◎ Whose Treat? ◎

Gu Qiao climbed into the red Xiali and had only just set off toward the address Peter had given her when rain began to fall. In the distance, a cement mixer was still rumbling.

Over the rumble in the distance, her mobile phone rang.

The familiar voice again. This time Luo Peiyin did not let the silence consume her roaming charges. Gu Qiao heard her name coming out of his mouth.

“You haven’t eaten yet, have you — let’s have dinner tonight. You can tell me more about which software sold well in the retail market this year.”

He didn’t ask whether she had time. He simply said: “Where are you? I’ll come get you.”

She had treated him to breakfast that morning — dinner should be her treat. But……

This time it was Gu Qiao’s turn to be silent. She was mentally calculating the odds of rearranging her dinner with Peter. She had been the one to invite Peter. If she backed out now at the last minute, Peter would naturally take it as a sign she wasn’t serious. She would almost certainly end up on his list of people not worth cooperating with. But turning down Luo Peiyin was not an easy thing to do — even when he was the one who had called later, even knowing that going forward he could only exist as her cousin.

The car was still moving toward its destination. The other end of the line was not indulging her silence: “Did you make plans with someone else tonight?”

“Peter from LC is quite interested in the concept of a domestic software chain store — he might invest in me someday. So I’ve arranged to meet with him at six to talk.” Gu Qiao said no more than that — she had seen Luo Peiyin and Peter standing together the other night, so naturally they knew each other. She had been deliberately thorough in her explanation so she wouldn’t come across as making excuses. The first sentence came out quickly, and she immediately followed with: “Cousin, are you free tomorrow night? Let me treat you.”

The second sentence seemed to fall on deaf ears at the other end.

“Peter? He wants to invest in you? Did he say this directly, or is this your own assumption? From what I know of Peter, he’s quite conservative in this regard — he wouldn’t invest in a shop that has yet to demonstrate the ability to build a chain. If he told you this to your face, then his professional integrity may be questionable.”

If Peter had any interest at all, it was more likely to be in the manufacturer of the game software Gu Qiao was distributing. A software specialty shop was fundamentally a distribution business, with far less appreciation potential than the software industry itself. Let alone a single-location shop that had yet to prove any ability to scale. If it were to become a primary distribution channel for major software titles in the future, investment might make sense — but from what Luo Peiyin knew of Peter, his problem was not recklessness but overcaution, always more afraid of missing out than of being too bold. Right now he would have no real interest in Gu Qiao’s chain store ambitions.

Luo Peiyin’s words made a few circuits in Gu Qiao’s head before distilling into a single sentence: Peter would have to be a scammer to claim he was willing to invest in her shop at this stage. Gu Qiao didn’t think Luo Peiyin was deliberately mocking her — perhaps it was only a well-intentioned warning. But this particular piece of good intent was already more than enough for her to deal with.

He could criticize her for anything else — scold her for being unreliable, say whatever he liked — she genuinely didn’t have a leg to stand on. She had brought up dividends when she broke up with him, she had brought up dividends when they met again, and when he offered an alternative arrangement, she had given him very little useful information during their morning conversation. Before she found out he had a girlfriend, most of her time had been spent telling him about her game launch event over the complimentary breakfast he was treating her to. And now that he was inviting her to dinner to discuss business properly, she had plans with someone else.

But when it came to her shop, Gu Qiao could not stop herself from pushing back. She tried to keep her voice steady, but some of her words came out pitched a bit higher than intended: “Right now I only have one shop — but it won’t stay that way for long. Even if Peter has no interest now, in a year or two he definitely will. And by then there may be a great many people looking to invest. Whether I accept them or not won’t necessarily be up to them.”

Gu Qiao said it with force, as though she were already the one choosing investors rather than being chosen. After she finished speaking she caught herself and laughed quietly at her reflection in the car window, a laugh that clung to her lips. After everything she had told Luo Peiyin about her plans, hearing her say this now — he would find it hard to believe.

Gu Qiao took a deep breath: “Cousin, I’ll make sure to get the data organized properly tonight. Before you leave Shanghai, I’ll have everything I can give you ready. If you need even more detailed figures, once I’m back at the shop I’ll compile and analyze them and send them to you.” Beyond her own shop’s data, and the estimates she had pieced together from visits to other shops, since she had changed careers she had subscribed to every computer-related newspaper available, and every piece of sales data in those papers related to software was recorded in her notebook.

The rain was coming down harder. Across the river, a tower crane turned slowly. Gu Qiao listened to the rain hitting the car window. Her ears felt unusually sensitive right now — it sounded as though it was raining on the other end of the line too. For a moment she couldn’t quite tell which rain she was hearing.

“I don’t want to wait until tomorrow for this. You’ve told me repeatedly that you want to give me dividends — I’ve taken that to mean it’s important to you.”

