◎ Free Breakfast◎

Gu Qiao climbed the creaking stairs one step at a time into the small windowless room. She bundled herself in the quilt and dialed the number that had been circling in her mind for a very long time. With every digit she pressed, she could hear her own heartbeat.

Once the call connected, Gu Qiao did not allow herself a moment of silence. She heard herself say *cousin*.

After all the winding and wandering, what settled on her lips in the end was still those two words — *cousin*.

“Cousin, please don’t hang up this time — let me finish first.” Afraid of being cut off the way she had been before, she spoke quickly. “I know you don’t like talking about money, but I have to thank you somehow.” It felt like a general rewarding merit after a victory — like saying: *my medals have your name on them too*.

Gu Qiao laughed as she praised herself, her voice carrying not a trace of embarrassment: “Thank you for having the good eye to recognize a thoroughbred when you saw one. If I gave the person who discovered me nothing in return, I truly wouldn’t be able to live with myself. Cousin, if dividends don’t interest you, we can arrange a different form of thanks — whatever I’m capable of……”

Inside the Cadillac, the man wound down his window. Looking out from the car, he could see a dim, yellowish light on the second floor. He had no way of knowing which room it was. He leaned back against the driver’s seat and reached for a pack of State Express 555 cigarettes, drew one out and lit it, and a small orange glow appeared inside the car. That glow slowly faded.

Luo Peiyin had started smoking two years ago. Smoking suited him far better than drinking — no one had ever heard of someone losing their mind from cigarettes.

All this delay and not a word spoken — and with roaming charges running as high as they were.

“I need you to share the sales data from your shop since you opened.” A pause from the other end of the line, and then: “And if I’m not mistaken, you should also have data from a number of other shops.”

This time it was Gu Qiao’s turn to go silent. Then she heard Luo Peiyin say: “Don’t worry — I’m not in your line of business. I’m no threat to you. I only need what you can reasonably provide. I need market research data, and you have it.” His tone was entirely businesslike.

He had guessed correctly. Her shop had always kept a message board up, inviting customers to write down the software they needed and what price they had in mind. She collected this information every day, and naturally her sales data was even more comprehensive. Beyond managing her own shop, she had posed as a customer at other shops to gather information. The reason she had signed an exclusive distribution deal for this martial arts game — beyond instinct — was largely thanks to what she had collected.

She heard him ask from the other end: “Or perhaps you feel that the dividends aren’t worth the cost of providing the data. If that’s the case, I can add more.”

Gu Qiao hadn’t expected Luo Peiyin to propose a solution like this. It had always been her bringing up money before — now it was his turn. That meant the person who had come into her shop must indeed have been him. He probably hadn’t known it was her shop before walking in. For all she knew, he might have already worked his way through every shop in Zhongguancun before reaching hers. But someone who normally lived in Singapore — no matter how many shops he visited, his impressions could only ever be surface-level.

“No need to add more — I’ll do it the way you said.” This was a room with no windows. Look in any direction and all you saw were mildew stains on the walls. She trusted he wouldn’t cheat her.

“But I can’t give you detailed figures over the phone. How about discussing it over a meal? Let me treat you.” Her data was stored in three places: her head, her notebook, and her computer. The computer wasn’t with her, and she had no way to copy the data onto a floppy disk for him right now. Both of the other two needed to be organized.

“No need. My room comes with two breakfasts included. One person eating alone is wasteful.”

Even without that last sentence, she wouldn’t have misunderstood. It sounded as though the reason he was inviting her to join him for breakfast was purely practical — his hotel room came with two breakfasts, and it would be a waste for one person to eat alone.

“I’ll come to pick you up at eight in the morning. I’ve forgotten which hotel you’re at — could you repeat it?”

The Cadillac remained where it was. The night seemed to thin gradually, like ink diluted with water, and that small orange glow — move even a little further away — vanished entirely.

From next door came a sound. The thud of bodies and the breathing that followed seeped through the thin walls into Gu Qiao’s ears. Gu Qiao understood what those sounds meant. Her entire understanding of the world between men and women had been awakened by Luo Peiyin — his gender, and everything that came along with it, had been another world to her, and it was her vast curiosity about that other world that had drawn her close to him and brought about the transformation of their relationship.

