◎No Regrets◎

Gu Qiao first spent a good while complimenting Lin Haichuan, then pivoted: “I imagine someone of your profile must be thinking about how to put your influence to use for some kind of positive social impact.”

Lin Haichuan, still basking in the praise, could hardly contradict this. “With so much pirated software out there in the country, it really is time for a public figure to stand up and advocate for people to support legitimate software. This person needs to be someone with a genuinely positive image, real name recognition, and real influence. I’ve turned it over in my mind again and again — other than you, I truly can’t think of anyone.”

The moment Lin Haichuan heard the word “software,” he remembered this was Gu Qiao’s territory and his guard went up immediately. “You’re not trying to get me to do more free work for you, are you.”

“How is it free work for me? You very kindly hosted that lucky draw ceremony for me as a personal favour. Naturally I should give something back. You could lead a signature campaign in support of legitimate software — I’ll organise it, find journalists, and get you some press coverage. Consider it a news feature sent your way before the new year.”

“You’re being this generous?”

Gu Qiao didn’t deny the ulterior motive. “I’ll be honest with you. The Northern region campaign would be held at the software launch event — it’s a win for both of us.” A purely commercial advertisement in a newspaper would cost a fortune. But creating a newsworthy story and having the papers cover it of their own accord was an entirely different matter. Besides, she genuinely loathed pirated software — it was a serious impediment to her making money.

“Win for both of us? You said the Northern region campaign — so there’s a Southern one too?”

“Shanghai and Guangzhou as well. I’ll cover all your flights and accommodation.” To sweeten the deal further, Gu Qiao pushed herself and said, “And naturally, in keeping with your status, I’ll book you first class and five-star hotels.”

“I’m not short of those things.”

Gu Qiao said with a smile, “I know you’re doing it all in support of legitimate software.”

After ending the call with Lin Haichuan, Gu Qiao phoned the hotel’s sales department to ask about booking a function room. The price was somewhat beyond her budget. She thought of Luo Peiyin — through him, perhaps she could get a more favourable rate.

This thought drifted through her mind and was gone in less than a second. Better to pay a little more herself.

Gu Qiao thought of a journalist she knew, and dialled Xu Ling’s pager. She wanted Xu Ling’s read on the news value of Lin Haichuan fronting a legitimate software campaign.

Xu Ling remembered Gu Qiao — and Gu Qiao’s cousin-brother — quite vividly. Journalism had preserved and sharpened her natural curiosity. Just the previous morning, over breakfast in the lobby, she had run into a female colleague with very different professional values. Different values didn’t prevent them from exchanging industry information, and in the course of doing so they had ranged rather off-topic. This colleague had worked briefly in Singapore and was now a reporter for a Sino-American computing newspaper. At the previous evening’s banquet she had chatted with Gu Qiao’s cousin-brother. Xu Ling had mentioned only a few distinguishing details before the colleague realised she was talking about Luo Peiyin.

It was from this colleague that Xu Ling had first learned that Luo Peiyin worked at LC’s Asia-Pacific headquarters. Gu Qiao apparently hadn’t seen her cousin-brother in a very long time — at their first meeting she had not even known this cousin-brother of hers worked at LC, and getting into the banquet to see Peter had required Xu Ling to make the introduction.

Xu Ling’s sense of professional propriety reined in her curiosity, though she was intensely interested in what exactly lay between this pair of “cousins.”

Over the phone, Xu Ling repeated back what Gu Qiao had described: “Lin Haichuan fronting a legitimate software signature campaign? That could work for the technology section, though I’d say someone like Lin Haichuan — an actor — might sit better in the culture section. Build up enough momentum and it’ll definitely be a news item. I’ll ask around with reporters from the other sections.”

She then asked, “How do you know Lin Haichuan?”

That, Gu Qiao thought, was quite a long story — it involved her wanting him to model for a leather jacket advertisement, her cousin-brother disapproving, and her going to Lin Haichuan as a result. But it all condensed into one sentence: “He did an advertisement for me when he wasn’t famous yet.” Because Lin Haichuan refused to acknowledge this Ba Fen – Chapter of his history, Gu Qiao left out the words “leather jacket” as well.

When Xu Ling learned that Gu Qiao had sold clothes before the software: “Quite a change of direction.”

By Xu Ling’s estimation, the exclusivity fee alone for the distribution rights would have been a very large sum. Add in a promotional campaign of this scale, and the spending was clearly significant — Gu Qiao had evidently bet her future on this software. If it paid off, she’d not only profit from the software itself, but be in a position to improve the terms for other distributors too.

But the last time they had talked, Gu Qiao hadn’t mentioned anything about a signature campaign — which meant this was yet another expenditure on top of everything else.

