◎Do I really seem that wealthy to you?◎

They hit another red light, and Luo Peiyin glanced sideways to find the broken comb tooth still nestled in Gu Qiao’s curls. It was a remarkable irritant to the eye.

Whenever something difficult came along, Gu Qiao usually told herself it was more material for the memoir she’d write someday. Publishers weren’t doing well these days, and it was common for them to seek out successful entrepreneurs and ask to publish their stories — the entrepreneurs bought their own print runs, sparing themselves the trouble of unsold books gathering dust. Gu Qiao wasn’t quite at that stage of wealth, but she felt it was only a matter of time. If the road to success had been entirely smooth, talking about it afterward would be unbearably dull. Her only regret was that Luo Peiyin would probably only be able to witness fragments of her story. But that was alright — she retained final say over how those fragments would be interpreted.

Luo Peiyin hadn’t mentioned the Hujiang Grand Hotel once, hadn’t asked whether this sort of thing counted as part of her easy new life. And so Gu Qiao had no way to assign these events a positive, uplifting meaning in front of him.

Because she didn’t want to pass her cold on to Luo Peiyin, Gu Qiao kept her face turned toward the window.

But Gu Qiao was worrying unnecessarily. As far as Luo Peiyin was concerned, there was very little doubt that Gu Qiao was doing well and moving toward doing even better.

As for how well she had done in the past — his father had already conveyed all of that over the phone.

The most darkly comic aspect of life, Luo Peiyin thought, was that Gu Qiao had broken up with him saying she wanted to live a lighter, easier life. When Gu Qiao had hung up that call, he had been forced to admit it: he had made the relationship far too heavy. Not long into their being together, he had already been thinking about meeting families and marriage — because only marriage would allow him to apply for a spousal visa to bring her abroad to study.

What made it absurd was that this heavy kind of life had been unfamiliar to him too. He had always maintained a certain distance from family; the tacit rule from childhood had been that adults were responsible for themselves. He had long assumed that Gu Qiao wanted a relationship with a visible future, one with marriage as its endpoint. If he couldn’t offer that, they shouldn’t be together at all. That was partly why, before he left the country, he had kept his distance from her.

He had only decided to be with her once he was certain he could give her a future. But looking back now, with the benefit of time, all those clumsy efforts of his seemed rather pathetic.

The result of unilaterally introducing Gu Qiao to his family had been to make the relationship look like a joke. Even his father, who had never thought highly of the pairing, hadn’t expected it to end so quickly. He had barely announced to the family that he and Gu Qiao were together before — without another visit home in between — they had already broken up again.

His father had been both astonished and furious, for reasons that were, frankly, absurd.

In the rare phone calls between Luo Peiyin and his father, the old man invariably berated him for being frivolous in matters of love — reckless and inconsistent, abandoning Gu Qiao without warning, and letting the fourth son make a spectacle of the whole thing for all his old colleagues to gossip about, leaving him unable to face anyone. In his father’s telling, Gu Qiao was doing splendidly. At Spring Festival in 1993, he had learned through his father that Gu Qiao had brought her parents and younger sister to Beijing for the New Year and had specifically called to invite his family out to dinner at a restaurant near Tiananmen Square. His father had said, How could I possibly accept a dinner invitation from Gu Qiao — after what you did, how can I face that girl? On the phone, listening to his father deliver his self-righteous pronouncements, what was he supposed to say? Say that Gu Qiao had been the one to end it?

Luo Peiyin reached into Gu Qiao’s long curls and circled a finger around, drawing out the broken comb tooth.

“There was something in your hair.”

Gu Qiao was not told what that something was. She didn’t ask either. She worked at filling her eyes with the scenery outside the car window, trying to restrain herself from reading too much into things. Letting her imagination run wild about someone else’s boyfriend was simply wrong.

But silence had a way of stretching the imagination. And Gu Qiao’s sense of smell had not deserted her with the cold — the scent of him reminded her that the hotel where he’d been staying two nights running had stocked all its amenities in mint.

Gu Qiao finally endured the journey to the hospital. When she stepped out of the car, the cool air rushed over her, and Luo Peiyin draped his overcoat around her shoulders. She immediately felt much warmer.

“You don’t need to — I’m not really cold.”

Luo Peiyin raised his eyes and looked at her with an expression that said: if you’re not cold, how did you manage to catch a cold?

“Don’t worry — if I were cold, I wouldn’t be giving it to you.”

His overcoat hung on her. Through all her own layers of clothing, Gu Qiao felt as though she could sense his body warmth. The coat was large on her, enveloping her completely, like an embrace. Gu Qiao reminded herself inwardly: even imagination has its limits — you two broke up.

You broke up!

He was still the same as ever, unbothered by cold, as if his overcoat had always been meant for her.

With Luo Peiyin beside her, Gu Qiao had no need to think at all — she only had to follow his lead. It was a rare moment of mental rest for her. And precisely because it was so restful, she didn’t dare let herself indulge in it for too long.

Perhaps the medicine had kicked in, because when her temperature was taken at the hospital, it registered as only a mild fever. The doctor confirmed what she had already suspected about herself: a common cold, nothing more. Luo Peiyin had accompanied her through the consultation, paid on her behalf, and collected her prescription. Gu Qiao could not feel entirely at ease accepting all of this. She thought back to the year Luo Peiyin had been in a car accident and hospitalised — she hadn’t gone to see him. And what she’d promised then, she hadn’t followed through on either.

