I Earn Millions Farming Fruit, Yet My Girlfriend Scorns Me

1.

My family has farmed for three generations. Working the land was how we made our money.

Five years into dating my girlfriend, Moira Henson, I'd finally saved up a five-hundred-thousand-dollar engagement gift from selling fruit, and I took it to her family's house to propose.

Instead, she demanded I give up the family fields and go work at a factory.

"Phineas makes a hundred grand a year as a plant manager, and you're just some dirt-poor farmer. If word got out, where would that leave my face?"

"I really regret it. I should have been with him from the start!"

I looked at the gold bracelet on her wrist, the one I'd bought her with fruit money, and asked quietly,

"And if I'm not willing?"

"Then we break up!"

I picked the bank card with five hundred thousand on it back up off the table and slid it into my bag.

"Fine. Let's break up."

A plant manager's hundred grand a year? I'll pass.

After all, those precious fruit trees back home can bring in a million a month.

...

Moira stared at me like she couldn't believe it.

"Lucius Cox, do you even know what you're saying?"

I nodded.

"You want to break up, so we break up."

"That condition you set, I can't meet it."

She screamed at me, coming apart.

"I've been with you for five years, and you just throw out a breakup like it's nothing. You heartless dog!"

I pressed my lips together. All I felt was tired.

I'd been hearing that line for five whole years.

Being with Moira, honestly, was me punching above my weight.

We went to the same college, same major, same class.

Moira was pretty, always the darling of the class.

You couldn't count the guys who liked her on both hands.

I was one of them.

The most obsessed one, too.

Four years of college, I spent every day running her errands, being her wallet, until she finally relented and agreed to be with me.

After that, I treated her like she was the most precious thing in the world.

Whenever we bickered, she always said the same thing:

She was the only child of an educated city family, and I was just some farmer's kid from the countryside. Being with me, she was the one getting shortchanged.

I knew I didn't have much to offer, so I always gave in.

I figured all city kids were like that. Proud, unable to bend.

Until I saw Phineas.

Moira brought him up every time we went out.

Said he was a plant manager, young and already pulling a hundred grand a year, and I couldn't hold a candle to him.

Even on our dating anniversary, when I got up early to book a restaurant, buy a gift, and wait for her, all I got in the end was:

I'm spending it with Phineas, no time right now.

That was when it hit me.

As long as I was a farmer, she'd look down on me forever.

And I didn't want to keep living the life of a groveling dog.

"Lucius, if you walk out that door today, there's really no chance for us anymore!"

I gave her one look, turned, and walked out without a second's hesitation.

Behind me came Moira's curses, and her crying.

"Heartless dog, country hick"

Every insult in the book washed past my ears, over and over.

Yet inside, for once, I felt nothing move.

Back home, I picked up my tools out of habit, meaning to go up the back hill and clear the weeds around the fruit trees.

Just as I was bending down, a low sigh reached my ears.

"This one's really pathetic. Groveled his heart out, and still got dumped."

"Fine, fine. Since he cares about us so much, I'll tell him a secret."

My hands froze, and my muscles tensed without my meaning them to.

"Under the tree behind me, there's a thousand-year-old ginseng growing. Whether he can dig it up is up to him."

The words in my ears sent my heart racing.

I looked up on instinct, at that one fruit tree.

An ordinary tree. Nothing out of the ordinary at all.

But I didn't hesitate for a second. I grabbed my tools, went straight to the spot it named, and dug like my life depended on it.

In no time, the top of the ginseng poked through.

My grandfather had been something of a barefoot doctor in his younger years.

Being around him all those years, soaking it up, I'd picked up a fair bit about medicinal herbs.

The one in my hands was a thousand-year-old ginseng.

Worth over ten million!

"Well now, the kid's got it in him after all. Dug it right up. That ought to cheer him up a little."

Cheer me up? That didn't cover it.

The hand holding the ginseng wouldn't stop shaking, and in my head I was already planning to buy a house and invest.

All that pent-up frustration from Moira's insults dissolved completely.

With this much money, who'd want to go on being a groveling dog?

Wouldn't sleeping every night with my arms around all that cash feel a whole lot better?

2.

I set the ginseng carefully to one side, my hands never stopping their work on the weeds.

By the time the last of them was cleared, a pleased little laugh drifted past my ear.

"That feels good. Next time there's a chance like this to strike it rich, maybe I'll let him in on a bit more."

I could hardly contain my joy. I scooped up my treasure of a ginseng, carried it home, and locked it away in the cabinet.

Ever since last year, when I'd been pulling weeds around my family's fruit trees, I'd made an accidental discovery: I could hear the voices of the fruit.

And whenever they spoke, they let slip the hiding place of some rare, valuable herb.

Worth tens of thousands, then hundreds of thousands, and now into the millions.