“I’m leaving tomorrow. Let me buy you drinks tonight. Last time you treated me — this time it’s my turn. And please don’t order plain water again, that really takes all the fun out of it.”

Gu Qiao gave a small sigh, then smiled. “I don’t have that honour tonight — I’ve already made plans.”

“From the sound of it, something interesting is happening?”

Gu Qiao corrected her: “It’s my cousin-brother.”

Xu Ling did not believe Gu Qiao and her cousin-brother were actual cousins in any conventional sense. She mentioned, with apparent casualness: “I only found out yesterday from someone I know that your cousin-brother works at LC too — she’d interviewed him before, at the LC Asia-Pacific headquarters. She actually had a thing for him at one point, but gave up once she found out he had a girlfriend.” The part about the colleague having feelings for Luo Peiyin was something Xu Ling had fabricated for effect — even if it were true, who would admit to something like that? But simply announcing out of nowhere that “your cousin-brother has a girlfriend” would have sounded too blunt. She hadn’t named anyone, so it wasn’t quite a false accusation of anything.

What Xu Ling was really trying to convey was that Luo Peiyin had a girlfriend. But that was already established fact for Gu Qiao — hearing it again only pressed the same point into her heart once more.

What actually made Gu Qiao pause was learning that Luo Peiyin worked at LC. She thought back to Peter standing her up — and then, what a coincidence: Luo Peiyin had barely finished saying that the odds of Peter investing in her were low when Peter called to reschedule.

His attitude toward her had shifted because she was unwell.

Gu Qiao didn’t let the silence linger. She said with a smile, “When I’m back, we’ll have that drink together.”

Right now she rather wanted a drink — but there were more important things to attend to. Gu Qiao called her software shop, asking Qiu Shuang to fax over the launch event poster featuring Lin Haichuan so she could review it one more time. The hotel offered a free fax service; naturally she was going to use it.

With all of that done, Gu Qiao drew the curtains. The room fell into dimness — a darkness like the formless void before humanity was made. She threw herself headlong into the mattress. The room’s one drawback: the bed was too soft. She had always slept better on a firm surface.

Gu Qiao understood very well that no matter how expensive a luxury, two or three encounters with it and it would feel ordinary. So however lavish a place she found herself in, she never felt out of her depth. Her only fear was that she would grow accustomed to it before she had achieved what she had set out to achieve.

Habit was a very powerful thing. The books she had spent her last two years reading in the library had described how armies that swept southward found themselves undefeated, while those that pushed north often lost their resolve when they reached the Jiangnan region — the soft, beautiful south robbed them of their edge. Coming back out of that comfort to face hardship again was something most people simply could not manage.

In her dream, Gu Qiao was a child again, swinging high on a swing, higher and higher. The dream was entirely without logic, jumping from the swing straight onto a train. Luo Peiyin stood with her in the gap between carriages. She kept her eyes fixed on a large burlap sack of leather gloves, terrified they would get lost. She clutched the sack hard, looked up — and found the person beside her was gone.

“Cousin-brother!”

Half-asleep, she heard the phone ringing. She grabbed the receiver, heard a familiar voice, and cried out in delight, “Cousin-brother!”

That cry jolted her fully awake. The dream was over. Luo Peiyin had a girlfriend now, and that girlfriend was not her.

She felt regret — but not remorse. She never felt remorse about things that had already happened.

“What’s your temperature now?”

Gu Qiao pressed her palm to her forehead. Perhaps the medicine and the sleep had worked together — the fever was gone.

“Normal.”

“Have you eaten lunch?”

“There’s still so much from breakfast I haven’t touched.” Most of what was on the trolley she hadn’t laid a hand on. One shouldn’t be wasteful. Dinner was at six. Gu Qiao squinted at the clock face in the dim light — it was already half past one in the afternoon. She had slept until half past one.

“Wait a moment — lunch will be sent up.”

“No need—”

Before she could finish, the line went dead.

She didn’t particularly want to eat. Something too lavish would be wasted on her.

A little while later, the doorbell rang and a server rolled in a trolley. The dishes were simple: white congee and several small sides, among them her favourite lettuce. That pool of bright green lifted her spirits considerably. The server tidied away the breakfast dishes.

Gu Qiao hadn’t wanted lunch, but the bowl of congee was completely empty by the time she set it down.

As the sun moved toward the horizon, Gu Qiao ate, slept, and made phone calls. All the sleep she had missed in recent days was recovered that afternoon.

Gu Qiao went into the bathroom. The showerhead delivered a strong, hot stream, and it hit her face in a rush. She had been thoroughly unsatisfied with the bathing conditions at the Hujiang Grand Hotel, and now she let the water run over her without restraint, until her whole body was flushed pink.

