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?