The things that drove that transformation were many. Beyond curiosity, there was the defiance of other people’s low expectations. But most importantly — she was merely one among his many relatives. He had biological cousins on his side, and beside them, her own status as a cousin felt counterfeit. So when he asked her to be his girlfriend, she hadn’t thought twice — she had rushed to claim that position before anyone else could. It was more exclusive than being a cousin, and she had been terrified that if she waited even a moment longer, the spot would belong to someone else. Later, she had let go of that position herself.

The moment Gu Qiao realized that the noises from next door might be traveling through her phone to Luo Peiyin’s ears, she immediately raised her voice and repeated the lie she had told earlier, in a tone loud enough to drown out the sounds next door. She even forgot to refuse his offer to come pick her up — she finished saying goodbye and hung up the call in a hurry.

The sounds from the neighboring room continued in their rhythmic pattern. Gu Qiao’s face flushed again. She wasn’t sure whether it was because of the room next door, or because of the fib she had just told in a soprano pitch. She sat on the bed hugging her knees, her chin resting on them, staring at the mildew stains on the wall. Even after a long while the flush on her face had not faded. Gu Qiao touched her forehead — while she felt more tired than usual, it wasn’t particularly hot. Surrounded by the clammy, damp quilt, Gu Qiao felt that a shower was the only way to drive the dampness from her body. But the hot water from the showerhead came out unevenly, and so she ended up taking an alternating cold-and-hot shower.

Gu Qiao decided that this guesthouse was simply not suited to her. She couldn’t keep staying here. Saving money was one thing — she absolutely couldn’t let it get in the way of what mattered.

The next morning at half past seven, Gu Qiao set out toward the hotel she had claimed as her own. It was too close for any driver to want the fare. The sky was a heavy gray — rain was likely — and Gu Qiao hadn’t bothered bringing the umbrella she had bought from the guesthouse owner earlier, thinking it too worn to bother with. She was nearly at the hotel when she heard someone call her name. By the time she traced the voice to its source, Luo Peiyin had already stepped out of the car. He made the car look expensive — though of course the car itself was genuinely more expensive than the average vehicle on the road. He watched her walk toward him.

Gu Qiao no longer liked keeping people waiting, but she held herself back from the impulse to run, and kept her pace deliberately measured. She was dressed entirely in red today — red coat, red beret — the only red she had omitted was a pair of red earrings.

She suspected that if Luo Peiyin noticed she was coming from somewhere other than the hotel, he would wonder where she was actually staying.

Gu Qiao made the first move, pleasantly: “Cousin, that car of yours looks excellent.” It was not so easy to slip back into being cousins — especially after he had announced their relationship to his entire family. He could hardly have imagined then that the two of them would one day break up.

“It’s rented.”

Luo Peiyin opened the passenger door, and Gu Qiao settled herself inside. The faint scent of mint still clung to him — the combined residue of shower gel, shampoo, toothpaste, and shaving cream — drifting slowly into Gu Qiao’s nose. Even with her eyes fixed straight ahead, she found it completely impossible to ignore his presence. She felt almost surrounded by this scent that was everywhere and inescapable.

“Why is your face red?”

“Probably the cold outside.” Perhaps there was another reason too. But saying it was a slight fever — or that the atmosphere in the car was doing this to her — was far less able to prevent awkwardness than simply blaming the cold.

“Didn’t you come directly out of the hotel?” As he said this, he turned up the temperature inside the car.

Gu Qiao kept her expression steady, face still flushed: “I went out for a little walk this morning.”

She added: “Don’t turn up the temperature on my account — the setting before was fine.”

She heard Luo Peiyin laugh: “What makes you think I did it for you?”

Because when she had first gotten in, the temperature had not been what it was now — and from what she knew of him, he never felt the cold. But he was a considerate person. He would probably do the same for any other woman.

The warmth in Gu Qiao rose another degree. The temperature inside the car made her feel considerably warmer in that cold, damp winter.

She had no desire to keep circling around this subject, so she closed it off decisively and turned to discussing the sales data from her shop. She had to keep talking. The moment she stopped, she was afraid his scent of mint would wrap itself around her and slowly pull her memory back to the past.

Gu Qiao suspected Luo Peiyin had taken a detour on purpose. The sound of a concrete mixer roared into her ears — this city had kept its old buildings, some going back decades or a century, but every day new ones were being built, and soon tall new towers would be rising one after another from the ground. Neither people nor cities could afford to stay in the past; what mattered was building the present.

