It began with persimmons.
This was not a moral failure so much as a natural consequence of Old Yan's display being at eye level and the persimmons being the colour they were in autumn and Wei Liang and Hao Jin having finished their lunch before noon and finding the afternoon long.
Old Yan was a vendor of thirty years' experience and had a practised ability to conduct two conversations simultaneously while never losing track of what was happening within five feet of his stall. This ability had been developed specifically because of children, who constituted the primary theft risk at most outdoor markets and who operated on the assumption that adult attention was narrower than it was.
He saw Wei Liang take a persimmon. He saw it happen the same moment it happened, which was the same moment Wei Liang thought he wasn't being watched, which was a miscalculation based on incomplete data.
"Hey," Old Yan said.
Wei Liang stopped. He turned around. Hao Jin, who had served as lookout and had manifestly failed at this function, went very still in a way that he apparently believed made him less visible.
Old Yan looked at the persimmon in Wei Liang's hand. Wei Liang looked at Old Yan. There was a moment.
"Would you like to explain yourself?" Old Yan said. He had asked this question to many children over thirty years. He expected, as usual, either a run or a lie of insufficient quality.
What he got was something else.
"The persimmons on the left side of the display have been sitting in the same position for three days," Wei Liang said. He had been watching Old Yan's stall for some time and had opinions. "The sun hits them directly in the afternoon. They were going to go soft. I was actually doing you a favour by removing them from the display and consuming them before they could damage your reputation for quality." He held up the persimmon. "This is the one most at risk. You can see the texture there, on the side facing the sun."
Old Yan stared at him. This was, technically, a lie. The persimmons were fine. The sun point was not entirely invented, but it was exaggerated well past the threshold of honesty into the territory of creative reconstruction.
What Old Yan found himself dealing with was the specific phenomenon of a lie delivered with such internal consistency and evident investment that evaluating it required more mental energy than simply being slightly charmed by it.
"How old are you?" he said.
"Seven," said Wei Liang.
"And you noticed the sun angle."
"I notice a lot of things," Wei Liang said. This was true and, in context, entirely self-serving.
Old Yan looked at him for another moment. He looked at Hao Jin, who was still doing the thing where he was pretending to be less present than he was. He looked at the persimmon.
"Pay for it," he said. "Go."
"I don't have money," Wei Liang said.
"Then give it back."
Wei Liang gave it back. He had eaten approximately one-third of it. Old Yan put it back on the display with the dignity of a man pretending this was normal.
"If you want a persimmon," Old Yan said, "come and talk to me. I throw away the ones that go soft. There is no need for this." He said it with his back turned, which was his way of delivering a kindness while maintaining the position that it was not one.
The second time was three weeks later, autumn deeper, the persimmons at their best. Wei Liang arrived with a new story — the fruit-blight, the river tradition, Old Yan's grandfather, the heroic death by persimmon — which he delivered with such commitment that Old Yan actually stopped what he was doing to listen to it. The story was structurally excellent. It had a beginning, a middle, and a conclusion that was internally consistent even while being comprehensively false.
"That is an excellent lie," Old Yan said when it was done.
"Thank you," said Wei Liang.
"I am giving you the persimmon because the lie deserved it," Old Yan said. "Not because it worked." He gave Hao Jin one too, on the grounds that the lookout function, however poorly executed, indicated an attempt. "You have a future in commerce or crime," he told Wei Liang.
"Not cultivation?" Wei Liang asked.
Something moved across Old Yan's face. Not pity — something more careful than pity.
"Eat your persimmon," he said.
The third time, Old Yan was waiting with two persimmons already picked when Wei Liang arrived. He held them out. "Save the story for someone new," he said. "But tell it to me anyway."
Wei Liang told him a story about a river spirit with a persimmon addiction. It was not his best work. Old Yan listened to it and gave him the persimmon. They were, without ever saying so, something to each other — an ongoing transaction of charm for fruit that had long since ceased to be about fruit.
Hao Jin ate his persimmon and concluded, correctly, that there were advantages to knowing Wei Liang that he had not fully anticipated.