Episode 1: I Ate 3 Boxes of Cherries and Made the Buffet Owner Cry
Lin Xiaoman makes the all-you-can-eat fruit shop owner cry again.
It's 8 PM at the most popular fruit buffet near the university town. The owner stares at the twenty empty fruit boxes and the mountain of peels and pits in front of him, his face turning bright green.
The girl in front of him looks tiny and harmless, with a round face that glows like porcelain and big black eyes like fresh grapes. But she's been sitting here since 5 PM, eating nonstop for three whole hours.
She devoured three boxes of premium Chilean cherries, spitting pits into two full boxes. She ate two entire baskets of cream strawberries, picking off all the stems without ever choking. Mangoes, Muscat grapes, mangosteens, pineapples, seedless watermelons—she eats every expensive, fresh fruit in the shop like she's drinking water. The pile of waste is taller than she is.
All the other customers have stopped eating. They crowd around her, filming with their phones, whispering in absolute shock.
"Holy s**t, is she a bottomless pit? Three boxes of cherries! I get full after eating a pound!"
"What's in her stomach? A pocket dimension? Her waist is thinner than my wrist, how does she fit all that?"
"Did you notice? She hasn't eaten a single bite of anything else, not even a sip of water. Is that humanly possible?"
The owner walks over with a crying face, holding a cigarette, his hands shaking so bad he can barely light it. "Miss, I'm begging you. Please stop eating. I charge 300 worth of fruit. I'm a small business, I can't afford this!"
Lin Xiaoman swallows the last bite of mangosteen, wipes her mouth, and smiles sheepishly. "Oh? I'm so sorry, boss. I'm still hungry. Should I pay you an extra $30?"
She's telling the truth. She's not even close to full.
For Lin Xiaoman, fruit isn't a snack—it's food.
For as long as she can remember, she can't eat rice, noodles, meat, or eggs. The second any of those touch her stomach, she throws up violently. Only fruit feels natural to her. The more she eats, the more energetic she feels, the healthier she gets.
Other kids eat a bowl of rice and an egg for a meal. She eats half a basket of tangerines, a bunch of bananas, and a whole watermelon to fill up.
Her parents have taken her to hospitals all over the country. She's had countless endoscopies, every part of her body checked. The results? She's healthier than an Olympic athlete. All her vitals are perfect. The doctors can only give one conclusion: pica, born with it.
Only Lin Xiaoman knows it's not pica.
She not only can eat a lot—she has no side effects. At twenty years old, she's never been sick. Not even a cold or a fever. If she cuts her finger deep enough to see bone, it heals completely in ten minutes without a scar. She looks thin, but she can carry two crates of fruit like it's nothing. She runs the 800-meter dash without breaking a sweat, and can carry a fainted classmate back to the dormitory afterward.
The craziest part? She eats boxes and baskets of fruit every day, but she never gains weight. Her skin glows, her hair is shiny, and she's never had a pimple. She's a walking fruit spirit.
Only her parents and her three roommates know this secret.
Today is her roommate Zhang Jiajia's birthday. The four of them came to celebrate at the fruit buffet. Zhang Jiajia and the other two gave up after half an hour, lying on the chairs and rubbing their stomachs. Only Lin Xiaoman kept eating, from opening to closing, and broke the owner completely.
On the way back to the dormitory, Zhang Jiajia wraps her arm around Lin Xiaoman's, looking defeated. "Xiaoman, I really don't get it. What is your stomach made of? Three boxes of cherries and two baskets of strawberries? How?"
Another roommate Li Meng chimes in. "Yeah! You must have been a fruit spirit in your past life. Other spirits absorb human essence—you absorb fruit essence, right?"
Lin Xiaoman laughs and brushes it off, but her heart skips a beat. She's heard that a million times. She's even wondered it herself. Am I really normal?
Just as they get back to the dormitory, her phone rings. It's her mom, and her voice is panicked, like she's been crying.
"Xiaoman, come home right now! Your grandmother is dying. She insists on seeing you one last time. She says she has something huge to tell you—something that will change your life forever."
Lin Xiaoman's mind goes blank.
