◎Low-grade fever◎

Gu Qiao crawled out of bed, picked up the thermos and poured water into a cup — not a trace of warmth to it. She swallowed her medicine with that cold, heat-less water.

This rundown little guesthouse really was no friend to her. Even though the room and the quilt were ice-cold, she still wanted to collapse back into the covers and not move an inch. She ought to change guesthouses. But the moment she thought about having to pack her luggage, haul the suitcase step by step down the stairs, wait for a car, stuff herself into it, check into the new place, and get herself and her bags settled into a new room — tasks that would once have been effortless for her were now broken down into individual steps, and just thinking through each step made Gu Qiao feel exhausted.

Her body desperately wanted to go on strike, but her mind refused to stop.

Gu Qiao picked up her mobile phone, closed her eyes, and quickly dialled a number. She got in first, laughing as she spoke: “Cousin-brother, you don’t need to come pick me up at the hotel — I’ll take a cab straight to you.” She said it as though it were a given that he would, of course, come to collect her that morning just as he had the day before. By making this call, she had settled the matter: he wouldn’t be picking her up not because he didn’t want to, but because she had talked him out of it.

Her voice had a muffled, stuffy quality as she spoke, and she only noticed it herself after she had finished.

By rights, if she had a cold, she ought to have partly lost her sense of smell — but right now it was strangely sharp instead. The thick, sweet scent of lotus root powder from the floor below threaded itself through the gap under the door and straight into Gu Qiao’s nose.

“You have a cold?”

It came to Gu Qiao like an inspiration: yes, if she claimed to be ill, she could justify yesterday’s lateness with even more confidence. But that had never been the kind of person she was. She laughed and said, “A little, nothing serious.”

There was a brief pause on the other end of the line. “Let’s just talk on the phone then.”

“Oh.” Gu Qiao’s voice made every effort to sound full of energy — even lighter and brighter than her usual tone. “That works too. Saves you from catching anything.”

“You’re still at yesterday’s hotel, I take it.”

“Yes.”

“What’s your room number?”

This time it was Gu Qiao’s turn to be surprised, and following that surprise came silence.

“We’ll be talking for quite a while, and receiving calls on your mobile will rack up roaming charges. I’ll just call you on the room line instead.”

Hotel room phones didn’t charge for incoming calls.

Gu Qiao didn’t know what to say. Even at a moment like this, her cousin-brother hadn’t forgotten to save her money. The trouble was, she wasn’t actually staying at the hotel she’d mentioned.

From Gu Qiao’s silence, Luo Peiyin drew his conclusion: she was still at that little guesthouse in the alley and hadn’t moved. Knowing Gu Qiao as he did, she wouldn’t waste a single coin she could save. If she had moved to a proper hotel and was now in that room, she would have used the room phone to dial out — not her mobile, roaming charges and all. Leaving money on the table when there was an easy way to save it — that simply wasn’t this woman’s style. She loved money like her own life.

If she wasn’t using the room phone, there was only one explanation: there was no room phone to use.

Right now she was huddled in that little alley guesthouse, sick, with no one beside her. And she had broken up with him to live like this? Did being with him weigh on her so heavily that even this was preferable? At that moment, he would rather that Gu Qiao’s life were genuinely as easy as she claimed.

Gu Qiao sidestepped Luo Peiyin’s question and said with a smile, “I’ll call you — roaming’s only a few cents a minute, that’s nothing to me. Shall I ring you at half past eight?”

“If you’re free now, we can carry on talking.”

Gu Qiao kept the line open. She draped two overcoats over herself and talked with Luo Peiyin on the phone, telling him how bundling her software in package deals had boosted sales. When she had first hit upon the idea of bundled sales, she had felt like a genius — but it had been three in the morning, and that stroke of genius had to stay bottled up inside her with no one to tell. She had lain awake staring at the ceiling, and had suddenly started calculating the time zones on the American West Coast. Halfway through the calculation she remembered he was in Singapore, which meant the time there should be about right.

At first Gu Qiao made a deliberate effort to modulate her voice, but as she talked she grew more and more animated, until she forgot herself entirely. Back when they had been in a relationship, the most important part, for her, had always been the talking — he was different, not as fond of talking without acting on things. But with an ocean between them, all he could do was keep her company on the phone while she talked. Every word jostled to get out of Gu Qiao’s mouth, as if the opportunity to speak would be gone forever if she let it pass.

Luo Peiyin knew Gu Qiao’s voice all too well — that tone of near-fevered exhilaration when she recounted her history of making money over the phone. But to reach today’s pitch of fervour, with her voice nearly hoarse and still going, was something he rarely heard.

