◎ Girlfriend ◎

The silver knife and fork had been polished to a high shine, and now they caught the light in cold, bright flashes.

Gu Qiao had hoped to find something in Luo Peiyin’s eyes — a trace of surprise, pleasure, admiration, something — but she found none of what she was looking for. So her words grew more and more numerous, faster and faster. Even if a thousand knives and forks had been glaring at her with cold fury, nothing would have stopped her from pouring out everything she had to say.

“I want to hold an outdoor launch event, so that anyone passing by can take part.” Compared to Changyou’s event, hers was more like a street-front promotion with a prize draw — but she knew exactly how powerful a prize draw could be, and she certainly wasn’t going to go the route of Changyou’s five-star hotel banquets and sit-down lunches and dinners. The small wontons from a roadside shop didn’t have to be inferior to the breakfast at a five-star hotel — they might even be better.

As long as this game software took off, everything else would follow.

The more Gu Qiao talked, the more animated she became, with an almost fervent, evangelistic energy. Nothing existed in her world at that moment but the person across from her. She didn’t even notice when a waiter wheeled a service cart to their table. The server lifted the cover of the dish to reveal fruit that Gu Qiao had never seen in season at this time of year — it had to be expensive.

She very much wanted to invite Luo Peiyin to try the wontons she had eaten before. But the man had just treated her to a meal under crystal chandeliers with bone china and silver cutlery, with fruit served out of season at considerable expense, and inviting him in return to a shop barely a few square meters across for a bowl of wontons seemed rather miserly — even if the breakfast he was offering was technically complimentary, it was certainly no small sum built into the room rate.

She had read in the newspapers that Cantonese-style dim sum breakfasts were becoming popular all over the country, and she proposed proactively: “Cousin, tomorrow let me take you out for dim sum.”

“Two breakfasts are sent up here every morning.”

Of course that meant he was declining her offer to treat him. But Gu Qiao heard in it that Luo Peiyin would still be here tomorrow morning — which meant she could see him again.

She then heard him say: “I’ll be leaving Shanghai on New Year’s Day. Until then, you’re welcome to come here for breakfast.”

The way he put it made her sound like someone mooching off him — but Gu Qiao momentarily forgot to argue back: “You’re leaving on New Year’s Day, then.” In fact, she had planned to leave Shanghai the day before New Year’s herself. Even if Luo Peiyin stayed in Shanghai for many more days, she wouldn’t be able to see him.

Without thinking, she asked: “Going back to Singapore?” Gu Qiao had seen Singapore on a map — it must be much warmer there right now than in Shanghai. And most importantly, there would be sunshine. For someone as perpetually curious as herself, she had a kind of probing, exploratory hunger for a city like Shanghai. But she had no love at all for its winters.

Where else would he go but Singapore? Gu Qiao felt she was losing her mind a little — her mouth had gotten ahead of her brain. As if to confirm that his decision was entirely sensible and correct, she immediately added: “I read in the newspaper that Shanghai could get even colder after New Year’s — going back to Singapore now is perfect timing. It must be sunny in Singapore in winter quite often. Spending the winter there should be lovely and warm.”

Luo Peiyin did not answer her. He looked at her the way one looks at someone they don’t recognize.

Gu Qiao added yet more milk to her coffee. At this point she couldn’t tell whether she was drinking milk or coffee. As she sat there with her head bowed over her cup, she thought — he’s leaving on New Year’s Day. She ought to invite him to dinner before then. But where? Apart from that one small point shop near her guesthouse that she loved, she had absolutely no knowledge of the dining scene in this city. As these thoughts wandered through her mind, she heard a young woman greeting Luo Peiyin in English.

Gu Qiao looked up to find a young woman standing there. She couldn’t quite guess her ethnic background — only that she was very beautiful. Her style suggested intellectual leanings, though the quality and cost of what she wore was not what one would typically expect from an intellectual, at least not in China — though she knew nothing about intellectuals’ spending power abroad. Gu Qiao didn’t intentionally judge people by their clothes, but asking a seasoned dentist to completely ignore a person’s teeth was simply impossible. She admired the bracelet on the young woman’s wrist — very simple, with no identifiable brand.

Annie’s boyfriend was still in their room, not yet out of bed, so she had come down to breakfast on her own. She had only flown to Shanghai after Christmas — her family was very traditional about the holidays, and everyone had to be together for Christmas, all present and accounted for.

