Chapter 46: Trouble at the Shopping Center

Chapter 46: Chapter 46: Trouble at the Shopping Center

At half past eleven, LS sent a message:

[Two o’clock this afternoon, private room 7 at the Luxe Morsel.]

Liam raised an eyebrow.

Luxe Morsel, wasn’t that Daniel’s restaurant?

Seeing something not quite right in Liam’s face, Daniel blinked and asked:

"What is it?"

Liam smiled: "Nothing. It’s only that I’m meeting an acquaintance this afternoon, and it turns out the place he chose happens to be your restaurant..."

Daniel: "... What a coincidence. Then don’t bother renting a hotel, just use my rest room."

Liam shook his head: "No need. I’m going to buy a few household things, and order a glass cabinet for my sister while I’m at it." 𝐟𝗿𝐞𝚎𝚠𝐞𝚋𝕟𝐨𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝕔𝕠𝚖

Daniel said at once: "The glass cabinets on the market are all fired from ordinary sand, the quality isn’t very good. Let me have Daddy make you a meteorite glass one."

Liam refused: "Meteorite glass is for fitting out military battleships, it’s only a cabinet, there’s no need to spend that much. Oh, do you want to come with me?"

Daniel thought about it. He didn’t have to get straight back to work after lunch anyway, so a stroll would be fine.

So the two Omegas went to the shopping center. Liam didn’t buy a great deal, mostly cooking seasonings and personal household items, two crates of low-grade nutrient fluid with two of high-grade. Besides that he bought a little low-grade and high-grade medicine, five energy lamps, five electric guns, two hundred sets of stretch climate-control clothing.

All of it things to trade in the Trading Hall.

Watching him buy this heap of odds and ends, the look on Daniel’s face was hard to describe. To him, everything Liam was buying was rubbish. Take the climate-control clothing. It was stock from ten years ago, the shopping center clearing it at a loss for 948 silver stars a set, buy one get one free.

"Um... are you very short of money?" Daniel asked hesitantly, regretting it the moment it was out.

Liam was the man who had refused gifts running to a hundred million silver stars online, so how could he be short of money?

Yet no sooner had he thought it than Liam answered straight away: "That’s right, I’m extremely short of money at the moment. In the next three years I have to earn 750 billion silver stars."

Daniel’s mouth fell open. The Masons were very rich, but 750 billion silver stars was an enormous figure, and three years of his family’s trading might not gather that much!

He choked for a long while before he managed to force out a comment: "Your ambition... is magnificent."

Liam nodded: "You think so too, don’t you? That’s what I think. And yet somebody still tells me my vision is narrow."

Daniel was blank: "Who would be that arrogant."

Liam laughed without answering, while the blue cat had hold of his head, gnawing at it with all its might. Speak ill of me, would you? I’ll gnaw you to death!

Display cabinets were sold on the sixth floor of the shopping center. Having ordered a U-shaped glass cabinet of five tiers with ten compartments to a tier, Liam went off with Daniel to browse elsewhere.

Daniel wanted to look at clothes, so the two of them went to the high-end fashion floor on the third. Daniel held clothes up against himself, asking Liam again and again:

"What do you think of this one? Does it suit me?"

Liam wasn’t someone who paid much attention to dress, but in his previous life he’d had a cousin and a nephew who loved dressing up, so he had trained up a fairly decent eye.

The several pieces Daniel picked all leaned on refinement while lacking any softness. Ten of them differed only in color, the cut being identical across all ten. Liam kept shaking his head, until at last he couldn’t hold back:

"Stop buying. Give that money to my sister instead, and I guarantee you’ll have beautiful clothes to wear in a week."

Daniel blinked. He remembered the hat Liam was wearing along with those two pretty little charms, putting the clothes back on the rack at once: "All right, I won’t buy anything."

Hearing that, the sales assistant’s formulaic smile stiffened. She muttered under her breath: "What’s this? So they’re two dirt-poor nobodies, no money yet putting on airs coming in here to shop."

She said it quietly, and people further off didn’t hear, but Liam and Daniel were standing close to her, so why wouldn’t they? Daniel was hot-tempered by nature, turning round at once to shout:

"Who are you calling dirt-poor? Your clothes are ugly, so what if I don’t want to buy them?"

This assistant was a female Omega, rather pretty. Scolded like that by Daniel, the rims of her eyes reddened at once as though she had suffered some enormous humiliation. Daniel’s shout had drawn the attention of several shoppers nearby, who came closer to see what was happening.

