Future Pet Shop

Chapter 318: Chapter 318: Happy Fruit Garden

Shen Yibin left in the car with Hah’Er and Maphario, leaving only the four girls in the shop staring blankly at the pile of fruit. Shen Yibin had bought quite a lot of fruit this time. Could they possibly finish it all in one afternoon?

"Um... lychees, apples, loquats, and all that are easy enough, but how are we supposed to get the seeds from the strawberries?" Li Shiqing quickly thought of a new problem. Strawberry seeds were smaller than sesame seeds and stuck tightly to the skin. Trying to preserve the strawberry seeds completely seemed even harder than eating all this fruit!

"Let’s look it up online!" Xia Shixuan shrugged, took out her phone, and started searching. Luckily, she quickly found a suitable method. "Shi Qing, go to the kitchen and bring a small knife."

When Li Shiqing brought the small knife, Xia Shixuan first washed it, then carefully peeled the strawberry. She peeled it very thinly, trying her best not to damage the seeds on the skin. After finally finishing one strawberry, she popped the flesh into her mouth, took a sheet of A4 paper, and laid the peel flat on it.

"Okay, everyone do it like this. In a bit, we’ll put the strawberry peels out in the sun to dry. Once they’re completely dry, just give them a gentle rub with your hand, and the seeds will fall right off," Xia Shixuan said, sharing her newfound knowledge.

"Peeling a strawberry... this is a first for me!" Li Shiqing was amazed. ’Ever since I started working at this shop, I’ve really seen it all!’

So, for the entire afternoon, the four girls split into two groups. One group was downstairs attending to customers, while the other was on the upstairs terrace, eating fruit and peeling strawberries. They switched shifts every hour.

Peeling strawberries was a delicate task that required hand-eye coordination and intense concentration. By the time they finally finished processing all the strawberries, they were all a bit dizzy with blurred vision. However, what was even more disheartening was what came next: there was still a huge pile of fruit on the table waiting for them to eat.

So, when Shen Yibin finished up with the film crew’s shoot and returned to the shop, he saw the four girls lying on the terrace sofa, clutching their stomachs with their eyes rolled back, looking like they had lost the will to live. He was a little baffled. "Hey, what happened to you guys this afternoon?"

"Hmph!" Xie Nannan had no energy left. She couldn’t even be bothered to lift a hand, instead pointing to the paper cups on the table with her pouted lips. "It’s all your fault. We’ve finished all the fruit. The seeds are in the paper cups, and the strawberry seeds will be dry soon too!"

"Uh, don’t tell me you ate it all?" Shen Yibin was a bit speechless. "I have to say, you guys are way too earnest. If you couldn’t finish it, you could have just peeled and sliced the fruit, put it in the fridge, and I would have made a fruit salad or fruit congee when I got back tonight!" ’I bought a lot of fruit this morning. I hope they haven’t made themselves sick.’

"Ahhh! Why didn’t you say so earlier!" Xia Shixuan was so angry she was speechless and threw a pillow directly at him. Shen Yibin quickly dodged, and the pillow THUDDED against Hah’Er’s head.

"Alright, my bad. What do you guys want for dinner? I’ll go make it for you!" Shen Yibin quickly threw his hands up in surrender.

"Eat what?! I don’t think this fruit will be digested by tonight, or even by tomorrow morning! You can just eat by yourself!" Judging by their expressions, they were probably traumatized by fruit and wouldn’t dare to eat it again for quite some time.

So that evening, in a rare turn of events, the four girls didn’t come to the dinner table. Shen Yibin could only have dinner with Hah’Er and Maphario. During the meal, Maphario’s eyes were fixed on the paper cups on the table. It looked completely distracted, as if it couldn’t wait to finish eating and get to planting.

"Sigh, you can go get started once you’re done eating. Hah’Er and I will come help you after we finish," Shen Yibin said with a shake of his head, letting the little guy go on ahead.

Upon hearing this, Maphario immediately hopped up and knocked over the paper cups, spilling all sorts of seeds across the table. Luckily the table was large enough, or else Shen Yibin and Hah’Er probably wouldn’t have been able to eat in peace. By the time the two of them finished their meal, Maphario had just finished sorting the seeds. Shen Yibin took the seeds it had selected and led his two companions downstairs.

Apples, pomegranates, apricots, loquats, and the like were relatively easy. You just needed to bury the seeds in the soil, then fertilize and water them. Strawberries and lychees, however, were a bit more troublesome.

After planting those seeds, Maphario first placed the lychee seeds in a cup of water to soak. Shen Yibin took out his phone to check and found that lychee seeds needed to be soaked in water for a long time. You had to wait until the shell cracked and a small green kernel emerged before you could plant them in the soil, otherwise they wouldn’t sprout.

Strawberries were even more complicated. The seeds needed to be wrapped in gauze, soaked for 24 hours, and then refrigerated to break their dormancy. According to what he read online, this process could take as long as half a month. But Shen Yibin figured, ’Since all the previous vegetables and fruits grew so quickly, Maphario can probably wake the strawberry seeds up faster, right?’

Sure enough, just as he had imagined, the seeds had only been in the fridge for three days when Maphario urged Hah’Er to take them out. Maphario hadn’t been idle during these three days either. It had found a small pot, dug up some soil from the farm, and then mixed in some fertilizer to create a nutrient-rich soil.

Once the seeds were "awakened," Maphario soaked the nutrient-rich soil with water. An hour later, it carefully sprinkled the tiny strawberry seeds evenly over the soil, then gently spread a thin layer of earth to cover them. Finally, it sprinkled a little more water and had Hah’Er carry the small pot to the sunniest spot on the farm.

In the following days, after waking up and finishing its morning exercises, Maphario would come to check on the small pot. It would water the soil whenever it looked dry. One by one, tender sprouts emerged from the soil. Maphario continued to water them carefully until the strawberry seedlings had grown three or four leaves, at which point it finally transplanted them to a prepared plot of land on the farm.

By this time, the rest of the fruit seeds had already sprouted, and Maphario’s Happy Farm once again presented a vibrant, thriving scene.

’It really is a bit like the game Happy Farm. At the beginning, you plant things with short growth cycles, and after leveling up, you plant things with longer life cycles that can be harvested multiple times. I wonder what Maphario will plant in the future. It would be great if one day it started planting long-lived plants like walnut or ginkgo trees!’

Shen Yibin daydreamed for a moment, then his gaze fell upon the sign. ’Maybe it’s time to change Maphario’s "Happy Farm" to "Happy Fruit Garden"?’