◎ Business Card ◎

Gu Qiao did not manage to exchange business cards with Luo Peiyin. She watched him take his seat in the front row, where someone was always engaged in conversation with him. Across all those rows of seats, drawing on her once-professional instincts, she could still pick him out at a glance.

While she was watching his back, he suddenly turned around — and the moment she confirmed that he was indeed looking at her, his gaze had already turned away.

At the launch event, Luo Peiyin had neither a nameplate nor an introduction — he sat as a quiet observer and gave no one reason to notice him.

Except that when Peter took the floor to speak, and Luo Peiyin sat listening from below, the air about him suggested a superior listening to a subordinate’s report. This impression made Peter deeply uncomfortable. He kept calculating inwardly: what had this man come to Shanghai for? Was the Shanghai office really going to be shut down? How much was Luo Peiyin involved in that decision?

As a minor sub-distributor, Gu Qiao was naturally seated toward the back. The content being presented onstage was something she had already read through in the promotional materials. Her mind kept circling back: What had he been doing since leaving school? Why had he come here? Was he staying because of his mother’s project, or just passing through for a few days? These questions revolved in her head. He was in China — she was certain now that it had been him in her store. But why had he come?

Peter had intended to use the lunch break to have a talk with Luo Peiyin, smooth over past friction, and offer the younger man some personal guidance on life. But Luo Peiyin smiled and told him he had other plans for lunch.

“Quite a busy holiday you’re having!”

—

Madam Liao gazed at the photograph in her office — a small boy in a navy blue shirt, a suit jacket with short trousers, black knee-high socks, small leather shoes with the laces tied to exact precision. It was taken the first year she had brought her son to Singapore.

How quickly time passes. Back then when she and her son met, it was always her schedule that was considered first. Now she was the one asking for his.

She didn’t know why her son had abandoned his studies — though it hadn’t been beyond her expectations. When she’d gone to America and taken the opportunity to see him, she had by then nearly given up all hope of Luo Peiyin staying in his academic program. At that visit, Luo Peiyin’s state had not seemed particularly good — though of course people from their family, regardless of whatever setback they had suffered, always maintained a presentable exterior and never gave outsiders cause for mockery.

Still — a man like that accidentally nicking himself while shaving, leaving a red mark on his face, was unusual. One would have to be quite distracted for that.

Not long after that visit, he stopped pursuing his doctorate. He didn’t seem inclined to accommodate her wishes, and had not notified her of this development. Madam Liao only found out after Luo Peiyin had already arrived in Singapore. She had assumed that since her son had come to Singapore — even if working at another company — he would eventually join hers. He was only waiting for her to offer him a graceful way to do so. She believed she had offered it quite skillfully, with more than enough consideration for his pride — yet he still had not accepted.

At the time, she had been displeased, but told herself: a spell somewhere else to sharpen his skills wasn’t a bad thing.

Back then, Madam Liao had still believed her son would eventually come to her company. Now she was no longer so certain.

—

The launch that day included not only the evening banquet but also lunch. Gu Qiao did not see Luo Peiyin at lunch.

Gu Qiao heard her mobile phone ringing from inside her briefcase. The roaming charges were steep — but she pressed accept immediately.

From the silence at the start of the call, she confirmed who had dialed her. There was no one else it could be.

She heard him ask over the phone: “Is there something else you wanted to say to me?”

His tone was level. Gu Qiao couldn’t picture the expression on his face as he said it — just as she had never been able to picture his expression when she had ended things with him. She had always deliberately avoided thinking about that.

The first question that came to her mind was: *Did you drop out of your program because of me?* She hoped the answer was no — but she didn’t ask. She knew that even if it had been true, Luo Peiyin would have told her otherwise. At least he was doing well now. The second question that surfaced in her mind was: *Do you have a girlfriend?* The third: *After you go back this time, will you leave the country again?* The fourth: *Was it you who came to my store? Why? Was it chance, or did you already know it was mine?* But what came out of her mouth was the seventh or eighth question: “How many days are you staying in Shanghai?”

After two seconds of silence, she heard him say: “What a thing to say — you couldn’t make it more obvious you’re grasping for something to fill the silence. Is that how you make small talk with everyone?”  Even between strangers, “how long are you staying” was basic pleasantry.

“When are you free? I’d like to take you to dinner.” These words, forced out at this moment, also sounded like nothing more than a polite nicety.

“Thank you — that won’t be necessary.” Outside the window of the suite, the Oriental Pearl Tower was unmistakably prominent.

“The dividends I originally owed you have been sitting in the bank this whole time—” Before Gu Qiao could finish, the call went dead. Not even a goodbye. It was the first time he had ever hung up on her so abruptly — and spared her the roaming charge, at least.

She should have asked for his number. His Shanghai number. His Singapore number. Every number for every place he might be… how had she forgotten? Perhaps because he had never once hung up on her before — she had always assumed he would keep listening until she reached the question she most wanted to ask.