Gu Qiao heard the sound of a door closing — she heard someone greet Luo Peiyin — she heard a car door open and shut again.

She guessed that the person on the other end of the line was driving while listening to her, the mobile on speaker.

“Are you talking this fast to save on the phone bill?”

“…”

“Have some water first. We’ll talk in person — I’ll be at your hotel shortly. Get ready. I’ll take you to see a doctor.”

He was coming to find her specifically to take her to the doctor? He was nearly at her hotel already? She wasn’t at that hotel at all. He hadn’t given her any warning, hadn’t given her any chance to refuse.

Gu Qiao’s lips suddenly felt glued together, and extracting even a single word was a tremendous effort: “I’m not staying there.” He would think — how could she even lie about something as simple as where she was staying.

Her voice had dropped, nothing at all like how it had sounded moments ago.

Luo Peiyin didn’t dwell on whether or not she had lied. “Where are you now? I’ll come and get you.”

“Actually, I’m absolutely fine.” Gu Qiao’s mind raced. “As it happens, there’s a nice teahouse right next to that hotel — Cousin-brother, go wait for me in the teahouse, start eating, I’ll be there as soon as I can. Order whatever you like. My treat.” She was suppressing a cough, but it broke through anyway, just before the words “my treat.”

Luo Peiyin waited for her coughing to finish and then his voice turned suddenly stern: “Listen to me. I have no interest in conducting a conversation with someone who coughs every few minutes and whose thinking I can’t be sure is clear. I imagine you want to get our conversation over with as much as I do. And besides —” He paused before continuing. “I am your only acquaintance in Shanghai. If your condition worsens, I can hardly stand by and do nothing. That would end up wasting your time as well as mine.”

Though there was plenty of content in what he said, Gu Qiao could not get past the word “acquaintance.” Not lover, not family — acquaintance.

That one word made her heart ache.

This time Gu Qiao didn’t waste either of their time. She finally told him the name of the guesthouse where she was staying. Even the name of the place felt embarrassing to say aloud.

Such a dilapidated little inn, and it called itself the “Hujiang Grand Hotel” — didn’t it feel the slightest bit of shame? The hotel’s name made her earlier lie seem even more painfully ironic.

Having said it, she followed up with a string of explanations: “The moment I came out of the train station that day, I ran straight into rain. The guesthouse owner happened to be out front touting for guests, and without really checking what the place was like, I just came here. It’s in an alley, not easy to find. You said you’d come pick me up that day, so I mentioned a different one.” The central point of all this was simple: she had chosen this little guesthouse purely by chance, and the reason she’d mentioned a different one earlier was that this place was tucked away in an alley — hard to find — so she hadn’t bothered to say.

Even she couldn’t convince herself with this excuse.

“So you’d like to switch hotels, I assume.”

“Yes.”

“I can get a negotiated rate at the hotel I’m staying at. The price should be quite manageable for you.”

Gu Qiao didn’t argue. Let him think what he liked.

People who go from poverty to prosperity tend to fall into one of two patterns when it comes to spending: one type spends lavishly, determined to enjoy everything they’d missed out on, reasoning that even if they ended up broke again, they’d survived hard times before; the other type — like Gu Qiao — keeps a strict budget even after money comes in, wanting every coin to multiply, because the gap between where she was and where she wanted to be was still considerable, and this was not the moment to enjoy the fruits of labour. Her standard for business travel was nowhere near five-star hotels.

“Pack your things. I’ll wait for you downstairs.”

She hung up and practically leapt out of bed, packing her belongings one item at a time. She dug out her yellow overcoat from the suitcase — yellow had always suited her, she decided she’d wear yellow today.

The guesthouse owner was scraping the bottom of her bowl of lotus root powder with a spoon, scraping until the bowl looked as clean as if it had been washed, before finally setting it down. A tall man came and stopped at the entrance. He was wearing something that looked very expensive — she had been wanting to make herself a cashmere overcoat recently and had been paying particular attention to fabrics. Someone dressed this elegantly wouldn’t normally stay in her establishment, though you could never be completely sure. The owner had seen plenty of men polished to a shine on the outside who were an absolute disaster underneath — and she had witnessed her fair share of people who made a fortune on the stock market one day and were on the edge of ruin the next. But the man in front of her didn’t look like someone down on his luck. He looked like someone doing very well indeed.

She walked over to greet him. “Looking for a room, sir?”

“How much per night here?”

“We have four-bed rooms, doubles — but judging by how you carry yourself, you’ll want a single.” The owner had said this line to men in cashmere coats and to men in plain grey cotton padded jackets alike. Everyone who walked into her establishment was entitled to a compliment.

