◎ Quite Strong ◎

The change in Luo Peiyin’s attitude toward her business had come after he saw her feverish at the “Hujiang Grand Hotel.” Before that, he had shown no apparent interest in her ventures whatsoever.

All business in matters of the heart — spouting off about clean relationships — and yet he had the time and inclination to talk with her about work.

Gu Qiao fixed her gaze on Luo Peiyin and said, one word at a time: “I simply had a cold. If you misread my situation because of that little inn, that’s a misunderstanding. In the startup phase one has to consider costs — it doesn’t compare to the foreign firms you work for, not yet — but that doesn’t mean I’m not doing well. These past two-plus years I’ve done very well and lived a very full life.”

“I have no misunderstanding about you. As for whether you’re doing well — you don’t need to keep emphasizing it to me. I’ve heard it more than once.” Luo Peiyin held Gu Qiao’s gaze. “But since you keep bringing it up, I do have a question. If you’re truly doing well enough, is there any need to say so over and over again?”

Gu Qiao was taken aback for a few seconds, then smiled right away. “It’s like advertising — repeat it enough times and it sinks in. No rule says the truth can only be said once. Don’t you think so? Cousin.”

Luo Peiyin stared at the mouth that had just said that, then shifted his gaze back to her eyes. “I have never underestimated you. You are the one who underestimates yourself in my eyes.”

At this moment he wasn’t concealing even a trace of the sharpness in his gaze. Gu Qiao’s eyes sought his, pressing in just as close, wanting to see clearly exactly how she appeared to him. She had never once thought about what she looked like through his eyes.

“You say you haven’t underestimated me — then why am I supposed to be so scrupulously careful about accepting a simple gift? Is it because you suspect I’m trying to bribe you, or because you think I can’t find investment without going through you? Cousin, if you truly believe in my project, then even if you recuse yourself, I will still find investors!”

She was tilting her head back like that, and the overcoat on her shoulders slipped off and fell, baring the shoulder and revealing the true color that belonged to her. She was wearing a yellow coat; there was not a single place on her that lacked vivid, brilliant color. But in the darkness, her clothes fell away into the background, and what reflected in Luo Peiyin’s eyes was entirely her face, her lips opening and closing. Every inch of her written with refusal to yield.

Gu Qiao slid the coat off entirely and draped it over her arm, handing it back to him. “Cousin, throwing your overcoat onto people at the slightest opportunity is hardly what you’d call ‘keeping things clean.’ Casually draping your coat over someone like that — it gives people the wrong idea.”

She was the one who had ended it — but he had moved on to a girlfriend. He no longer had standing to reproach her.

“What wrong idea has it given you?”

Back then, during their breakup call, he had asked her why she had been with him in the first place. After a long silence, she had said: the two winters she had met him had both been bitterly cold, and he had made her feel warm. She had been deeply, deeply grateful for his company. The irony was that by the time she said those words, it was already late summer turning to autumn — autumn in the north was the finest season, and the bitter cold had not yet arrived.

Singapore had no dry, windy winters to speak of. There was no circumstance there to bring her to mind.

Being looked at inch by inch like that by Luo Peiyin, Gu Qiao showed not the slightest intention of backing down. She had had enough of that composed, unhurried look he gave her. She would rather have this.

“I had no wrong idea — I was just worried others might.” Gu Qiao tilted her head back and addressed Luo Peiyin word by word: “Cousin — what New Year’s gift would you like?” This time there was no circling around it. Her words were as direct as her eyes. She was advancing. She wasn’t accustomed to being passive, and now she wanted to take back what was rightfully hers.

Luo Peiyin’s gaze moved inch by inch over Gu Qiao’s lips. “Whatever I want — you’re willing to give it?”

Given that she had chosen not to keep things clean between them, he would give her no other option.

Close as they were, Luo Peiyin caught the flicker of hesitation that crossed Gu Qiao’s eyes in the moment before he asked that question. Before his words, she had assumed he was a man of propriety who wouldn’t chase after anything beyond what propriety allowed.

She apparently gave it about a second’s thought before concluding he was indeed that man. Her eyes didn’t leave his. “Of course.” She gave weight to both words. It seemed he had never once proactively asked her for anything.

“Don’t worry — I’m asking for something you can give. Come somewhere with me.”

“Where?”

“You’ll see when we get there.” Luo Peiyin returned to that unhurried smile of his. “Will you come? You can still change your mind now.”

Gu Qiao held his gaze and pressed back. “I’ll come.” She wasn’t afraid of anything.

And Gu Qiao tucked herself again into the passenger seat of that Cadillac.

Luo Peiyin gestured with his chin toward the stack of CDs. “Pick whatever music you like.” Gu Qiao’s fingers slid across the CD cases one by one — still the same bands he had listened to before. His taste in music at least hadn’t changed. Gu Qiao picked one and put it on. One of the tracks she knew very well — she even remembered when it had played.

