◎ Give It a Try ◎

The vast expanse of stars tumbled into Gu Qiao’s eyes. She found herself thinking of the day before her birthday, when Luo Peiyin had pointed at the stars overhead and traced out the general positions of the constellations for her.

The surroundings were utterly open and empty. Beneath a sky like this, one could almost believe the illusion that only the two of them existed in all the world.

Luo Peiyin draped his coat back over Gu Qiao’s shoulders. His hand pressed firmly against her shoulder blade — resolute, brooking no refusal — as though he meant to stamp a mark into her flesh and brand her as his. Gu Qiao felt a slight ache from the pressure. In that moment, their faces were very close together. His breath fell directly against her face, yet Gu Qiao did not flinch away. She looked straight at Luo Peiyin. Their faces were near enough that even with only the headlights and starlight as their source of illumination, neither had any difficulty seeing the other clearly.

Gu Qiao’s long hair had been tucked inside the coat. Luo Peiyin’s fingers drew it back out, his fingertips grazing the nape of her neck as he did so. His fingers were very cool — he was wearing nothing more than a suit jacket, and however fine the fabric, it was still just a jacket. He seemed born immune to the cold, not the least bit bothered by it. And it wasn’t only the cold he was indifferent to — as far as Gu Qiao could recall, she had never seen him afraid of anything.

Luo Peiyin’s cool fingers wound through Gu Qiao’s long hair and skimmed past her neck and earlobe. On such a still, windless night, it felt like a cool breeze caressing and touching her, that sensation diffusing outward through her body. Her great mass of hair was freed from the coat and exposed to the open air again. His movements were not particularly gentle — his fingers caught her earrings and sent them chiming with a crisp, clear sound.

The person responsible for producing that sensation in her was now tracing the path of her constellation with a red-beam flashlight. Drawing out Pisces against a winter sky was no easy feat. Yet he found it with ease, with the familiarity of someone who had done it many times before. Out here in the cold countryside, any breath drawn and released gathered into a small cloud of white vapor at one’s lips. Gu Qiao watched the little cloud at the corner of Luo Peiyin’s mouth slowly dissipate.

So many stars above, and only the two of them below. She gazed up at those stars — those that could be named, and the countless more that could not — and let his name quietly accumulate in her heart. As though the moment he left, the space around her would become utterly empty.

This feeling rose within her, slowly, in that moment. Everything that had come before grew faint in her mind — she had even forgotten the words she had prepared to say. There was only the person beside her, and the stars overhead. Gu Qiao followed the beam of light in Luo Peiyin’s hand and looked up toward the sky. His voice came at her from all directions. She watched the hand with which he pointed at the stars.

A small cloud of white mist formed at Gu Qiao’s lips: “Did you go to Death Valley?”

“I did.” Before he had planned to go with Gu Qiao, Luo Peiyin had already been once — not alone that time, but surrounded by others, he had thought of Gu Qiao. Had thought of Gu Qiao in Hohhot on the night before her birthday, pointing at the stars overhead.

At the time, because Gu Qiao had agreed to come, Luo Peiyin had already prepared the camping gear. He was never the type to scramble at the last moment. When she hadn’t come, he had already booked the hotel restaurant. He was never short of people experienced in food, drink, and entertainment — pooling that knowledge wasn’t difficult, provided one was willing to spend the money. A restaurant that turned no one away still required advance reservations; later, when she didn’t come, it hadn’t made things much easier for him. He’d had to cancel both the hotel and the restaurant bookings he’d made in advance, and the deposit he’d paid to one of the restaurants was never returned.

His life experience had taught him to always prepare a Plan B for everything. But for every single matter that had to do with Gu Qiao, he had never once prepared an alternative.

Another cloud of white vapor escaped Gu Qiao’s lips: “What did it feel like, being there?”

She heard him laugh: “If you want to know, go there yourself and find out.”

Standing this close together, the white mist from their breath mingled and merged until it was impossible to tell whose was whose, and then it slowly dissolved away.

In her heart, Gu Qiao said she would certainly go. But she did not do as she had in childhood — immediately plan out a date and promise those around her when exactly she would go.

In front of someone who had heard quite enough of her promises, it was more convincing to fulfill one promise before making the next.