“How much for the single?”

“Fifty yuan — but if you stay three nights, I can knock five percent off. You’ve come to the right place, very convenient location.” The owner settled her arms on the narrow front desk, about to gauge whether the man had any intention of staying. Then she noticed his eyes had already shifted toward the stairwell.

Gu Qiao had finished packing. She pressed her lips together hard — they looked considerably redder for it, not the least bit like someone who was ill. She stood in front of the guesthouse’s small mirror, finger-combing her hair. The guesthouse comb had teeth that were too fine and had snapped after just a few strokes, leaving her with only her fingers to work with. Her mass of long curls swept across her forehead and fell straight down over her yellow overcoat. Gu Qiao was reasonably satisfied with what she saw in the mirror. Her fingers had just closed around the handle of her suitcase when she glanced down and noticed that her leather shoes still bore the mud splashes from last night’s rain. When she had first checked in, the room had offered only a roll of tissue roughly the width of a finger, long since used up. Gu Qiao steeled herself and used her white handkerchief to scrub the shoes clean.

Gu Qiao locked all her exhaustion and her embarrassment inside that small room and, once through the door, was the version of herself that met her own standards again.

Gu Qiao picked up her suitcase and prepared to go downstairs. The staircase shook and was very narrow — the owner’s generously built figure could only just pass through. The stairwell was dim, but not so dark that she couldn’t look down and see Luo Peiyin below.

Gu Qiao’s lashes fluttered open, then lowered again. She remembered once complimenting Luo Peiyin: “You look very hard on the outside, but you’re actually quite soft.” His nose was firm to the touch, the line of his mouth cold and rigid — yet his lips had been soft when kissed. Luo Peiyin had apparently not taken this as a compliment at all, and had bitten her lip quite sharply. The bite had been both pleasurable and painful, and she had promptly decided to take her compliment back.

She looked down at him; he looked up at her. Gu Qiao immediately broke into a smile to project an air of energy and good health. Suitcase in hand, she made every effort to look at ease.

“Stay there — I’ll carry that up.”

The words “no need” hadn’t even made it out of her mouth before Luo Peiyin was already coming up the stairs. The staircase swayed, and in the dim stairwell Gu Qiao watched him walking toward her as their shared past came rushing toward her too.

He was considerably taller than her, and the few times she had been able to look down at him were ones that had left an impression — especially the last, when he had lifted her off the ground and spun her around. She’d had no warning, and her boots had knocked together, producing a light tap-tap sound.

Gu Qiao worked hard to keep a smile on her face. With no mirror in front of her, she had no idea whether the smile looked well.

When he drew close, Gu Qiao said brightly, “Cousin-brother!”

When Gu Qiao handed over the suitcase, her fingers inevitably grazed his. Before she had even registered the warmth of those fingers, Luo Peiyin had already taken the case from her.

He had a large frame. Once he was holding the suitcase, the stairwell felt suddenly cramped.

The owner gave an inward sigh. No new guest, and one leaving. She had thought this young woman might stay a few more days.

The pair of them both looked well turned out, but appearances could be deceiving — some people put every last penny they had into looking the part. Maybe the man had found somewhere cheaper and was having the girl move in with him to split costs? What a waste of two such good-looking faces. If they were each attaching themselves to someone else, they wouldn’t be squeezing into a place like hers.

“This location is unbeatable — mine is the cheapest in the area. Go and look anywhere else, you won’t find better. And if you do find cheaper, something’s wrong with it.” When the two showed no sign of wavering, the owner added, “As it happens, a room with a window has just come free — move in there and I’ll charge the same rate. It’s a bit more spacious, fits two people comfortably too. Normally that room costs ten yuan extra, mind you.”

With Luo Peiyin standing right there, the owner’s words felt particularly pointed to Gu Qiao — two sentences had stripped her accommodation situation completely bare. And what did she mean, “fits two people comfortably”? Was she assuming they’d be sharing a room?

Gu Qiao’s face, already flushed, went even redder at the owner’s words. She was about to say something when Luo Peiyin got there first: “Please process the checkout quickly.”

The owner’s tone shifted at once. “I’ll need to check whether anything is missing or damaged — one of you should come up with me, otherwise you’ll say I’m making false accusations.”

Gu Qiao laughed inwardly. And what, exactly, in this place could go missing or get damaged?

The front area was very small — two people standing outside the desk was already a squeeze. Gu Qiao said quietly to Luo Peiyin, “Cousin-brother, wait outside — I’ll be right out. I’m so sorry to trouble you with all this.” She suspected that in a short while, Luo Peiyin would have figured out every detail of this guesthouse’s condition.