Annie had never seen Luo Peiyin’s girlfriend in person. The time she had gone to Luo Peiyin’s apartment-cum-office to drop off a housewarming gift, she had assumed his girlfriend would soon have a chance to use the five-wheeled reclining chair she’d brought — but that chair never got the chance to meet her. By the time Luo Peiyin moved out of his rented apartment and left the university, his girlfriend had never materialized. For a while, she had almost suspected he had broken up with someone — perhaps his girlfriend had been disappointed by a thirty-point diamond ring, so he had been disappointed by her in turn. For several days he had fit her mental image of someone nursing a heartbreak remarkably well. But very soon he appeared to be back to normal.

The previous Christmas, Annie had run into Luo Peiyin when he was back at headquarters from Singapore. She told him that the five-wheeled reclining chair she had gifted them was about to go into mass production — it was no longer anything special. She had been on the verge of inviting him to celebrate Christmas together, but before extending the invitation, she asked whether he had a girlfriend. He told her: yes.

On the desk of Luo Peiyin’s apartment-office back then, there had been a photograph of a girl in a blue sweater with yellow flowers. Annie had been surprised at the time — she hadn’t expected him to be drawn to someone sweet and charming. Because she was surprised, she remembered it clearly. So when she looked at the girl sitting across from Luo Peiyin now, she felt immediately that something was familiar — a girl who seemed curious about everything in the world. They were eating breakfast together this early in the morning; they must have spent the night together.

Though the photograph was from nearly three years ago. Annie wasn’t sure whether this was the same girl, or whether Luo Peiyin simply had a very consistent type and always ended up with girls who looked similar. If this was the same girl, neither of them was wearing a ring. Two-odd years ago he had been thinking of proposing — surely he hadn’t gone two years without managing to get the proposal done. Unless he had persisted in believing his girlfriend didn’t care about the size of the diamond, stubbornly buying a ring under a carat even after he had made quite a bit from the stock market.

When Annie saw Gu Qiao, she switched from English to halting Mandarin on her own initiative: “Hello, I’m Annie.”

“Hello, I’m Gu Qiao.”

“Gu — Gruel?” Annie repeated the name. “What a wonderful name. Peiyin told me he has a very wonderful girlfriend — today I finally get to meet you. You’re so beautiful.”

Gu Qiao spent a few seconds sorting out that *Gruel* referred to herself, and that the *Peiyin* in Annie’s mouth was Luo Peiyin.

He said he had a very wonderful girlfriend? Since when did he have one? Gu Qiao had always considered herself an excellent person, but a *wonderful girlfriend* almost certainly didn’t refer to her.

Annie didn’t seem like someone who had gone two years without seeing Luo Peiyin. This girlfriend — was she a present-tense reality, or already past tense the way Gu Qiao was? Annie had likely assumed that since Gu Qiao was having breakfast with him, they must have spent the night together — hence the misunderstanding.

Gu Qiao produced a smile: “You’ve misunderstood. We’re not in that kind of relationship.” Worried that Annie, being a foreigner, might not follow, Gu Qiao spoke deliberately slowly. She watched Annie’s expression shift from assuming they were a couple, to perhaps suspecting they had merely spent a night together.

She truly was being wronged. Did she need to explain that the night before she had been alone in a windowless guesthouse room, the two of them perfectly innocent — not a single finger touching?

Gu Qiao said nothing further. She knew no explanation was needed — a single form of address would set the record straight.

“Cousin, I’ll go organize the data and we can continue discussing it tomorrow. I have some things to take care of, so I’ll head off first. Thank you for the wonderful breakfast.”

Gu Qiao smiled as she said goodbye to both Luo Peiyin and Annie. She gathered her coat and, before she could button it, picked up her briefcase and walked forward at a quick pace.

Though the people behind her couldn’t see her face, Gu Qiao kept her smile in place the entire time. She walked on smiling, smiling right into the glass door. She heard the sound of her head striking the glass.

“Miss, are you alright?”

Gu Qiao’s smile stayed fixed on her face: “I’m fine.” She walked away too quickly, afraid the doorman would say a second word and draw someone’s attention to her.

Annie was momentarily unclear on what had just happened. *Cousin?* And yet this girl looked so much like that photograph. Besides which, the cousin had seemed deeply uncomfortable with her misunderstanding.

This cousin had walked away very quickly — as though the hotel were a prison and she were a newly freed prisoner making her escape.

Annie followed Luo Peiyin’s gaze to the door, and then turned to him with an apologetic smile: “Did my misunderstanding just now cause you some trouble?”

She knew she probably shouldn’t, but Annie couldn’t quite suppress her curiosity: “Is she the girl who was curious about everything in the world?”