Before, it had always been her who hung up first — impatient with the cost of international calls, she would compress everything she wanted to say, then squeeze out her goodbye in the final second.

Now it was Luo Peiyin’s turn to hang up on her. Gu Qiao thought: this is what they call karma. What goes around comes around.

Xu Ling asked Gu Qiao: “Was that your actual cousin just now?” Seated in the front row — she couldn’t imagine what his position was. Between Gu Qiao and this so-called cousin of hers, there was something both familiar and unfamiliar. Not familiar enough to be called close — and yet if they were truly strangers, what kind of look had that been?

Gu Qiao said nothing.

A sense of propriety kept Xu Ling from pressing further.

Xu Ling suggested: “The shrimp here is quite good.” Seeing Gu Qiao’s evident inability to eat, she added: “I wonder what the dinner will be like. That evening banquet — I’ll bring you in. Peter will definitely be there, and the standard will be considerably higher.”

“Thank you.” Gu Qiao asked: “This won’t cause you any trouble, will it?”

“No trouble at all.” Before, she had simply found the launch too dull and had been eager to escape before the banquet. Now she had changed her mind.

Xu Ling didn’t know how to comfort Gu Qiao, so she only said: “Don’t let your mood ruin your appetite. No man is worth that.” Even a handsome one.

Gu Qiao didn’t feel that her inability to eat the food in front of her — the free food — had anything to do with her mood. She simply had no appetite. The fever-reducing tablet was finally taking effect — the fever had broken. She knew there was still an afternoon session ahead of her, and she would be seeing him again.

Xu Ling observed how quickly Gu Qiao’s composure shifted. Within moments, Gu Qiao was in conversation with someone else, handing out business cards. For reasons she couldn’t quite name, Xu Ling suddenly found Gu Qiao’s dream a great deal less remote than it had seemed.

Gu Qiao did not see Luo Peiyin in the afternoon session — his seat was empty. For one fleeting instant, she almost wanted to rush out of the hall to look for him. She wanted to stand up and ask whether anyone in the room had seen him. But it was only an instant. She settled back into her seat.

From the quality of his clothes and the position he had occupied in the hall, she had confirmed that he was doing well. And really — why had Chen Qing given her that CD? Playing over and over in her ears: *one day you’ll come to know, that life without me is no different.*

Gu Qiao sat steadily in her place, but her attention seemed to stall. During the afternoon press Q&A session, every question slid right through her mind without catching.

Gu Qiao did not see Luo Peiyin at the evening banquet either — but she did see Peter. Xu Ling, afraid she might mistake him for someone else, pointed him out to her once more.

Gu Qiao thanked Xu Ling for the kindness — though she had already memorized that middle-aged man’s face during Peter’s remarks.

She had plenty of business cards left and didn’t mind giving one to Peter. She had to do something to compensate for the opportunity she had let slip.

During a lull, Gu Qiao made her way to Peter with a champagne flute and handed him her card. The expression on Peter’s face when he saw the card was rather worth studying. Peter clearly operated on two entirely different sets of standards. If Gu Qiao had been a little more plain-looking, he would have thought her thoroughly lacking in social awareness — someone who didn’t know her place — and that would have only confirmed his view that Changfriend had no great prospects.

But as things stood, he found Gu Qiao to be a young woman with dreams and considerable persuasive ability — someone who knew how to package an aspiration of limited probability into something compelling. That was a kind of talent in itself. He seemed to have reached an age where he could listen to a young woman talk about her dreams with genuine interest.

Peter was, for once, genuinely engaged listening to a woman talk about her ambitions — had nobody kept coming over to engage him in conversation, he might have listened to Gu Qiao lay out her vision, her plan — or rather, her dream — in full.

Peter noticed that Luo Peiyin had appeared again. He’d said he wasn’t attending, and yet here he was joining the proceedings. He genuinely preferred not to be in the same venue as Luo Peiyin, but right now he desperately wanted to extract from Luo Peiyin the information he needed, and even his glances carried a veneer of deference.

At a public function, keeping up a prolonged animated conversation with an attractive young woman was bound to invite misinterpretation. At this moment, Peter had no interest in inviting that kind of misinterpretation.

Before someone else stepped in to claim Peter’s attention, Gu Qiao thanked him and gracefully excused herself. She could tell that Peter placed very little faith in her future plans. That was fine — say a dream enough times and it might just come true; and even if it didn’t, saying it often enough was good practice for the tongue.

Gu Qiao turned and found herself face to face with Luo Peiyin. In a crowd, fixing one’s gaze too intently on a person’s face was liable to cause awkwardness. Gu Qiao avoided repeating the mistake she had made that morning.

He passed close beside her — very close. His voice was low, but she caught every word: “Run out of business cards yet?”

Luo Peiyin had seen Gu Qiao handing her card to Peter. And clearly, she had given out more than one card before that.

Gu Qiao stood there frozen. In truth, she hadn’t run out at all — there were still two cards left.