That evening, he had played her half of it on his guitar, and then without warning he had shifted into “Tomorrow Will Be Better.” She no longer listened to “Tomorrow Will Be Better” as often as she once had. Even when she did, it was no longer for the sake of the lyrics. Of the six versions of “Tomorrow Will Be Better” she knew, the one she had memorized best was the one he had played. Every time she heard his version, she found herself picturing the sight of him on stage — the light falling across his face, giving nothing away. Only when you stopped looking at his face and closed your eyes and listened to his playing did you understand that his expression had actually been an illusion.

The music filled the car with sound, packed it full. In a space saturated with sounds from the past, memory too must have filled the car completely.

They drove out from the most bustling part of the city. Lights of every color dazzled Gu Qiao’s eyes. She glanced sideways at him — a face of sharp angles and planes, the kind that seemed a little cold when his mouth was shut and he wasn’t speaking.

Luo Peiyin drove fast. The lights outside gradually thinned; fewer and fewer people. The music inside the car only made the silence outside more pronounced. If it had been anyone other than this familiar person sitting beside her, every alarm inside her would have been screaming. But because it was Luo Peiyin, she hadn’t even asked him where they were going.

Gu Qiao turned off the music. She didn’t want to keep looking back at the past — the past had passed. She decided to talk about the present and the future. The car fell silent. They could hear each other breathing.

“Going forward — will you stay in Singapore, or come back to settle in China?”

The phrase “settle down” felt somewhat foreign to Luo Peiyin. He barely managed to rent a place long enough to loosely count as settling — he usually lived in hotels. Her breakup call had “liberated” him; he had cleared the matter of buying property from his to-do list for the time being. As for property as an investment, he had no appetite for it either. All his assets were in stocks. Beyond stocks, he had no assets of any kind.

Luo Peiyin glanced sideways at Gu Qiao and smiled. “I’m not like you — my own boss, absolute say over everything. This isn’t something I can decide.”

Gu Qiao suspected the first half of his sentence was a deliberate jab at her, but she took his words entirely at face value without any modesty. Modesty was not her habit.

Once she was in the car, she decided to drop the word “Cousin” altogether — she had set aside the address entirely, and every reference she made to him was simply “you.”

“What new attempts have you made in romance over these past two-plus years?” She sent back everything he had asked her.

“Attempts? What do you mean — the same as you? Going on blind dates all the time? Or…” On this trip back to Beijing, his fourth younger cousin had specifically told him about all the accomplished young men Gu Qiao’s mother had introduced to her, and how much they had admired her. His cousin had told him deliberately — thinking Luo Peiyin had been the one to end it. Everyone assumed he had been the one to break things off.

Gu Qiao looked at him as though she were listening to a joke. “I go on blind dates all the time? Who told you that?”

The corner of Luo Peiyin’s mouth curved slightly. “Since you didn’t ask anyone to keep it quiet, you can hardly be furious about it getting out.”

“I have never been on a single blind date!” Who was angry? She had no idea who had been spreading stories about her. Her voice had risen from before, her earrings swaying faintly as she spoke.

“So what attempts at romance have you been making?”

Gu Qiao was silent for a beat, then fixed her gaze on that sharply defined mouth of his. “If I remember correctly, I was the one who asked that question first.”

The most persistent attempt he had made in romance was trying to forget her — and naturally, he had not succeeded.

Gu Qiao gave herself no room to hesitate. This time she asked more directly: “What was your last girlfriend like?” She bore down on his profile the way a small leopard locks eyes with its quarry — she fixed on him and waited for an answer. This question had been building inside her for a long time; she felt a pressing need to know. She also wanted to ask how long after their breakup he had found someone new, but that question had no useful bearing on the future, so she left it out.

She kept her eyes on his, letting his words press into her ears one by one: “Someone with quite impressive strength.” She had apparently been able to haul hundreds of catties of Chinese cabbage. He had never seen her transport cabbage, but he had seen her drag a very large bag all on her own.

Gu Qiao had been expecting a stream of adjectives — smart, beautiful, lovely, all perfectly imaginable. But quite impressive strength… she also wondered what “quite impressive strength” even meant coming from someone as strong as him.

She listened as he continued to describe his last ex-girlfriend: “And a very good appetite, with excellent teeth…” The kind of person who could chew her way through a dry, tough steak without leaving any behind. Before his eyes appeared the image of her forehead, and the faint blue vein pulsing at her temple as she chewed hard at that steak.

She didn’t know why, but Gu Qiao felt a surge of jealousy. As he described this girl, his gaze drifted somewhere far away — as if his mind had gone to a shared past between them. Though there were only two people in the car, in that moment of description it felt as if three people existed in that space simultaneously, with her shut out. She caught the faint scent of something bittersweet emanating from him — the smell that old memories carry with them.

