Setting Up Stalls – Chapter 230

There’s Still a Bit Left at the Bottom

In response to Sun Miao’s words, the student crowd answered her with seven mouths and eight tongues¹:

“Yeah! We’ve been waiting for so long!”

“It’s so hot today. If it weren’t for a bite of this, you think I’d be standing here in line?!”

“Boss Sun, you really kept us waiting!”

Amidst all this miscellaneous chatter, the voice of the person first in line was particularly distinct:

“Isn’t that the truth! It’s been two months. Long time no see, Boss-jiejie!” For some reason, as the group admin of their “Find Sun Miao’s Stall” chat group spoke, she did so gnashing her teeth with the air of a beef pancake toxic solo. Perhaps after lining up for Sun Miao’s food for long enough, this sort of mournful aura just starts to emerge.

It couldn’t be helped. No one could line up for Sun Miao’s snacks without a bit of resentment.

Faced with such comments, Sun Miao subconsciously had to ignore them. And she spoke up directly, changing the subject, “Hey, no need to rush. Let me get the stall set up first, or no one will be able to eat.”

Hearing this, the students quieted down and made space for Sun Miao to set up her stall. Sun Miao’s food cart had a sort of all-in-one, molded feel to it. When attached to the electric scooter, it looked more like a shipping container. She first took down the folding table and chairs hanging from the back of the cart and walked to the side to set them up.

Then she returned to the cart and opened the stainless steel panels on its left and right sides. The side closer to the road pulled forward, with support legs underneath that braced against the edge of the cart to form a small flat surface. The upper panel folded up, opening up the space completely.

On the other side, where Sun Miao usually worked, she did the same, folding up the top and bottom panels. But near the driver’s seat, a small tabletop extended out, giving Sun Miao a place to eat and so on.

Sun Miao crouched down again and took out things like rags, wet wipes, and disinfectant spray from a thin drawer. She first cleaned the cart’s entire countertop, then switched to a new rag and went over to the folding table and chairs she’d set up, carefully wiping them all down before returning.

Sun Miao found a tool box in a drawer, opened it, and put on a food-grade mask—the kind with a transparent panel—and then put on gloves. When making certain dishes before, Sun Miao didn’t wear gloves, as it would interfere with her work.

But for things that didn’t require much dexterity, Sun Miao would usually wear gloves to ensure food safety.

Because this time the snack had to be kept iced, the System had specially reduced the countertop to half its usual size, with the other half being a freezer. Sun Miao placed the take-out containers on the countertop, put her little fluorescent-marker blackboard at the very front, and announced that business was open.

Even though not all the students had come, they were very clear on this signal. After all, Sun Miao had bought the little blackboard back when she was still selling changfen to them.

The group admin was first. She took a step forward, saw the words “Limit one per person” written on it, and her teeth itched with hatred. “Give me one.” But it couldn’t be helped. No matter how much she hated it, she still had to eat.

Sun Miao first asked her usual question, about menstruation or pregnancy and so on. To be honest, this question could be a bit offensive sometimes, especially when the young lady in front of her was so young—just a student, you know? Asking about pregnancy… she was lucky they didn’t just think she was a psycho.

But then again, plenty of people run off to have kids halfway through college these days, so being pregnant wasn’t that strange.

The group admin had watched Pear’s livestream yesterday, so she knew why Sun Miao was asking. She answered directly, “Neither. And my stomach is fine, no need to worry.”

After speaking, she scanned the code and paid 15. Sun Miao nodded, deftly opening the freezer door, grabbing a disposable container and a large ladle nearby. She first scooped up a ladle of huaihua fen, then dug out some brown sugar shaved ice from another large tub.

The bowl, originally full of the brilliant yellow huaihua fen, now looked even better with the addition of the brown sugar shaved ice.

“To go or for here?”

“For here.”

Sun Miao placed a spoon in the bowl and handed it to the group admin across from her. The group admin took the huaihua fen, walked to the side, gave it a stir with her spoon, and started to eat.

Starting from two-thirty this afternoon, there wasn’t much sun over here. The sky was gloomy, with clouds drifting by. But it was September 3rd, after all, and the sweltering heat was hard to shake. After waiting by the roadside for so long, the group admin was already slick with sweat.

But now, one mouthful of the huaihua fen made her feel that the long wait had been worth it. With a single bite, the summer heat instantly dissipated. The cool sensation seeped out from every pore, and even her somewhat restless and impatient heart grew calm.

Just as she was marveling at how good the huaihua fen was, some of her classmates started speaking a little too bluntly.

“This is so damn good! What was all that other huaihua fen I’ve eaten before? It was all shit! This is the real huaihua fen!”

“Waaaah, it’s too good, it’s really too good. With this bowl of huaihua fen in my belly, I feel like a cold corpse!”

People in the know understood they were just describing how delicious the huaihua fen was, but anyone who didn’t would just think they were sick in the head. As soon as these words were out, the tightly packed crowd loosened up a bit, taking a slight step back. The group admin took a deep breath and decided to ignore them.

After she finished her bowl of huaihua fen and threw the trash into the large bin Sun Miao had placed nearby, she didn’t forget to lay down a challenge to Sun Miao.

“We’ll find you again next time! Don’t get too smug!”

