When the aroma of sesame from Pingkang Ward mixed with tears and drifted into Zhang Yifan’s nose, he was shaking his abacus beads while negotiating with a Persian merchant for black pepper. Right beneath the apricot tree at the corner of the alley, a young girl with double buns was squatting beside a stove, wiping away her tears. Her blue-and-white apron was stained with cheese sauce, and half a golden pastry had fallen from her sleeve.
"Little maiden, this pastry," he said, flicking the edge of the pastry with an abacus bead, "its crust could scratch my abacus beads, yet the cheese is so heavy it sticks to the teeth—are you making some kind of 'teeth-grinding weapon'?"
The girl looked up, teardrops hanging on her eyelashes like a cluster of little grapes. "Brother Fan is teasing me again! Boss Liu at Apricot Blossom Tower says that barbarian cheese mixed with sesame is 'upsetting the stomachs of the Central Plains'!"
Chapter 143