Gu Qiao understood the unspoken meaning. The way she had been pressing him about dividends made it sound like the most important thing in the world. But when he offered an alternative, she hadn’t shown anything close to the same urgency.

“It’s half past five now. Eight-thirty — I’ll be waiting in the hotel lobby. When you arrive, we continue the conversation.”

He gave her no room to refuse. Gu Qiao’s lips opened and closed, and in the end she said a single word: *alright*. She had a six o’clock appointment with Peter. Two hours should be enough for a meal.

Luo Peiyin heard her say *alright* and hung up the line. It had always been her who hung up first before. Perhaps this time he was trying to save her roaming charges…

Gu Qiao laughed at that thought, and then the laugh vanished just as quickly. The rain sound on his end had been landing on the ground — different from the sound of rain hitting a car window. She had almost wanted to ask him if the rain was heavy where he was.

Five minutes later, Gu Qiao received another call. It was Peter.

Peter said he had something come up unexpectedly and couldn’t make dinner. If Ms. Gu had time, they could reschedule for another day.

The world had an odd sense of humor — this cancellation had come five minutes too late. Perhaps Peter genuinely did have something come up, but it was also true that he didn’t take her plans seriously. The tone in his voice over the phone didn’t suggest any urgency. This dinner was nothing more than a forgettable meal to him — canceling it cost him nothing.

Why did he back out so easily? Why couldn’t she do the same thing as easily as Peter had? And somehow Luo Peiyin had predicted all of this without knowing a word of their conversation.

Gu Qiao suppressed the urge to say something she shouldn’t. She smiled over the phone: “I’ll be leaving Shanghai quite soon. When you come to the launch event for the software I’m distributing, I’ll treat you then.”

The smile never left Gu Qiao’s face, and it stayed there even after she ended the call. For a brief moment she felt a little dazed — mobile phone in hand, and in the space of just a few seconds, she had already forgotten who had hung up first.

“Turn around!”

“What?”

“Turn around! Go to Qiujiang Road.”

She had just come *from* Qiujiang Road and now she wanted to go back. The driver expressed his bewilderment in the local dialect.

“Don’t worry, you’ll get your money.” One day, people would be coming to her looking for investment — not the other way around.

The vast majority of software circulating on the market — ninety percent, and that was an optimistic estimate — was pirated. For game software aimed at individual consumers, a piracy rate of ninety-five percent was not unusual. A single disc was priced at ninety-eight yuan, while pirated versions often sold for a tenth of that. Once the software was cracked and pirated copies flooded the market, a large portion of her profit margin would be eaten away. But such was reality — that slice of profit could only be written off. She had to move most of her stock before the pirated version arrived. That day, Gu Qiao had made a point of noting which shops carried only legitimate software. Other parts of the market could sell pirated copies all they liked eventually. But if her sub-distributors opened up a separate line for pirated goods and started mixing them in with the legitimate stock, then she would only be doing the hard work while someone else reaped the benefit.

The shops she had visited that day — the larger ones — had each been willing to order no more than two hundred units at most, and had pushed for half of those to be on consignment, meaning no upfront payment and all the sales risk falling on her.

Since she still had time, she would visit a few more.

A red Xiali pulled up at a street corner. A girl in a red coat stepped out, pulled her collar tight, and with a bang, a yellow umbrella opened above her. She ran through the puddles toward the shops lining the street inside — rain water splashing up onto her boots, leaving small winter imprints. The girl’s colors were so vivid that the driver couldn’t help but follow her with his eyes as she ran.

Peter had originally planned to invite Luo Peiyin — he had something work-related he wanted to discuss, and had specifically reserved a private room with the landlady for the occasion. He hadn’t expected the young man to turn him down, claiming he had plans for the evening. Half an hour ago, Luo Peiyin had called to invite him to dinner. The invitation was rather abrupt, but Peter, wanting to take a closer look at him, agreed.

The private room was a fairly spacious attic space — higher-ceilinged than a typical one. The first time Peter had been brought to this room, he had been quite taken aback, as it bore no resemblance to his mental image of an attic room.

The rain outside had not invaded the interior. A fire burned in the fireplace, warming the room from every direction. Through a narrow, multi-paned window, the sound of the rain outside was just audible.

The landlady came in — Peter was by now a regular, and she was well acquainted with what he usually ordered. The menu here was just a single thin page, though regulars knew there was also a hidden menu from which one could order specific dishes.

Peter recommended to Luo Peiyin: “The salted pork and spring bamboo soup and the eel in scallion oil here are both exceptional.”

The landlady stood to one side with a slight smile — an implicit confirmation rather than open self-praise. Her eyes briefly settled on the new guest’s watch, cufflinks, shoes, and the coat draped casually over the chair back, and from that she took a reasonably clear reading of this young man. Peter fell just short of being six feet tall, and under normal circumstances could hardly have been called short — he kept himself in good shape, and had a face that was, among his peers, quite well-preserved. But seated across from a man considerably younger than himself, he had already, in some undefinable way, given up a layer of presence.

