embarrassed, and cleared his throat: "Everything is difficult at the beginning. Let's see."
Lin Zhou then turned his attention to a young man selling eggs.
The young man was looking down at his phone, and the sign on his stall read "Free-range eggs, 1.2 yuan each".
Lin Zhou walked over, pointed at the eggs, and asked in a still very soft voice, "Boss, are these... really free-range eggs?"
The young man looked up from his phone, giving him an impatient glance: "How could it be fake? If it were fake, would eating it make you lay eggs?"
Lin Zhou choked for a moment, his face turning bright red. After a long pause, he managed to squeeze out, "How...how could you swear at me?"
"Where did I insult you?" The young man rolled his eyes and continued playing on his phone. "One yuan and twenty cents each, take it or leave it."
Lin Zhou was defeated once again.
For the next hour, he challenged the potato seller, the chili pepper seller, the bean sprout seller... without exception, all of them ended in failure.
His hesitant and unassuming manner seemed to these seasoned street vendors to him no different from that of a lunatic.
Lin Zhou was utterly desperate. He squatted in a corner of the market, holding his head in his hands, the noise amplified countless times overwhelmed him like a tidal wave.
He felt like he was suffocating.
"I can't take it anymore... I really can't take it anymore..." he muttered to himself. "Wang Minyu is a liar. He just wants to see me make a fool of myself..."
Zhao Na, watching from a distance, couldn't bear it any longer: "Senior brother, he's about to break down. Shouldn't we go up and 'help' him?"
Li Siyuan frowned, about to nod, when suddenly something unexpected happened.
A young man delivering goods on his electric scooter was going too fast and knocked over a pile of apples at a fruit stand next to him while turning.
Red Fuji apples and green apples rolled all over the ground.
The fruit stall owner, a robust woman who estimated to weigh 180 pounds, was furious when she saw this scene.
"Are you blind?! In a hurry to be reborn?!" The proprietress grabbed the young man by the collar, spitting in his face. "These apples are all imported! Twenty yuan each! You're not leaving until you pay up!"
"Ma'am, I didn't mean to..." The young man was so frightened his face turned pale. "I'll pay for it, I'll pay for it, okay?"
"Compensate? How can I compensate? This whole place is broken, you have to buy it all!" The proprietress persisted.
The surrounding crowd quickly gathered around, pointing and whispering.
Lin Zhou was also drawn by the commotion. He looked up and saw the young man being grabbed by the collar by the proprietress, looking helpless and fearful.
In that instant, he felt as if he saw himself.
That version of myself, utterly powerless against the sounds and the world.
A surge of anger, seemingly from nowhere, suddenly ignited within him.
The fire burned away his fear, his hesitation, and his polite facade.
He suddenly stood up, pushed through the crowd, and rushed in.
"Let him go!" Lin Zhou's voice wasn't loud, but it was unusually clear, carrying a firmness that even he himself didn't recognize.
The proprietress paused for a moment, turned around, saw the thin man in the baseball cap, and scoffed disdainfully, "Who are you? His father? Trying to stand up for him?"
"I'm not his father." Lin Zhou walked to the pile of apples on the ground, squatted down, and picked one up. There were only a few minor dents on the apple.
He looked up and stared directly into the proprietress's eyes: "You said these apples are twenty yuan each, and they're imported?"
"Of course!"
"Okay." Lin Zhou took out his phone from his pocket, opened a shopping app, and pointed the camera at the label on the apple. "I just checked, the wholesale price of this brand of apples online is 3.8 yuan per jin (500g). This one weighs at most half a jin, and the cost is less than 2 yuan. You're selling it for 20 yuan and claiming it's imported. That's price gouging."
The proprietress's face instantly changed: "You...you're talking nonsense! This is imported!"
"Whether they're imported or not, you know perfectly well." Lin Zhou stood up, his voice suddenly rising an octave. "Look at these apples on the ground. How many of them are actually damaged? Most of them just rolled down and got a little dusty! You're asking them to pay for everything? That's not protecting your rights, that's extortion!"
His voice grew louder and louder.
To his surprise, when he focused all his attention on confronting this unreasonable woman, the surrounding noise actually... became quieter.
His brain, like a highly efficient processor, automatically filtered out irrelevant noise, leaving only the conversation between him and the landlady.
"I'm extorting you? Which eye of yours saw me extorting you?" The proprietress also got agitated, her voice even louder than his.
"I saw it with both eyes!" Lin Zhou retorted, pointing to the apple on the ground. "Everyone, come and see! Be the judge! For such a small bump, you want hundreds of dollars in compensation? Is there any justice in this world? Business is about integrity; you're treating your customers like pigs to be slaughtered!"
His shout completely ignited the gossip-loving spirit of the onlookers.
"That's right, the proprietress always likes to shortchange customers."
"Last time I bought a watermelon from her, when I weighed it at home, it was almost a pound short!"
"This young man is right! We can't bully people like that!"
Public opinion reversed instantly.
The proprietress's face flushed red and then turned pale as everyone talked about her, and she was practically spitting fire in her eyes when she looked at Lin Zhou.
"Fine! You win!" The proprietress finally couldn't withstand the pressure, loosened the delivery boy's collar, glared fiercely at Lin Zhou, and said, "I'm just unlucky today!"
The storm has thus subsided.
The deliveryman thanked Lin Zhou profusely, and the onlookers also cast approving glances at him.
Lin Zhou stood there, panting heavily.
He felt like he had just finished a marathon, completely exhausted, but his mind was clearer and... quieter than ever before.
The tinnitus and auditory hallucinations that had tormented him for months vanished without a trace during that exhilarating argument.
The world has finally fallen silent.
He stood there blankly until Li Siyuan and Zhao Na walked over.
"How are you feeling?" Li Siyuan asked, his eyes full of inquiry.
"I..." Lin Zhou touched his ears and listened to the noise in the distance.
The sounds are still there, but they are no longer harsh noises; instead, they have become background noises that can be distinguished and ignored.
"I think I'm... all better," he murmured.
"Congratulations." Li Siyuan patted him on the shoulder. "You've mastered the essence of 'street cursing therapy.' Let's go, Dr. Wang is waiting for your follow-up appointment."