I had never breathed a word of it to anyone, and I'd never dared use the money for anything.

My family had raised me from childhood to be honest and to keep to my place.

So I only locked the herbs away at home, saving them for a rainy day.

But now, with Moira's mocking words circling in my head, I understood something.

Being honest and knowing your place got you nowhere.

In this world, money was the only thing that counted.

That night I sat clutching the cabinet where the herbs were hidden, and it was a long time before I could close my eyes.

Early the next morning, I took one of the herbs, one worth tens of thousands, to the pawnshop.

The owner took one glance and snatched it up in a rush.

"Where did you get this? I'll give you a hundred thousand. Will you sell it to me?"

My eyes narrowed.

A hundred thousand.

More than I'd expected.

I nodded on the spot.

Once the money was counted out, I wrapped it up carefully in a cloth, tucked it into the bag I carried, and turned to leave. Then a shrill voice cut in behind me.

"Lucius? What are you doing here?"

I turned around.

Moira had her arm hooked through Phineas Gilbert's, the two of them pressed close together.

The moment she noticed me looking, she gripped him tighter.

Her eyes raked over me, suspicious, up and down.

"This is a shop for expensive medicine. What could you possibly be doing here?"

The owner had been listening, and, afraid of a scene, he hurried over.

"This gentleman came to sell something."

"I just came to look. Is that a problem?"

I cut him off and shot him a warning look.

Moira couldn't find out yet that the herbs were worth anything.

The owner was a shrewd man.

He caught my meaning and said nothing more.

Moira let out a scornful laugh.

"You? Sell something?"

"Do you have any idea how much the things in this shop cost? Can you not stand here embarrassing yourself?"

My face went cold.

Ever since we'd gotten together, it seemed I'd never been anything but an embarrassment in Moira's mouth.

I didn't understand it.

If she really found me so shameful, why had she agreed to be with me in the first place?

"We've already broken up. Wherever I want to go is none of your business."

Moira's face flushed a deep red.

She stared at me in disbelief, her voice climbing higher.

"Lucius, how dare you talk back to me!"

The other customers in the shop turned their eyes on the two of us.

I looked at her and felt, for the first time, plain disgust.

Not wanting to stand there making a spectacle any longer, I tucked the money away carefully, brushed past her, and headed straight for the door.

Moira had never been treated like that by me.

She threw out a hand, her long nails digging straight into my flesh, sharp enough that I sucked in a breath.

She didn't seem to feel a thing. If anything, she pressed harder.

"I'm not finished talking, so where do you think you're going!"

I couldn't take it. I wrenched her hand off me.

In the struggle, the cloth wrapped around the money slipped from my pocket.

A hundred thousand in bills went scattering across the floor.

I froze for a second, then dropped into a crouch to gather it up.

Moira stepped closer and stamped her foot down on my hand.

"Lucius. That's a lot of money. Where did you get it?"

Around us, the stares turned hungry.

A hundred grand. Not a fortune, but far from small change either.

I'd kept it tucked close on purpose, exactly so no one would notice.

And now Moira had gone and shaken it out into the open.

"I'm talking to you. Are you deaf?"

Her voice kept drilling into me.

Beside her, Gilbert's smug expression drained away the moment he saw the money.

Which made sense. Even a big plant manager like him only pulled in a bit over a hundred thousand a year.

"Where did you get all this?"

Gilbert stepped forward and looked down at me from above.

The air he carried from all those years playing petty boss at the factory came seeping out, pressing down on me bit by bit.

My heart gave an instinctive flinch.

Then, once it registered, the taste in my mouth turned bitter.

That reflex was Moira's doing too.

Back when she first met Gilbert, she was always running me down in front of him.

Once, on Gilbert's birthday, to win him over, Moira faked being drunk at midnight and called me over.

By the time I got there, Gilbert's men had me cornered, and I was forced to down a whole bottle of high-proof whiskey.

And that wasn't enough.

To feed Gilbert's ego, Moira demanded that I kneel on the ground and call him big brother.

I refused, so she told the others to hold my head down and force me.

That left a small scar on me. It was the first time Moira and I ever had a real, blazing fight, and for a moment I thought about walking away for good.

When she found out, she did something she almost never didshe came to my place, cried in front of me, apologized over and over.

She said:

I only wanted you to look good in front of Gilbert, so he'd give you a hand, help you get out of this poor little place.

Every word, all of it framed as if she'd been thinking of me.

She cried so pitifully.

And with my head full of that lovesick fog, in the end I forgave her.

But back then it never once occurred to me.

Give in once, and you hand people a thousand more chances to trample your dignity.

That Moira could treat me like this today

when it came down to it, I'd brought it on myself.

But I would never give her that chance again.

I ignored what they were saying and picked the bills up off the ground, one by one, stuffing them back into my pocket.