Another assistant hurried over to put an arm around the Omega’s shoulders, asking quietly: "Cindy, what’s the matter?"

The Omega shook her head over and over, weeping more bitterly still. Seeing it, anger showed on the faces of the other shop staff. A Beta assistant stepped in front of her colleague, looking coldly at Daniel and Liam.

"Honored customers, we always welcome shoppers to our store. But if you’re unhappy about something you can ask our staff to explain, or if you don’t like it you needn’t buy, so why insult my colleague like that?

You are Omegas, she is an Omega too, you ought to understand the minimum respect owed to an Omega!"

The people around were pointing and murmuring. Daniel’s mouth fell open as he pointed at his own face: "Me? I insulted her? When did I ever?"

The people around frowned, the shop staff looking angrier still. The assistant from a moment ago spoke again, more loudly:

"If you didn’t abuse her then why would she be crying so bitterly? If you don’t give us an apology today, we’ll take you to court. Even a noble Omega has no right to bully another Omega like this."

Daniel’s face went black, ready to erupt on the spot. Liam immediately put a hand on his arm to signal him to stay calm. He stepped forward, about to produce his evidence, when a man’s voice full of resonance rang out:

"What’s this? Is something going on here?"

A tall blond Alpha came in unhurriedly from the door. The crowd parted at once to make way. Seeing who had arrived, the shop staff brightened visibly:

"Young master Jacob, Cindy has been bullied. These two won’t even admit it."

The instant she saw this Alpha, Daniel’s face couldn’t help showing utter loathing. The Omega called Cindy, the moment Jacob arrived, threw herself into his arms, sobbing pitifully like a kitten.

The Alpha gathered the Omega in, soothing her quietly, then let his eyes slide over the two the staff had named. One look, and his gaze fixed on Liam. It was a gaze carrying invasion along with something too familiar, and Liam frowned without meaning to.

Daniel stepped forward at once to pull him behind his back, looking coldly at the Alpha. Seeing Daniel, Jacob Eugene was plainly startled for a moment, then smiled with open mockery:

"Well now, and here I wondered who it was, my bride-to-be." He put weight on the words bride-to-be, his tone thoroughly grotesque: "What’s this, howling to my face that you won’t marry me, then bullying my girlfriend behind my back. Young master Mason, this way of seeking attention is genuinely beneath you."

Daniel shook with rage, his stomach cramping in waves, genuinely wanting to bring his whole lunch back up. He said coldly:

"Jacob, it’s still daylight, you’re dreaming a little early." He glanced at the Omega in Jacob’s arms: "I haven’t so much as touched her, she hasn’t even said a word, yet you fools have all piled in accusing me of bullying her. How exactly did I bully her, let her stand up and say it herself."

The Omega began weeping again, burying herself deeper in Jacob’s arms. Jacob’s heart went out to the beauty, so he frowned at Daniel:

"That’s enough, Daniel. By the end of this year you’ll be the young madam of the Eugene house, so stop shaming both families here. A noble Omega and you haven’t the least sense of propriety."

Daniel’s hand clenched at his side, his nails driving into the flesh hard enough to hurt without his feeling it. Once Liam had digested this new information, he suddenly understood Daniel’s situation. It seemed he hadn’t been living as carefree a life as Liam had assumed.

Liam immediately patted Daniel’s shoulder in comfort, then stepped forward with a smile: "Forgive me, everyone, I’m a streamer, in the habit of keeping my smart camera running anywhere and everywhere. The dispute just now between this assistant and my friend, I have the whole of it recorded. Take a look for yourselves and it will be clear."

Hearing that, the Omega’s body stiffened at once, her hand grabbing quickly at Jacob’s arm as she said thickly:

"Jacob, I don’t feel well. I don’t want to be here anymore."

Liam smiled brightly: "Oh, so now you can speak? And here I thought you were severely traumatized."

Then, without hesitating, he opened his smart unit, enlarged the screen and shared it. The scene of Daniel trying clothes on and putting them back on the rack, along with that Omega’s sneering remark, played out without a word missing. Even the line Daniel had shouted at her contained nothing that could be called an insult. His voice had indeed been a little loud, but not loud enough to traumatize a grown woman like her.

Everyone turned to look at the Omega with extraordinary expressions, even Jacob’s mouth twitching. The Beta assistant who had scolded Daniel most fiercely a moment ago now had a face as red as if she had been slapped several dozen times.

Her mouth opened and closed several times without producing a word.