Luo Peiyin traced many constellations with his red-beam flashlight, yet never found his own.

“Where is your constellation?”

Luo Peiyin suddenly recalled that on the night before Gu Qiao’s birthday, she seemed to have asked him this very question — but he had never gotten around to pointing it out for her. Before his birthday arrived, Gu Qiao had already called to end things over the phone.

“About the breakup — I’ve always been a little curious. How exactly did you tell people about it back then? You were so eager to announce to everyone that we’d broken up — why didn’t you ever make it clear how things actually went?” Everyone — his own family included, of course — had assumed it was he who had initiated the breakup.

He had effectively become the family’s common enemy, with his fourth younger brother’s reaction being the most pronounced. He himself didn’t particularly care — he simply found it rather absurd.

The news of the two of them getting together had come entirely from him. Every single account of their breakup, on the other hand, had had only one source: Gu Qiao. He couldn’t help but admire the speed with which she spread information. Before he had discussed it with a single person, it seemed as though everyone who knew him already knew that he and Gu Qiao had broken up — and their version of events was quite far from the truth.

Shortly after their breakup, he had contacted Xiao Jia about some software matters, and naturally Gu Qiao came up in conversation. Gu Qiao had generously promised to bring software from an American app store for Xiao Jia. Since Gu Qiao couldn’t make the trip to America, the software would naturally never materialize. From Xiao Jia, Luo Peiyin had learned nothing beyond “Gu Qiao is doing well.” The most useful piece of information he’d gleaned was this: the very day after their breakup, Gu Qiao had already told others. Far more proactively than she had ever been about announcing their relationship in the first place. He had felt like laughing over the phone at the time.

The irony was that checking in on his ex-girlfriend’s wellbeing after the breakup had been universally interpreted as him having hurt Gu Qiao but not yet losing all conscience — and the universal response had been: Gu Qiao is doing well.

Luo Peiyin knew Gu Qiao well enough that he certainly did not believe she had deliberately spread word that he had initiated the breakup. She was so fiercely competitive — she would not have enjoyed that kind of misunderstanding.

He had never explained the ins and outs of their relationship to anyone. He had always believed that a relationship was a matter between two people — until that certificate was officially in hand, it wasn’t even necessary to tell one’s own parents. But back then, when Gu Qiao’s pager had broken and he had been unable to reach her, wanting to see her one last time before going abroad, he had done something he could not have imagined doing even a few years younger — he had bought separate gifts for her family members and paid a visit to Gu Qiao’s family without any pretense, a direct and rather blunt approach that had, of course, been met with no welcome at all.

In such a conservative environment, a young man calling on a girl at her home — attempting a casual cover story was impossible and would only have invited greater suspicion, so it was better to simply be honest. He had openly acknowledged their relationship partly to prevent Gu Qiao’s family from misunderstanding his intentions. For reasons he had never been able to determine, her family had simply not believed he would treat her seriously.

After the two of them broke up, Gu Qiao’s family had presumably been relieved of that worry. The very Spring Festival following their breakup, Gu Qiao had gathered all her family together for the holiday — news he had heard from more than one person. He hadn’t gone home for the holiday himself, not because he was afraid of seeing her, but because once he heard that news, he had simply lost all desire to return.

“I was never eager about it.” Her words lacked conviction. Gu Qiao kept her eyes fixed on the stars above, watching one star after another. She had announced it proactively back then precisely because she hadn’t wanted to leave herself any way back.

Even now, Gu Qiao had no regrets about the choice she’d made then. She had let him wait for her again and again — his patience would have run out eventually. At the time, her leather jacket business had fallen through, and there was simply no way she could have gone on booking hotel rooms day after day. Away from the hotel, even a long-distance phone call became a luxury. To make a call, she’d had to go to the telephone bureau to fill out a form — wait in line, fill out the form, finally make it into one of those small booths — with no way of knowing whether anyone would pick up on the other end.

And he had no way to reach her either — there wasn’t a single number to call. What would he call — the telephone bureau? When he’d been in that car accident before, she hadn’t been able to reach him in time. If something happened to him again in the future, she would likely have no way of knowing promptly. Being in a relationship was simply too much of a luxury. Without sufficient money, it simply couldn’t be sustained.