The pharmacy owner couldn't stand to watch, and since I was a big customer, he came over and handed me a tube of ointment.

"Put some on. The cut's going to get infected otherwise."

I lowered my head and only then saw that my hand was already swollen and red.

All thanks to Moira.

"Lucius, if you don't dare answer me, it wouldn't be because you stole this money, would it?"

I drew a deep breath and turned to face her.

After one thing on top of another, I understoodif I didn't set this straight today, I wasn't getting out of here.

I looked at her and said, cold and flat,

"Where my money comes from is none of your business. You're overstepping quite a bit, aren't you?"

"And another thingyou did this to my hand. I could call the police. I'm advising you to keep your distance and stop pushing me."

Moira froze.

My expression today clearly wasn't anything she'd expected.

She scanned me up and down, and a flash of panic shot through her eyes.

"Lucius, back then when you said we were breaking upyou meant it?"

"What did you think? Did you really imagine I still had all this time to keep circling around you, Miss Henson?"

I curled my lip in a sneer.

"Impossible!"

Moira's voice climbed louder.

"You used to fawn over me every single day! There's no way you'd break up just like that. Let me tell you, playing hard to get doesn't work on me!"

My gaze dropped to her arm, still trying to stay looped through Gilbert's, and the mockery in my eyes went thicker.

I honestly didn't get it.

How she could be so shameless, playing two men at once without a shred of guilt.

Moira caught where I was looking, and her face turned uneasy.

Without thinking, she let go of Gilbert's arm.

Gilbert shot her a glance but said nothing.

Out in public, it seemed they still wanted to save a little face.

After all, Gilbert had been married a long time nowhis kid was already three.

The old me was blinded by love. Even knowing all this was wrong, I never once exposed it in front of anyone.

Even when everyone assumed I was the third party, I never said a word.

But now, I was done holding it in.

She'd lost any right to make me keep protecting her.

"Moira, you've hung off other men right in front of me, more than once. If I don't break up with you, what am I supposed to dokeep you around for the holidays?"

4.

Moira's face went red in an instant.

Gilbert stepped sideways too, putting distance between them.

He shot me a warning glare.

"Lucius, don't go making things up! I only think of Moira as a little sister."

Moira jumped in the second he said it.

"A dirty mind sees dirt everywhere."

I stared straight at her.

"Am I really the one making things up?"

Moira looked uneasy.

"Lucius, what's that supposed to mean?"

I didn't look at her.

Ever since the scene had started, more and more onlookers had gathered, and some had even taken out their phones to film.

I wandered over to one of them, pulled her aside, and turned my phone screen toward her.

"Miss, I saw you filming just now. Might as well get this on camera too."

She looked startled at the tug.

Then she read what was on my screen, her eyes went wide, and the way she looked at Moira turned to disgust.

"Damn, so this whole time you've been the one getting cheated on!"

"What kind of nerve does this woman have, dragging the guy she's cheating with right in front of you?"

The color drained from Moira's face.

She lunged forward and snatched the phone out of my hand.

"Lucius, what did you show them?"

"Nothing. Just a photo of you passed out drunk, lying in your dear Gilbert's arms."

The crowd sucked in a breath.

The looks turned on me grew more and more sympathetic.

"And here I thought this guy was the one who'd wronged her. Turns out..."

"How does she have the nerve to cheat and then come make a scene in front of the guy she's with? Disgusting."

"Why is someone like that even allowed in the shop? Boss, throw them out before they dirty the whole place."

The herb-shop owner listened to all this, then walked over to the two of them, his face cold.

"You two had better go. My shop is small. There's no room for you here."

Moira's chest went tight.

Countless cameras were trained on her and Gilbert's faces.

She scrambled to hide behind Gilbert.

"Stop filming! I didn't, quit spouting nonsense here."

I stood quietly off to the side.

There was more than one photo on my phone.

They were from the old days, back when we all hung out together. My friends couldn't stand watching me fawn over Moira, so they'd snapped these on the sly and sent them to me.

They'd wanted me to see her for what she was.

It had taken me this long to understand why.

But at least I'd never deleted them.

And now they'd finally come in handy.

Moira's eyes went red.

After the scene I'd made, it finally sank in for her that I really was breaking up.

"Lucius, you'll regret this! When that day comes, even if you beg me, I won't spare you a single glance."

With that, she grabbed Gilbert and left in disgrace.

Watching them go, my chest clenched hard.

All those years I'd poured into it couldn't just vanish in a moment.

But there was no going back.

Once Gilbert was gone, the crowd in the shop drifted apart.

The owner clapped me on the shoulder.

"Kid, you're still young. No need to break your heart over something like this."

I nodded.

That was true.

I was still young.

At most, all of it had been trial and error for me.

I had plenty of chances to start over.

"Thanks, boss. Next time you've got something good, I'll be back to find you."