Along the way, they did not exchange a single word about old times — everything they discussed was numbers. The conversation flowed without friction, and the more they talked, the more certain Gu Qiao became that the time Luo Peiyin had visited her shop, it hadn’t been for her sake. She found herself a little amused by her own thoughts — it was she who had broken things off, after all. Was she really expecting him to pine for her so intensely that he would fly from Singapore to Shanghai and make a special detour to her shop on the way?

Gu Qiao’s eyes stayed fixed straight ahead, as though the road in front of her was the only thing in her world.

The Christmas tree in the lobby of this hotel was even larger than the one at last night’s venue. Christmas had just passed, and 1995 was nearly here. Luo Peiyin had deliberately switched hotels — he had no interest in running into colleagues during his holiday while eating breakfast.

Breakfast was a combination of ordering off the menu and a buffet. In this season, the hotel had fresh-squeezed tomato juice available — Gu Qiao hadn’t eaten tomatoes in a long time. She didn’t order any for herself, only a coffee. Those two words — *tomato juice* — pulled her toward memories of the past they had shared. Every time she drank coffee, she added both milk and sugar. Strange, really — she was someone who could endure considerable hardship for the sake of her business, yet she couldn’t tolerate even the slightest bitterness on her tongue.

In this respect, she and Luo Peiyin were very different. He drank his coffee black, without adding anything at all.

Luo Peiyin ordered her a serving of wontons: “The small wontons here are quite good — you should try them.”

Gu Qiao hesitated for a moment: “Thank you.” That was the difference between her and Luo Peiyin — she would never order herself a bowl of wontons in a place as devoid of everyday warmth as this; she would always order something she didn’t usually have. But right now, she genuinely wanted to eat a bowl of small wontons. She needed something piping hot to warm her stomach.

Gu Qiao shook open her napkin and spread it across her lap. Her movements were excessively graceful and slow — slow to the point where she herself felt she was being affected. She had actually picked up these habits from him, and yet now, in front of her, he didn’t observe any dining etiquette at all.

Gu Qiao spread a generous amount of cream and syrup over her waffle, filling every crevice until it was almost overflowing, and then loaded all that sweetness into her mouth. She could endure hardship, but she absolutely refused to seek it out — one had to have reached a certain level of pointless idleness before one chose hardship for its own sake. She thought the hotel’s breakfast was excellent. She wasn’t sure about things like the smoked salmon, but she could tell at a glance that a well-made fried egg was exactly that. The yolk still seemed to be trembling. Seated this close to him, Gu Qiao did not look at Luo Peiyin — she focused entirely on the fried egg in front of her, working away at it with her knife and fork.

Beneath the white linen tablecloth, their knees grazed each other. Through her skirt, Gu Qiao felt the fabric of Luo Peiyin’s trousers — even the warmth beneath the cloth — and she quickly pulled back. This was the first physical contact between them since their reunion, and the brief collision sent a tingling sensation that shot up to her waist and hips and all the way down to her fingertips. The feeling from memory crept back in, climbing up her spine and into her mind. The last time they had seen each other was in 1992 — on that bed, his knee pressed against the back of her knee, and in the friction that followed their warmth slowly rose. Gu Qiao heard the sharp, clear ring of silverware striking porcelain — her own cutlery, naturally, slipping in her hands. The crisp sound broke the silence. She looked up and found him watching her mouth. She instinctively pressed the corner of her lips lightly with her napkin.

She didn’t ask him whether there was anything there. She simply extended the area she was dabbing.

He was still watching her. Gu Qiao inwardly cursed herself for being so flustered. She finished pressing her napkin against every part of her lips. She was not particularly suited to demonstrating elegance through slow, deliberate movements. Though the truth was, she had no interest in demonstrating elegance — she only wanted a moment to regain her composure.

Gu Qiao finally managed to collect herself. Since he wanted to talk about her business, she was more than willing to oblige.

She brought up the game software launch event she was planning for January 1995.

Perhaps the milk in her coffee was taking effect — with every word about her launch event, Gu Qiao’s eyes grew brighter and brighter, her manner almost like someone delivering a roadshow pitch: “Our shop has exclusive distribution rights for a martial arts game, and I’ll be holding a launch event on the second Sunday of 1995. Unlike Changyou’s events — which are primarily aimed at institutional buyers — ours targets individual consumers, so our event will be more flexible and fun. Do you remember Lin Haichuan? He’s recently appeared in a martial arts drama that’s become quite popular. He’ll be coming to the launch event to host the prize draw.”

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