She pulled out the toiletries from the small drawer — all mint-scented. The lather bloomed and grew, gradually enveloping her, until she was wrapped in nothing but the scent of mint. Gu Qiao thought of how she had felt in Luo Peiyin’s car. It had been exactly this feeling.

The water washed away her fatigue and every last discomfort the Hujiang Grand Hotel had visited upon her.

Gu Qiao hadn’t finished drying her hair when the phone rang. She wrapped herself in a bathrobe and dashed to the phone.

“I’m at your door.”

He was at her door now — he clearly hadn’t anticipated she’d be bathing at this hour.

She was still in her bathrobe, hair not yet dry. She’d have to open the door like this. Everywhere the bathrobe didn’t cover was flushed from the heat — stark against the white terry cloth. Her face was red too, steamed red.

“I was passing a department store on the way back and picked up two cashmere jumpers for you. Come out and take them.” Luo Peiyin had spent no more than two minutes in the women’s section, pointed at a white one and a pale grey one, added a scarf — none of them the colours Gu Qiao preferred. But then, he wasn’t choosing a gift. He was simply picking out two warm things for her.

Those few minutes, however, were enough to run into an acquaintance. Zhao Yue had managed to extract one foot before the last of Hainan’s real estate bubble burst, though the other was still mired in it — his mother, Madam Liao, had been of considerable help. These days Zhao Yue was in Shanghai doing property development.

Gu Qiao retied her bathrobe belt firmly.

Gu Qiao opened the door and looked up to find Luo Peiyin. She took the carrier bag from him; their fingers touched, and Gu Qiao quickly pulled her hand back. Her fingers were warmer than his — still heated from the shower.

His fingers were a little cool.

Gu Qiao would not allow herself to blush in front of Luo Peiyin. Blushing required a proper basis for doing so. Flushing red in front of someone else’s boyfriend at the slightest provocation — what kind of behaviour was that?

“Thank you so much, Cousin-brother, sorry for the trouble.” He had figured out that a person who ran cold and yet had gone the whole day of a fever without putting on enough layers must not have packed sufficient clothing — though without cashmere, layering other garments could still ward off the cold.

“Just something I grabbed in passing. It’ll do.”

Luo Peiyin glanced down at his watch. “Half an hour should be enough time — I’ll wait for you at the elevator.”

“It is.” Looking the way she did right now, she could hardly invite Luo Peiyin to sit down in her room. And Luo Peiyin had no intention of sitting down in her room either. As soon as she answered, he had already turned and walked away.

She shut the door. Gu Qiao took out the cashmere jumpers from the bag. Both in the same simple style, with sleeves to the elbow. The scarf was white as well. With her eye for clothing, she could tell these weren’t cheap. Her eye for quality hadn’t failed her.

Just like long ago, when he had sent her clothes — always with the price tags removed, always delivered through her cousin-sister. He had been so careful about everything else, but one thing had given him away: the cousin-sister’s taste in clothes would never have run to something that vibrant. Perhaps he had started to like her even earlier than she had known.

Pure goodwill, taken to its highest expression, could look like this: seeing her sick, promptly getting her two cashmere jumpers to keep her warm. But it took something more than goodwill — it took enough feeling for someone — to deliberately choose the colours she loved, even if he might not have shared her taste in them.

Gu Qiao felt a faint urge to laugh, at her own slowness to see things. Long after the breakup, she had realised: before they had even been together, he had already liked her.

Gu Qiao was sincerely grateful for the gesture, but in the end she did not put on the cashmere jumpers Luo Peiyin had bought her. She could accept his other kindnesses, but not clothing. It wasn’t a matter of the colour — she would never be so ungrateful toward someone’s goodwill over something as trivial as that. It was simply that with cashmere like this pressed against her skin, every thought of him would make her uneasy — and that was the last thing she needed when he was standing right in front of her.

Gu Qiao rummaged in her case until she found her clip-on rhinestone earrings — not because she wanted anyone to mistake them for real diamonds, but simply because they were big and sparkly. Both the rubies and the diamonds were imitation, but that didn’t stop Gu Qiao from loving them.

This time she did not arrive late. She made a point of being at the elevator five minutes early.

Gu Qiao watched Luo Peiyin walk toward her, and offered him the kind of smile appropriate for a younger female cousin greeting family. It was a pleasant thing, being the one who waited.

Oddly, when the elevator arrived going down, it held just the two of them.

Gu Qiao couldn’t understand why elevator cabins were mirrored on every side. Even without looking at the person beside her, the mirrors showed her his face with perfect clarity. She stared at the elevator doors and found herself seeing his features laid out before her — especially his eyes.

Gu Qiao decided to look only at herself. Even after half an hour since the bath, the heat-flush on her face hadn’t fully faded — and the dangling earrings only made her look more flushed.

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