A week later, Weng gave the new tricycle away

to a man with a young family

who was just starting out in the vegetable trade.

He also hired a mechanic to fix his neighbor Hui’s car,

which had been annoying everyone for months,

billowing smoke into bedrooms.

As the mechanic hammered on the new muffler,

Hui asked Weng why he was being so generous,

and why he had stopped working.

Weng told him that overnight he had become a billionaire

but Hui just walked away, laughing.

After a few weeks, however, people in the neighborhood

began to gossip.