The villagers craned their necks, staring at the screen; some even stood on tiptoe. “Now … can we go?”
The village chief rubbed his hands and nodded repeatedly, “Of course, of course! Lora really is a big internet celebrity—so straightforward!”
I helped my parents walk out and my team quietly followed.
Behind us, villagers cheered and someone shouted, “We’re rich!”
Back in our large apartment in the city center, my mom was still wiping her tears, “That’s 28.000 dollars…”
I stood in front of the floor‑to‑ceiling window, looking at the stream of headlights below. “Mom, don’t worry. The way they took that money… I’ll make them spit it back out the same way.”
I gave my team half a month off. Their salaries stayed the same and I even transferred an extra seven thousand dollars to each of them as a travel fund.
Two months later, the second batch of mangoes in Leverant Village ripened. The village chief came straight to my company, shouting the moment he walked in, “Lora, livestream for a few days and help us sell this new batch of mangoes! This time you have to sell them for 2,82 dollars a pound. You have a lot of fans, so you can definitely sell them!”
Smiling, I opened a drawer and handed him the contract. “Mr. Brown, I now have 30 million fans. The commission for promoting one batch is 70,000 dollars—payment first, livestream later.”