She really said this with a tone of gnashing her teeth. The thought of Sun Miao secretly selling the three-piece fried skewer set while they were on summer break especially made her teeth itch with anger.

That wasn’t just any snack, that was the three-piece fried skewer set! Students are famous for loving fried food, and this was fried starch sausage, no less! As everyone knows, the status of starch sausage among fried skewers is simply unshakable. If you did a survey, even if starch sausage didn’t rank first, it would absolutely not fall out of the top three.

With that kind of ranking, it’d be weird not to want some!

The hateful thing was, Boss Sun had secretly sold fried starch sausage during their summer break!

If this can be tolerated, what cannot be tolerated²? They could only… line up more and more to make up for the snacks they’d missed out on. Damn it! Classes start tomorrow. Good thing I don’t have class the day after tomorrow in the afternoon. I’ll charge right over.

Sun Miao watched the group admin leave in a huff and could only sigh with emotion: If students have this kind of perseverance and unremitting willpower for eating snacks, their studies definitely can’t be that bad. Otherwise, how could they get into a junior college³ while I could only get into a technical school⁴?

After her moment of reflection, Sun Miao continued selling huaihua fen.

There were many, many more people today than yesterday, to the point that Sun Miao never stopped. She didn’t have much of an impression of the customers before her; right now, she was just an assembly-line worker. Only when a few more familiar people spoke would she respond.

She finally managed to sell all the huaihua fen in the large tub, with only a little brown sugar shaved ice left. Sun Miao looked up and said to the remaining people in line, “Sorry, everyone, it’s all sold out. Please come back and line up next time.”

The customer right in front of her had sharp eyes, though, and immediately said, “That’s not right, Boss Sun. I see you’ve still got a bit left at the bottom of your other tub.”

Sun Miao froze. “Ah… that, that’s the brown sugar shaved ice for topping. The huaihua fen is already sold out.”

“Then you can just sell me the brown sugar shaved ice.”

Sun Miao explained, “You can’t eat this by itself. Without the huaihua fen to balance it, it’s way too sweet. It’s just a topping.”

“It’s fine, just sell it to me. I’ll make more shaved ice at home and pour this on top. I’ve been in line for so long, what’s the harm in selling it to me?”

Sun Miao thought for a moment before replying, “Alright, well, let me see… I’ll sell the brown sugar shaved ice as a topping, then. Five yuan a serving, but there isn’t much left.”

The customer didn’t care how much it cost; as long as there was something to eat, it was fine. The customer immediately nodded. “Okay, okay, okay, sell it to me.” He didn’t even give Sun Miao a chance to back out, quickly scanning the code to pay. Sun Miao took out a small bowl, scooped some brown sugar shaved ice into it for him, and dutifully packed it up.

But as it turned out, the moment this customer received the brown sugar shaved ice, he ran to the side, couldn’t hold back, and immediately opened it and started eating with a spoon. Sun Miao’s eyes went wide. At that moment, she truly felt her customer was guilty of the great “hunger”-est crime⁵.

“No! Sir, wait, eating it plain is really sweet!”

The man took his spoon and put the brown sugar shaved ice directly into his mouth. The next moment, the customer shivered, but a look of satisfaction appeared on his face. He shivered because the shaved ice was truly icy. The huaihua fen was in iced water, so the shaved ice was inevitably diluted a lot when mixed in. But shaved ice is just ice. Even though summer wasn’t over and the temperature was still high, how could a spoonful of pure shaved ice not make you shiver?

But the customer was still perfectly content. The brown sugar shaved ice was sweet, a sweetness that reached the bottom of his heart, but it wasn’t as excessively sweet as Sun Miao had said. The sweetness was balanced by the ice itself. It tasted sweeter than the huaihua fen, but it was still within a tolerable range for most people. Besides, some people just love sweet things, like the customer right in front of her.

The customer ate the shaved ice with satisfaction, and the people behind him who hadn’t been able to buy any followed his example, each taking a bit of brown sugar shaved ice to go.

This customer even shared his secret recipe in the group chat:

【I cordially invite everyone who likes sweets to try some of the brown sugar shaved ice by itself. It’s seriously so good. That sweetness goes straight to your heart. It’s delightful. I can’t imagine how delicious it would be if you made a separate fruit shaved ice, drizzled this brown sugar shaved ice on top, and added a little fruit jam.】

This secret recipe was also seen by Su Ruixi. She was a fast mover, too. Before Sun Miao got back, she had already taken Sun Miao’s shaved ice machine and made a fruit shaved ice. When Sun Miao returned, she presented the watermelon shaved ice she’d made as if it were a treasure.

Sun Miao had some brown sugar left at home, and she hadn’t hidden the process from Su Ruixi, so she understood all the steps.

It’s just… Su Ruixi was probably just like Shen Yiqiu—truly without any talent for cooking. Su Ruixi had mentioned before that both her maternal and paternal grandmothers were great cooks, but somewhere along the genetic line, something went wrong. She and her own mother had somehow not inherited a single drop of that talent.

So the watermelon shaved ice Su Ruixi made was also a bit… hmm, deserving of patient inquiry⁶.

Forgive Sun Miao for not knowing many idioms, but after thinking it over and over, this was the only one that fit the scene when she saw the shaved ice. At first glance, it seemed like there shouldn’t be a problem, but the more she looked at it, the more she felt that something was wrong everywhere.

---

---