◎ The Fever Breaks ◎

Luo Peiyin watched the hands of his watch turn — eight-thirty, eight-thirty-one, eight-thirty-two……

“Could you possibly go any faster? I’ll add more money.” Gu Qiao watched the hands of the watch she had once traded for in Erlian Haote go round and round.

She had thought the time she had built in was more than generous — at the very least she would arrive ten minutes early. But she hadn’t anticipated how difficult it would be to hail a cab on a rainy evening. When she finally managed to catch one, every single traffic light she hit afterward was red without exception.

“Little miss, I charge by the meter. The rules of the road must be followed.”

Gu Qiao pulled a hundred-yuan note from her purse and slapped it down: “I’ll add a hundred! If you can get there in ten minutes, I’ll add another hundred after that.”

Inside this car that was inching its way through winding streets, Gu Qiao laboriously pressed the digits on her mobile phone. She could hear her own heartbeat clearly with every number she pressed.

Before she had finished dialing, her phone rang.

She heard the voice on the other end ask: “Where are you?” His pace of speech was faster than usual. Gu Qiao didn’t catch any reproach in it — but she heard concern for her.

Gu Qiao said quickly: “I’m fine. There was an accident ahead of me on the road, and taking the detour cost me time. I’ll be there within ten minutes.” She said it without the confidence of someone standing on firm ground. He was almost certainly thinking: *why does she always have a reason to make him wait?*

There were many specific reasons, all reducible to unforeseen circumstances and unavoidable situations…… but at the root of it, there was only one. And Gu Qiao only realized it now — deep down, she had always believed that without her, Luo Peiyin would be perfectly fine. Unlike her family or her work, he didn’t truly need her. And so when it came to choosing between work and him, she seemed, almost without realizing it, to have rarely chosen her cousin.

“I’m calling to tell you — you don’t need to come tonight. Let’s talk tomorrow.”

Luo Peiyin hadn’t reminded Gu Qiao that when meeting an important contact on a rainy evening, one ought to account for the weather’s effect — that the probability of accidents causing traffic delays on rainy nights was far higher than usual, and not wanting to be late meant leaving at least fifteen minutes earlier. If it was a truly important contact, that window should stretch to thirty minutes or more. But for a genuinely important contact, Luo Peiyin felt Gu Qiao would need no reminder from him.

Perhaps people always found themselves most fascinated by what they didn’t have. His attention had first truly fixed on Gu Qiao because of her letter of thanks — he had been astonished that someone would go to such lengths to track down the family member who had inadvertently cost her the chance to continue her studies, and that she had genuinely believed this person had not meant to harm her. He had never agreed with her thinking, but he had arrived at a slightly different understanding of the word *family*. He had once bought a ring, intending to bring her into his family. The outcome had naturally confirmed how foolish that had been. And because he refused to accept the foolishness being prolonged, it had only become something more absurd.

He had never liked waiting. And going forward, he had no intention of making an exception for anyone.

Out of courtesy, Luo Peiyin waited three seconds — leaving an opening for Gu Qiao to hang up first. But she didn’t. And so three seconds later, Gu Qiao heard the line go dead.

Gu Qiao’s ears were full of the sound of rain. She replayed what Luo Peiyin had said — not a trace of emotion, not even accusation. If he had been a client of hers, Gu Qiao would have called back without a second thought, asking for one more chance, running through every argument from one to ten about what they would be losing by not working with her. But he wasn’t. And she couldn’t even count how many times she had made him wait. So in the end, even though this last time had been entirely unintentional, he was done waiting.

His girlfriend now — she probably never made him wait.

The driver was still pressing forward with furious energy. If there had been a camera, it would have captured a remarkable scene — money driving a person to extraordinary heat and ingenuity, a car weaving through dense traffic with nimble precision, threading gap after gap toward a destination far ahead.

“Stop the car!”

“Another six or seven minutes and we’re there.”

“Stop the car!”

“You, young lady — you said one thing and do another. No other car is going to get there faster than me. And besides, where are you going to catch another cab out here at this hour?”

“One hundred yuan — keep the change. Stop the car. If you don’t stop, you’re not getting that hundred.”