What had come over her, insisting on sitting here in this car listening to him talk about his ex-girlfriend, forcing herself to make the imagined concrete? If she had never asked, it would have remained an ignorable noun. But now, these descriptions were searing themselves into her heart — and there was no way to scratch them back out.

His words had thrown her heart into complete disorder, unsettling the resolve she had made just moments before. She had meant to set aside his last relationship entirely. After all, being someone’s only ex-girlfriend was nothing to be proud of — not a title worth holding onto forever. She was the one who’d called it off. He had moved on to a new girlfriend. So they were even.

But right now the car felt suffocating, so stifling she could barely breathe. She rolled down the window and let the outside air rush in.

When Gu Qiao looked out the window, she realized how far they had come. They were very far from the city now — the neon lights of downtown had long since disappeared, and the only two sources of light in all directions were the headlights and the stars overhead. Outside, there was not a single person.

“Where exactly are we going?”

“Are you afraid?”

“How could I be? You say you don’t underestimate me, and yet this is all it takes? I’ve never known what fear looks like. I walked night roads as a child without the slightest anxiety.” It was only later that she had learned what fear was — when she started having money, and lived in fear of having it taken. Her worst moments of fear had all come on the trucks traveling back and forth to Erenhot: heart pounding wildly, while having to pretend to be calm, because she knew that panic solved nothing.

He wasn’t going to take anything from her. What was there to be afraid of? She let this evening take her wherever he was leading — whatever happened, she held a deep, instinctive trust in him. He had never once done her wrong.

Like setting herself up for something that would hurt to endure, she decided she would ask everything about his last girlfriend tonight, and after tonight, she would never bring it up again.

“Did you ever go to Death Valley to look at the stars with her?” As Gu Qiao asked this question, she could almost hear the echo of each word inside her.

“Her?”

“Your last girlfriend.”

“Does it matter to you?”

“You don’t have to answer.”

“No.”

Even though the answer was no, Gu Qiao didn’t feel any happier for it. She heard in his voice a faint, nearly imperceptible note of regret. Could a person fall easily in love with someone, and then still find it impossible to forget — even after that too had ended?

Of course, it had ended. Gu Qiao found that she was not as magnanimous as she had imagined. She had absolutely no desire to see him part ways with someone and then go on to find another perfect romance, growing old with that other person, bound together heart and soul, a hundred years of bliss.

Even if he and someone else had only “one year of bliss,” she couldn’t bring herself to offer a genuine blessing. The actual number of days they had properly been together was countable — easily surpassed by anyone. It didn’t matter, she told herself. It was in the past. They were even.

Gu Qiao’s chest clenched and unclenched, but she didn’t stop asking. She kept her voice light. “How did you end up breaking up?”

She noticed him press his finely defined lips together. He didn’t give her an answer right away. The car moved forward, and Gu Qiao looked out the window. The smooth road had ended; they had turned down a narrow track. His car moved fast, and an inevitable jolt ran through her. She looked at his pressed lips and the crease between his brows, and felt her heart lurch along with her body.

By the time the road smoothed out again, Gu Qiao’s heartbeat still hadn’t settled.

But his voice, when it came, was very calm: “Because she had a misunderstanding about me. She thought I couldn’t give her a light, easy relationship.”

Luo Peiyin’s words jumped one by one into Gu Qiao’s ears, then dropped one by one into her heart, sending out ring after ring of ripples. The person he described as having “quite impressive strength” — that was her. The one with “a very good appetite and excellent teeth” — that was her. The one who had never gone to Death Valley with him — also her. Every single description of his had been about her.

The car fell quiet. Gu Qiao heard him say: “I’m very curious — why did you think I couldn’t give you a light, easy relationship?”

“It’s the nineties now. Letting love become a heavy burden is simply not worth it. Of course I could have given you that. If you had taken even a few more seconds on that call to ask, we wouldn’t have wasted all that time on pointless attempts.” Her breakup call had been nothing short of a rout — and yet that notoriously frugal person had voluntarily squandered dozens of seconds of an international call, then hung up in a rush.

Such a penny-pinching person, and she had stopped timing her call? Not long after their breakup, keeping in touch across borders had become a little easier — ordinary households, once they had a telephone line with international calling enabled, could call abroad directly, without needing to go to a phone office or hunt down a hotel that permitted international calls.

Gu Qiao sat in the passenger seat and let the outside air drift in through the window, let every word he spoke drop into her heart. None of his words were heavy, yet every one of them landed with a sound.

Without any warning, the car stopped. Outside, a wide open emptiness stretched in all directions.

“Get out.”

Here? To stop here, in a place as open as this. But Gu Qiao said nothing.

She pushed open the door. On a night without wind and without a moon, in a place entirely free of the city’s neon glow — she raised her head and saw a sky full of stars.