My Fish Pond Has One Very Loyal Customer novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: All of Them
Lu Qing hauls up a carp that cannot exist and a stranger on the bank says he will buy every fish; Lu Qing refuses, hands him a rod instead, and the man falls asleep in the chair.
Lu Qing stood thigh-deep in his grandfather's pond, hauling on a line, with a carp on the other end that was too big to exist.
It had been nine jin when it took the worm.
"Doubled, Host," said the Pond System in his head, pleased with itself, and now it was eighteen.
When he dragged it up the mud, a stranger was standing on the bank in a very expensive jacket.
"All of them," the stranger said.
Lu Qing held the carp in both arms.
Water ran off his shirt and down his legs and into boots that had a hole in the left toe.
"Sorry?" he said.
"The fish," said the man. "All of them."
The man was tall and probably thirty, with a closed face and a good haircut.
His shoes were clean, and he was standing in mud.
He took out his phone and held it up and waited for a number.
"Name a price," he said.
Lu Qing looked at the phone.
Nobody had bought a fish from this pond in a year.
The feed bill sat in the hut under a stone, and there was a second letter under that one.
"There are about nine hundred fish in this pond," he said.
"Fine," said the man.
"You want to take nine hundred fish home. In what?"
"I'll send trucks," said the man.
"What for? Are you opening a restaurant?"
The man said nothing.
He looked at the water, and not at Lu Qing, for a long time.
"Is there a reason?" Lu Qing asked.
"No," said the man.
Lu Qing set the carp in the keepnet, where it rolled one gold eye at him in disgust.
He wiped his hands on his shirt and thought about forty yuan a jin times nine hundred fish.
He thought about it properly, for a whole second, and his stomach turned over with wanting it.
Then he thought about his grandfather standing on the dam bank every morning, counting.
"No," said Lu Qing. "Fish need to stay in the water."
The man looked at him then.
"Triple," he said.
"It isn't about the price."
"Five times."
"You can't pay me more for something I'm not selling," said Lu Qing.
The man put his phone away.
He stood there a moment longer with his hands in his jacket pockets, and Lu Qing waited for him to turn and go.
It would have been the sensible end.
The man looked tired, though.
It was not the tiredness of one bad night.
His eyes had dark skin under them, and he had stopped at this pond in the middle of a very quiet Saturday and not moved.
"Do you fish?" Lu Qing heard himself say.
"No," said the man.
"Ever?"
"Never."
Lu Qing nodded slowly. "Then sit down."
He pointed at the folding chair on the east bank, the green canvas one that had been Grandpa's.
The man looked at the chair, and then at Lu Qing, and then he walked over and sat in it.
Lu Qing waded out, shook the water off, and put a rod into his hands.
It was an ordinary bamboo rod with a plain reel, the one Grandpa had given him at seven.
"Hold it here. Not there, that's the reel. Here."
The man held it in his fist, as far from the reel as it would go.
"Throw the line out. Gently. Let go when your arm is straight."
The man threw the line.
It went forty feet, which was more than Lu Qing had ever managed, and landed in the exact place the carp liked.
Then the float went under.
"Pull," said Lu Qing.
The man pulled, and the rod bent nearly double.
"Let it run. No, don't, wind it in. Wind it. Wind."
"I'm winding," said the man.
It was the first full sentence he had said that wasn't a number.
"Doubled, Host," said the Pond System, quite warmly. "Customer's catch added to your account."
The carp came up the mud in a long gold rush.
It was eleven jin, and then it was twenty-two.
The man looked at it without any expression.
"Is it always like this?" he asked.
"No," said Lu Qing, truthfully. "Not for a year."
He pulled the hook out, gently, and asked if the man wanted it back in the water.
"Yes."
"Good. That's the right answer."
He set the fish in the shallows, and it lay there a second before it went.
The man was still holding the rod.
"What do I do now?" he asked.
"Now you wait."
"For what?"
"Anything. Another fish. Nothing. That's the job." Lu Qing sat down on an upside-down bucket.
"My grandfather said the point of a pond is that it makes you stop."
It wasn't a thing he had planned to say to a stranger.
Lu Qing talked when he was nervous, and he had been nervous for twelve months, so by now he talked to the ducks.
He told the man about the pond, and the inlet, and the old weir.
He said the aunties claimed the fish tasted of mud before September.
He told him about Grandpa, who had died last winter, and about the accounting firm in Hangzhou he had walked out of in the spring.
He said, "Sorry, I'm talking," and the man did not answer.
Lu Qing looked up in the middle of a sentence about the frogs.
The man's eyes were closed.
His chin was down, and the rod was still in his hand, and his breathing had gone slow and long.
Lu Qing shut his mouth.
He sat on the bucket and did not move.
A duck went by, and he looked at it hard until it understood.
The float bobbed twice and settled.
Ten minutes went by, with the sun on the water and a stranger asleep in Grandpa's chair.
Then the man's head came up, fast, and his hand locked on the rod.
He looked at the sun, and the pond, and the bucket, and at Lu Qing.
"How long?" he asked.
"About ten minutes."
The man said nothing for a moment.
"That's the first time in years," he said.
He stood, and put the rod carefully in the grass, and took out his wallet.
He counted bills out onto the lid of the cooler and set a stone on them.
"That's for the fish," he said.
"I put it back."
"It's triple."
"You can't pay me for a fish I threw in the water," said Lu Qing.
"Saturday," said the man.
He walked up the path in his clean shoes, and did not look round.
Lu Qing counted the bills twice.
Under the stone was six thousand yuan, and the Pond System said, with great satisfaction, "Loyal customer registered."
Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend