Chapter 7: Chapter 7 The Village Market — Where the Sun Returns

Sunday. The scene of the countryside market in the foggy morning appears like a rustic and bustling picture.

The sound of bidding, the squawking of chickens and ducks, the loud honking of motorbikes mixed with the smell of fresh pork, the smell of vegetables and the smell of smoke rising from the sidewalk noodle shops.

Mộc Miên sat perched on the back seat of an old swallow-wing Honda Cub motorbike, following Hoàng Phong carrying two giant baskets of vegetables to the market. The morning dew still hung faintly on the road surface, the cold air seeping through the thin coat made Miên huddle tightly, hugging the two baskets of vegetables in front, with both hands clinging to the side of the car every time Phong drove over the protruding potholes on the red dirt road leading to Đá Bàn town.

Today is the first harvest of organic lettuce and bok choy from Mộc Trại (the name Miên herself gave to the garden). Miên was filled with enthusiasm, patting his chest and guaranteeing that he would sell all of these vegetables within an hour.

They chose a small corner at the end of the market to spread out a plastic tarp to display vegetables. Phong quietly arranged bunches of vegetables on the canvas, while Miên stood to smooth her hair, adjust her conical hat, clear her throat, and prepare to unleash her divine marketing skills.

"Here are clean, organic vegetables, ladies and gentlemen! No pesticides, no stimulants, cool to the intestines, beautiful skin, live a hundred years!" Miên raised her voice to preach.

A few housewives carrying baskets passed by, heard the strange noise and stopped to look down.

Miên was delighted and greeted warmly: "How many bunches will you take? My vegetables are grown naturally, 15 thousand per bunch."

The woman frowned, picked up a bunch of lettuce and flipped it over. "15 thousand per bunch? Half the price of Mrs. Tu's vegetables over there! Moreover, the leaves were also bitten by worms and had holes in them. When I brought them home and stir-fried them, before they could be put on the tray, they were crushed. If they were sold at such a high price, who would buy them?"

The woman smacked her lips, threw the vegetables on the tarpaulin, shook her head and walked away, going straight to Mrs. Tu's row of lush, green, spotless vegetables a few stalls away. Mrs. Tu's products sell like hot cakes, customers flock in droves.

Miên was stunned. In less than a minute, all the advertising statements she had rehearsed in her head all night suddenly became meaningless due to the indifferent reaction of the buyers. She looked at the woman's back as she disappeared towards the vegetable stall opposite, feeling like a bucket of cold water had just been poured directly into the enthusiasm that had been burning in her heart since early morning.

She did not give up and continued to advertise more loudly, explaining in detail the process of growing clean vegetables, the harmful effects of chemical pesticides, and beneficial microorganisms.

With each stop, Miên repeated her speech with undiminished enthusiasm, even though the results were mostly just shakes of the head or skeptical looks. An old lady even smiled and said, "This girl talks just like the multi-level marketing kids on TV", making Miên only laugh and not dare to argue back.

But in this rural market, the concept of "organic" is a luxurious language. People only like cheap vegetables with big, shiny leaves and no scratches. They don't care about the process, they just want the final product to look good on the dinner plate.

Two hours passed. The sun began to rise, shining harshly on the plastic tarpaulin. The lack of water in the vegetables began to wilt.

Miên sat down on a plastic chair, sweating profusely, her throat hoarse from pitching. In the giant basket of vegetables, they have only sold a few bunches to elderly ladies who bought them out of love.

A man driving a three-wheeled cart carrying bricks stopped to look, picked up a bunch of bok choy to look at it, then laughed and asked directly: "What magic does this vegetable have that makes it more expensive than meat?" Miên was speechless, not knowing how to answer in a way that was both truthful and convincing, so she had to laugh it off. A seemingly joking question made her think endlessly: if even a simple answer couldn't make people nod, then the "value" that she and Phong believed in, was it just an illusion of two outsiders to the rural market?

In the other row, Mrs. Tu had sold all the vegetable baskets and was waving her fan and counting the rustling money. Seeing that Miên was depressed, Mrs. Tu pursed her lips and said loudly:

"I told you, but you didn't listen. You should take trash like that and feed it to the pigs. The people here are very smart, no one has the money to buy ugly vegetables at exorbitant prices, student!"

Miên was so angry that she blushed and was about to stand up and argue, but Hoàng Phong put his hand on her shoulder to stop her.

He gave her a bottle of filtered water. "Drink some water. Your voice is hoarse."

"Why don't they understand?" Feeling overwhelmed, holding a bottle of water and gulping down. "Her vegetables are full of poison. Eating them will bring illness to your body. And our vegetables are so clean. You've worked hard to compost them for months. Just because of a few worm holes, do they criticize you?"

Phong thoughtfully looked at the basket of wilting vegetables. A feeling of disappointment rose in his heart, but he had expected this.

"At this point, the core value of a product is not always immediately visible to the naked eye," Phong said softly. "People buy by habit. It's very difficult to change the habits of an entire countryside with just a few sentences from your sales pitch. Perhaps... this model is really not suitable for retail here," Having said that, Phong rolled up his sleeves and started cleaning up the remaining vegetables. "Let's go home. We can take these vegetables home to pickle, or feed the chickens."

Miên looked at Phong's broad back, busy picking up bunches of vegetables. He didn't complain, he didn't get angry. His calmness made Miên feel a sense of sadness creeping in. This man poured countless drops of sweat into that barren land, only to receive people's pouts and criticism.

She looked down at Phong's slightly shaking hands as he put the wilted vegetables back into the basket, realizing that behind that inherent calmness, he was also gritting his teeth to swallow a big disappointment. Perhaps this wasn't the first time he had experienced this feeling since the day he started renovating the abandoned garden, he was just too used to hiding it inside.

"No! Don't feed the chickens!"

Miên suddenly stood up and grabbed the tarp from Phong's hand. Her eyes sparkled with a stubborn and determined fire just like when she threw the job application in boss Hà's face.

"The market here is not suitable? Then we will change the market! They say it's expensive? I will sell it for three times the price to people who really need it!"

Phong looked at her bewildered. "What are you going to do? Go back to the city to sell vegetables?"

"In the 4.0 era, it's not necessary to be in the city to reach city customers," Miên smirked, pulled out her smartphone from her pocket, and opened the camera app.

She squatted down, picked up a bunch of vegetables with holes in them, and carefully sprinkled some water on the leaves to create a dew effect. She adjusted the angle of the photo to capture the oblique sunlight shining through the deep holes, creating a photo that was both rustic and imbued with the breath of nature.

She took dozens of pictures over and over again, rotating them from all angles, sometimes even lying down on the dusty ground to catch the sunlight passing through each leaf according to the plan in her mind. Phong stood nearby, looking at the girl who was originally shy about mud and now not afraid to get dirty with a little market dust, an indescribable feeling arose in his heart, half surprise and half admiration.

*Split.*

"Engineer, pack it carefully and bring it home to me," Miên ordered, putting the phone in his pocket. "The Marketing game is now really starting."

On the way back, sitting behind Phong's car, Miên leaned her chin on his shoulder, her eyes still glued to the phone screen, her hand scrolling through each photo she had just taken to choose the most satisfactory one. The afternoon wind blew briskly, carrying the smell of road dust and straw from the fields on both sides. In her head, a series of ideas about content and brand stories kept flowing endlessly, as if a door that had been locked tightly for many months had suddenly burst open, revealing a whole sky of creativity that she thought she had lost forever.

"What are you thinking about, being so quiet?" Phong asked over his shoulder, his voice had to be raised a little higher to drown out the sound of the wind and the roar of the car engine.

"I'm thinking about a name," Miên replied, her eyes still not leaving the phone screen. "Country markets criticize vegetables with holes in them, so I will turn those holes into a characteristic, something people are proud to buy. City people don't need beautiful vegetables, they need a story to believe in." Phong didn't answer right away, just nodded slightly, eyes still focused on the road. In his heart, a new feeling was creeping in: curiosity mixed with hope, an emotion that during the three months of struggling alone in the wasteland, he had never dared to let himself fully feel. Perhaps, Ms. Tám's garden not only needed an engineer who knew how to read the pH index of the soil, but also needed someone who knew how to tell stories so that the land can speak.

When I got home, it was already afternoon. Miên quickly took out the charger and plugged in her phone, sat down on the porch, her fingers quickly gliding across the screen to sketch the first words for something much bigger than a sluggish market.