“You wait here. I’ll go up with her.” He turned to the owner. “Which room.”

“Please don’t—”

Before Gu Qiao’s words were out, Luo Peiyin had already started up the stairs.

By the time Luo Peiyin had disappeared from Gu Qiao’s line of sight, the owner was still only halfway up, clinging to the banister and breathing hard.

It was a room with no window. The doorframe was very low, and Luo Peiyin had to squeeze through. Even in her hurry to leave, Gu Qiao hadn’t forgotten to roughly fold the quilt.

After her thorough inspection, the owner made a significant discovery. “A tooth has broken off my comb. Five yuan deducted from the deposit.”

“That comb is worth five yuan?” Luo Peiyin glanced briefly at the comb. He didn’t know much about combs, but he knew something about the materials. A comb made of polypropylene like this one would have cost less than ten cents to manufacture, and at a guesthouse of this type — one that treated a plastic comb as a major asset — the procurement price wouldn’t have been more than twenty cents.

“Things take time to buy, you know. I have to take a bus to get a comb. Never mind a taxi — even a minibus costs more than that. You think I want to claim this money? Give me a new comb right now and I won’t charge you a thing, no argument.”

Luo Peiyin let his gaze move briefly over the owner, as if taking stock of something. Being looked at from that height, from that angle, with that expression, the owner suddenly felt a flicker of unease and stepped back. “There are lots of people around here, you know.”

Luo Peiyin opened his wallet, pulled out a note, and dropped it on the wooden table. The table’s upper left corner had already split. The owner, to her credit, had not thought to charge Gu Qiao for the split wood.

“Keep the change — return her full deposit. And don’t mention the comb to her.” He didn’t think Gu Qiao would be heartbroken over five yuan in deposit right now, but she had obviously not wanted him to know where she was staying. The comb’s existence would only make things more awkward for her.

So he does have money after all. The owner’s eyes darted around the room, looking for anything else that might qualify as damaged.

She was in the middle of this assessment when she heard the man say, “Can we go down now?”

He was a man, and a big one at that. The owner thought better of it and said, with a smile, “After you.”

The owner returned the deposit to Gu Qiao and arranged her face into a welcoming expression. “Come again next time!”

Gu Qiao’s face was even redder than before Luo Peiyin had gone upstairs. Any claim that the alley guesthouse had its own special charm was now completely without credibility.

Gu Qiao had barely stepped outside when the owner, finding business slow, grabbed a handful of sunflower seeds and squeezed through the doorframe after them, scanning in every direction for the next potential guest. The “Hujiang Grand Hotel” sign beside them was impossible to miss. The owner watched the young man push the suitcase he was carrying into the trunk of a Cadillac.

A rich man, after all. The owner cracked a seed with regret. She should have held back a few more yuan from the deposit.

The owner cracking her seeds right now had absolutely no idea that the following day, a surprise fire inspection would force her to close the guesthouse temporarily — triggered, in fact, because her determination to claim a few extra yuan from that deposit had given someone cause to take a thorough look at her establishment.

Gu Qiao settled into the passenger seat, and the warmth washed over her immediately.

Luo Peiyin glanced sideways at Gu Qiao’s hair, studying it carefully. The owner hadn’t been wrong about her. The teeth of the green plastic comb were still caught in Gu Qiao’s mass of curls — but he said nothing about it, and did not reach over to pull them free.

“Cousin-brother, I don’t need to go to the hospital.” On the rare occasions Gu Qiao had been to a hospital, it was always to visit or look after someone else. She herself was robustly healthy — a little something here or there, and a bit of medicine sorted it out. Partly because of this, she had never treated her own fevers as anything significant.

“What’s your temperature right now?”

Gu Qiao had no thermometer, so she had no idea.

“It’s just a low-grade fever. I just took medicine for it — I’ll be fine soon. Thank you for coming, Cousin-brother.”

He didn’t need her thanks. Right now, without a mirror, she couldn’t see her own face — but with her cheeks that red, it was frankly inaccurate to call it a low-grade fever.

“I’d recommend going to the hospital to confirm whether it’s a common cold or influenza. We’re in peak flu season right now.”

Luo Peiyin brought up their earlier topic again, but the atmosphere inside the car was utterly wrong for talking business.

Gu Qiao turned her face toward the window. “Cousin-brother, I think I’d better not talk to you right now. What if I give you my flu — wouldn’t that be terrible?” She thought her symptoms were probably not flu, but passing on a cold to him would be a genuine transgression.

Gu Qiao meant every word sincerely, with not the slightest intent to provoke.

—