“Fine, I’ll stop! Having money doesn’t make you better than everyone else!”

When Gu Qiao heard *having money doesn’t make you better than everyone else*, she suddenly laughed. And her laughter grew louder and louder.

The driver thought to himself: *this girl — pretty as she is, she’s completely unhinged.*

Out of the car, Gu Qiao was still laughing. She was a person with money now, and she would have more and more of it. Everything she had worked for was worth it. Every sacrifice she had made had been worth it. Shanghai at night in the rain — neon lights blurred behind a layer of water vapor — and everything around her rushed toward her from all directions. Her gaze shot out to all four corners of the world. The world seemed drunk, and she was the only one still sober. She laughed through her clarity.

She suddenly remembered something from long ago. The day Lou Deyu was discharged from the hospital, after dinner, Luo Peiyin walked them home. The next day he was flying back to San Francisco, and Lou Deyu, bracing himself as though for battle, insisted firmly that Gu Qiao go home rather than stay at the hotel. The one considerate thing Lou Deyu did was leave the two of them a brief moment to say goodbye. Twenty-one-year-old Gu Qiao had found it embarrassing to embrace in the mouth of a hutong. So the two of them simply stood facing each other. Had there been a moon that night? She couldn’t remember. Only that patch of light falling onto the ground — in that alleyway with no streetlamps, it had been enough for her to see him clearly. The distance between them then had been more or less the same as it was now, yet back then she had felt his gaze moving over her like a touch.

The cold rain landed on her face. Gu Qiao realized she had left her umbrella behind in the cab.

“Young miss, you forgot your umbrella!” The driver thought to himself: *what a perfectly lovely girl, and completely out of her mind — one minute paying more money to get somewhere faster, the next insisting on stopping, and now standing out in the rain laughing.* The only thing he could compare this to was the stock market — he had seen nothing else capable of sending a person soaring to the heights and plunging to the depths within minutes, swinging between heaven and earth.

“Come on, get back in. I’ll take you wherever you need to go — metered, no extra charge.”

The driver pulled up at the door of the small guesthouse. Such a bright, vivid young girl — casually pulling out hundred-yuan notes — and she lived in a place like this. Well. You truly can’t judge a book by its cover.

Gu Qiao took out her wallet and prepared to pay by the meter.

The driver felt a moment of pity for this vain little miss: “The hundred you gave me is more than enough. No need to keep playing rich in front of me.”

Gu Qiao paid by the meter regardless.

Gu Qiao climbed the creaking stairs. The dampness in the room had grown heavier by another layer. The burst of energy she had felt outside drained out of her completely the moment she stepped inside. An irresistible exhaustion swept through her from the inside out. She wanted nothing more than to climb into bed and sleep. Even if it was a damp, cold iron bed — she kicked off her shoes and shrugged off her coat without bothering to change the rest of her clothes, and buried herself in the quilt. She would switch guesthouses tomorrow. She had no energy for it tonight. She didn’t even have the energy to take her medicine and swallow it. Very quickly she drifted off into a half-conscious sleep.

That night, Gu Qiao had a dream. She dreamed of Luo Peiyin and his girlfriend. The new girlfriend’s face was blurred and unclear. Luo Peiyin watched his girlfriend as though she were his entire world — and Gu Qiao stood outside that world, on the other side of everything.

She woke to find no bank passbook in sight. Gu Qiao couldn’t call on the numbers written there for comfort, so she thought of her shop instead. Where had their morning conversation left off? The retail market. The OEM market. The systems integration market. What share of the total software market did retail account for? Which regions — the Northeast, North China, Central China, East China, the South, the Southwest — were most active in retail? On what basis would customers choose to buy legitimate copies from her shop rather than cheaper pirated versions? The impact of piracy on her shop’s sales volume……

She still very much wanted to talk with him about all of this. Even talking about nothing but these things would be fine.

Strange — back during all those days and months before they had seen each other again, even though they were in different countries and there was not a single phone call between them, she had never felt the distance between them as great as it felt today.

Thinking and drifting, Gu Qiao fell asleep again without knowing when.

She woke at seven o’clock to cold pressing in at her from every direction. How had she forgotten to take her fever medicine yesterday?