When they got back into the car, Gu Qiao slipped off the coat, still holding the warmth she had left in it. One of her long hairs clung to Luo Peiyin’s overcoat. She pinched it between two fingers and swiftly tucked it into her own coat pocket.

Silence was something Gu Qiao could not tolerate at all — every gap had to be filled with words, otherwise she would allow herself to dwell on the past and start having thoughts she had no business having.

She brought up the figures she’d been turning over in her mind, sorting and analysing them. It was only when she talked about these things that her words didn’t stumble.

The elevator climbed floor by floor. A porter stood beside Gu Qiao, holding her luggage.

Luo Peiyin had not come up with her.

Gu Qiao studied her own face closely in the mirror. The redness had faded a little. She had talked the whole way back; now she could finally be quiet.

The elevator reached the thirty-ninth floor. When the room door opened, Gu Qiao immediately wondered whether Luo Peiyin had overestimated her financial standing. Through the window, the Huangpu River was visible — and beyond it, a skyline of towers rising one after another, tumbling into her eyes.

She could certainly afford a standard room, but Luo Peiyin seemed to have taken out a loan against her future earning capacity, assuming she could comfortably inhabit a suite like this without a second thought.

Luo Peiyin had booked the room on her behalf. Booking under his name was how they had secured the negotiated rate. As for the price — he’d said they would settle that last. By rights, Gu Qiao’s sharp eyes could have estimated the sum from a distance just by gauging the thickness of notes, but what he had taken from his wallet was a card.

The doorbell rang. A server pushed in a trolley.

A silver pot of hot milk. A glass jar of tomato juice, sealed. A basket of bread and assorted biscuits. Beside these, a red velvet cake, and the small wontons she had eaten the previous day.

The breakfast spread was extravagant. Even with Luo Peiyin around, she could drink tomato juice every day now. She no longer had to worry about him reacting badly to tomatoes.

Gu Qiao sat down before the trolley, took a piece of toast from the rack, and spread a thick layer of tomato sauce over it.

Breaking up wasn’t entirely without its benefits. She could eat tomatoes without a second thought, without any worry whatsoever.

People who were sick were supposed to take in plenty of vitamins. Gu Qiao looked out at the Huangpu River and poured tomato juice down her throat.

She didn’t know why, but neither the tomato sauce nor the tomato juice tasted of anything in particular. Tomatoes really were getting worse year by year — not a trace of tomato flavour left. Gu Qiao lowered her head and turned her attention to the small wontons.

The room phone rang. Gu Qiao crossed to it. It was Luo Peiyin. He told her where to find the menu so she could order lunch to be delivered at noon.

“Cousin-brother, let me take you to dinner this evening.”

Luo Peiyin didn’t decline this time. “If you don’t mind, I’ll choose the restaurant.”

“Of course — you know Shanghai far better than I do.” Gu Qiao couldn’t hold herself back any longer and asked, “Cousin-brother, how much is this room per night?”

There was a two-second pause, and then a laugh. “You’re this curious about the number — are you planning to use it as a benchmark when negotiating room rates for your staff travel someday?”

Gu Qiao couldn’t quite tell whether Luo Peiyin genuinely believed she would one day build a company whose employees travelled at this standard, or whether he was gently mocking her.

After three nights at the Hujiang Grand Hotel, Gu Qiao had come away with at least one resolution: when she got back, she was going to raise the travel standards for her staff. Naturally even that improved standard would still be a long way from the room she was in now.

But Gu Qiao decided to take Luo Peiyin’s words at face value. She said with a smile, “I hadn’t even said anything yet — and Cousin-brother already knew what I was getting at. Would you be willing to tell me what kind of discount you can arrange?”

Right now she felt no embarrassment whatsoever. Back when she’d been selling leather jackets outside a bar, she had kept herself going with visions she’d drawn for herself. She didn’t mind drawing an even bigger vision now. And she believed — she truly believed — she would taste that vision one day.

Luo Peiyin had listened to countless people draw out their visions over the past two years. To attract investment, the ability to construct a compelling vision and actually make people believe it was a crucial skill.

“That’s not exactly classified information. But I can’t just tell anyone, can I.”

Gu Qiao felt a flicker of disorientation, as if she were hearing someone else’s voice.

Luo Peiyin didn’t wait for a response. “Get some rest. Goodbye.” He gave Gu Qiao five seconds to hang up first. She didn’t, so he hung up.

The doctor had told her to rest. But Gu Qiao couldn’t sleep at all. She picked up the hotel information booklet and read it word by word. The software launch event in Beijing might have caused a stir, but it probably hadn’t reached Shanghai. She found herself wondering about the price of the function rooms here — if she held the Shanghai launch event at this hotel and invited dealers… naturally, having the event here might also help lend some prestige to her shop and the software.

With that thought, Gu Qiao picked up the room phone and dialled Lin Haichuan’s number. Lin Haichuan was extremely in demand right now — she had better book his time well in advance.

Gu Qiao said with a smile into the phone, “Still filming before the New Year?”

The moment Lin Haichuan heard that scheming little laugh of Gu Qiao’s, he knew she was calculating something at his expense again.

“Tell me. What is it?”

—