It was only when she had crammed herself into a red Pusan that Gu Qiao became aware of a slight ache on her forehead. Honestly — how could there have been no Xiali outside this hotel?

Gu Qiao decided to deal with Changyou’s ordering issue first, then head to Qiujiang Road. She had signed the order form the day before; today she was coming back to negotiate a larger consignment quota. With consignment, no deposit was required upfront, and any unsold stock could be returned directly to the supplier. Consignment carried no risk of dead inventory, so naturally more was better. Gu Qiao wore her voice nearly raw arguing with the sales department before she finally managed to push the consignment volume up to two hundred units. If the launch event goes well and meets the game manufacturer’s expectations, she thought, she won’t have to spend this much effort explaining her shop every time.

At Changyou, Gu Qiao spotted Peter. Unlike her, he had been personally escorted all the way to the elevator, with the person accompanying him getting in with him.

Peter remembered Gu Qiao well. The colors she wore were always so bold and conspicuous — as if she were afraid no one would notice her.

The day before, Gu Qiao had said quite a lot to Peter — but the one thing she had forgotten to do was invite him to the launch event. Not everything produces results immediately. Inviting Peter to the event would add one more impression, and even if it was still a long way off, there was no saying he might not invest in her shop some day. And even if that avenue led nowhere, having someone from LC at her launch event and letting word get around that LC was interested in her shop was hardly a bad thing.

Gu Qiao ran the numbers in her head for what it would cost to bring Peter to the launch event — she had picked up some information about foreign companies through the Chen siblings. Someone at Peter’s level almost certainly wouldn’t fly economy. A round-trip business class ticket between Beijing and Shanghai, plus hotel costs, plus other expenses…

The numbers completed one full circuit in her mind. She could see the elevator was about to reach the ground floor. Gu Qiao made her decision: extend the invitation first and sort out the rest later. Having just practiced the same pitch in full in front of Luo Peiyin that morning, she delivered it again now with considerable fluency.

She invited each person with the same apparent wholehearted sincerity.

Peter hadn’t intended to look at Gu Qiao’s face — but that enormous sweep of red was simply impossible to ignore. The words pouring from her mouth came like sparks, each one distinct and rapid, as though she were afraid he would miss a single syllable.

Peter had almost forgotten there was a time when he himself had been this person — someone who never stopped pitching, even in an elevator. Back when he had been doing his management studies master’s — a two-year program, but with funding for only one year — he had driven himself to finish the degree in a single year. Fresh out of the program and newly into the company, he had worked relentlessly to make himself visible, dreaming of work even in his sleep. And in the end, what had it gotten him? His wife left him for putting work before the family, and then turned around and remarried his direct superior. By rights, after the divorce, he should have had even more time to devote to work — but it hadn’t brought better results either. He had still come out on the losing end of office politics; Cohen had somehow climbed above him and was now giving him directions from the Asia-Pacific headquarters. He had always suspected that being assigned to Shanghai was deliberate — someone’s way of pushing him to the margins.

Pushed far enough to the margins long enough, Peter had simply gotten used to it. Work had betrayed him, so he stopped taking it so seriously and began to learn how to enjoy life instead.

Peter asked in a level tone: “Who else from LC have you invited?” He remembered last night’s dinner, and how Gu Qiao had spent quite some time talking with Luo Peiyin. He was finding arrogant young people increasingly grating lately. He had invited Luo Peiyin to dinner and the man had turned him down, claiming he had plans for the evening. Technically, it was perfectly reasonable to decline — they had no real connection, and it was his personal holiday. But what if it had been Cohen who asked?

“You’re the only one I’ve invited.” Gu Qiao knew no one else at LC. She quickly offered an alternative: “But if you’re truly too busy to come yourself, you’re welcome to send someone else from the company.”

The elevator reached the ground floor. Gu Qiao got her invitation in just in time: “Do you have time tonight? I’d love to take you to dinner and get your advice on a few things.”

Gu Qiao hadn’t expected Peter to agree so readily.

Since she was unfamiliar with Shanghai’s restaurants, she asked Peter to choose the venue.

“The restaurant is inside an old mansion. The landlady makes an exceptional salted pork and spring bamboo soup — you can only find this kind of home-style flavor in a place like this. Everywhere else falls just slightly short.” Peter had originally planned to take Luo Peiyin here — what a shame that man had had no taste for it.

These two years in Shanghai had not been entirely wasted, even if his professional progress had been minimal — even if young people might claw their way above him. But outside of work, he had truly refined his sense of pleasure, and in matters like knowing where to eat, he was more knowledgeable than many locals.

—