The Mandarin was too polished to be local. The landlady took the initiative to describe the hidden menu.

When it came to ordering, Luo Peiyin showed Peter complete deference, selecting only a single dish for himself — a water chestnut porridge. His grandmother had made this dish often when she was still alive. And later, someone else had made it for him too.

“Young man,” said Peter, with a deliberate air of familiarity, “what would you like to drink?” Using *young man* was a small but purposeful gesture — a way of knocking someone’s age down a notch. *Good food, good wine, beautiful women…* Beautiful women? Peter gave a small, cold laugh inside. The man sitting across from him could certainly not be called ugly. The girl who had invited him to dinner today, though — she could genuinely be called beautiful.

“I don’t drink.”

“On an evening like this, it really is a shame not to have a warm cup of yellow rice wine.” The young man was cautious to a fault.

The landlady, without pressing further, quietly withdrew and closed the door.

“You really know how to enjoy yourself.”

Had anyone else said this, Peter might have taken it as a compliment. But coming from Luo Peiyin’s mouth, there was almost certainly a barb buried inside. Since being sent to Shanghai, he had nothing to show for it beyond Changyou. In that situation, being good at enjoying life was hardly a virtue. Though of course that wasn’t *his* problem — good projects were hard to find, and even when a good project turned up, there was no decent exit route.

“Knowing how to enjoy oneself — that’s something I could hardly claim. It’s you young people who know how to enjoy things.”

If he wasn’t mistaken, the watch on Luo Peiyin’s wrist was considerably more expensive than the Rolex on his own. And while appearances couldn’t be shabby in this line of work, the man had gone rather far down the road of not being shabby. Most importantly, he hadn’t been at LC for more than two years, and had only recently reached his current position — could his salary really justify spending that kind of money on a watch? Given the bearing of the man, perhaps he was the son of a corrupt official.

Peter sighed inwardly — that connection might genuinely be why he couldn’t get the better of Luo Peiyin.

Using the water chestnut porridge as a natural segue, Peter asked: “Do you have family in Jiangsu or Zhejiang?”

The question was cut off by a knock at the door. A young girl pushed open the door with a coat rack — she had been sent specifically because she could speak Mandarin.

“Is this your coat? Let me hang it up for you.” The landlady had specifically asked her to bring the rack over — this coat looked rather expensive.

“Thank you.”

Peter observed that Luo Peiyin gave the girl a slight smile. The girl glanced away shyly, not noticing that the polite smile had already faded, and went cheerfully about hanging up the coat.

Peter made a jovial remark: “It seems the young man is quite popular with the ladies.”

Luo Peiyin’s expression became still. He raised his eyes slightly and gave Peter a measured look: “You can make jokes about me however you like — but making jokes about a young lady is taking things a bit far.” He turned to the girl: “Thank you. Please close the door on your way out.”

The smile froze on Peter’s face. He swallowed the irritation along with a sip of tea. Playing the paragon of virtue in front of him, was he — and who knew what the man got up to in private.

An uninvited guest arriving at dinner — things might get unpleasant.

Half a meal in, Peter had failed to extract a single useful piece of information from Luo Peiyin. Worse, it was Luo Peiyin who — through a conversation about classical record collecting — had drawn out a great deal of talk from Peter. He considered himself a half-serious collector, and sometimes listened to records even in the office.

Just as Peter was beginning to think he might have found a half-kindred spirit, Luo Peiyin shifted the conversation to ask his views on the current state of the software market.

This was not what Peter had expected. He spoke carefully and with considerable reservation. He noticed Luo Peiyin’s expression change — those eyes were sharp, and now they made no effort to conceal it.

It was not Peter probing Luo Peiyin, as he had imagined. It was the other way around entirely.

Peter did not enjoy this meal. He had to keep his guard up against whatever question the man across from him might throw out next. Luo Peiyin, by contrast, appeared to be genuinely savoring the food — though even his enjoyment had its limits. What true connoisseur can only appreciate a single bowl of porridge?

The porridge arrived last. When the door opened, the sounds from downstairs drifted softly upward.

A table on the lower floor had some performers of Huju opera, and for some reason, someone had begun to sing.

*”Reflect on life — how full of mystery, with countless unseen chances threading through it. What seems at times a permanent farewell — who would have thought we’d meet again in another place, like a dream. What seems at times a brief parting — may become the scattering of two birds, east and west, never to return……”*

Under the dim glow of a streetlamp, Gu Qiao stepped out of a shop, opened her yellow umbrella, and ran toward a steaming street cart. The yellow umbrella was newly bought — she had specifically chosen yellow. She tucked her handbag under her arm and took the hot roasted sweet potato from the vendor’s hands, and the warmth of it spread slowly through her palms and up into her whole body.

—