Of course, one could have gritted one’s teeth and carried on — there were couples in that telephone bureau calling internationally, keeping in touch on calls placed once every few months, still persevering. Why should they have been any different?

But if she hadn’t mentioned the problem with her money order, and if Luo Peiyin hadn’t told her the earliest flight he could book was two weeks out, she might not have found the resolve to go through with the breakup. Was the reason for their breakup that he cared too much about her? He’d been in a car accident, and the moment he’d recovered, he had come back to China for her sake. Who would treat their lover that way — probably only people very much like Zhou Zan. She had no desire whatsoever to be like him.

Not one bit like Zhou Zan. And indeed, she was nothing like him.

If Luo Peiyin had confined himself to verbal comfort alone, their relationship might have lasted longer.

Who could say such a thing aloud — that the breakup was his fault for being too responsible, for caring too much? He had even prepared a ready-made solution for them to be together — having her go study in America, so they wouldn’t have to be apart. For a relationship, that was undoubtedly the best possible option. But for a single individual, it was another matter entirely.

When everyone had misunderstood who had ended things between them, she had considered trying to restore his reputation. But she had never known which version would serve him better: the one where he had just announced to his family that this was the woman for him, only to discover a short time later that she was not the person he’d thought — that she wasn’t prepared to be with him for the rest of her life — or the one where he had never intended a lifetime together and had cut his losses of his own accord.

Things were much better now than before. The place she rented now had an international calling line. The phone at her shop had even been set up with a voicemail function — even if a call was missed, she could still hear the message.

When she’d had the system installed the previous year, Gu Qiao had also found herself wondering: why on earth couldn’t this technology have come along a little sooner — why had making a phone call back then been so impossibly inconvenient?

She didn’t respond. Luo Peiyin likely hadn’t expected her to.

Luo Peiyin suddenly leaned close to her ear. His voice was not loud, yet his words fell against her earrings and landed one by one into her heart: “Everyone else assumed I was the one who ended things between us. Hearing that — you must have found that rather infuriating, didn’t you.”

Yes, she had found it a little infuriating. In that regard, he truly understood her. But if they had guessed correctly, it wouldn’t have brought her any happiness either.

“It’s too cold. Let’s get into the car.” Gu Qiao very much wanted to linger a while longer under this sky — out here, she could momentarily leave everything behind. To hell with all plans, at least for now.

But however impervious to cold he was, this weather was still quite something.

Gu Qiao removed Luo Peiyin’s coat from her shoulders. The moment it left her body, she was immediately struck by a wave of cold.

Luo Peiyin took the coat from Gu Qiao’s hands and draped it over himself — still warm from her body heat. Then, with practiced ease, he pulled Gu Qiao inside the coat with him. For a moment, Gu Qiao felt a strange sense of unreality. Did Singapore have weather this cold, that he could perform such a move with such effortless, practiced grace, entirely without awkwardness? She heard the sound of her earrings swaying, felt her hair brush against his chest.

Luo Peiyin’s hand rested at Gu Qiao’s waist. Through all their layers of clothing, she felt the pressure and warmth of his fingers — as though he meant to press his fingerprints into her waist. A heat began to rise there, at first spreading slowly along the surface of her skin outward from her waist, then growing deeper and more penetrating, coursing through her entire body, all the way to her fingertips.

This kind of touch was about as far from casual as one could get. By this point, some things required no announcement — Gu Qiao already understood. They might not be entirely familiar with each other’s present thoughts, but their bodies, coincidentally and unexpectedly, knew each other well. She knew the longing within herself, and she could feel his longing through layers of clothing and skin and blood. In this moment, for the first time, there was no need to suppress it.

Luo Peiyin drew her a little more tightly against him, shutting out the damp, cold air. Her nose was filled with his scent, his coat wrapping around them both. One half of it enveloped her completely; the other hung open, letting the wind blow through freely. As though he had been born without any fear of cold.

He leaned down and spoke to her, his breath landing against her face: “Since you want something casual, it’s more efficient to stay with someone familiar.”

Those words carved into Gu Qiao’s heart, one by one. A casual relationship — being with him had never exactly been casual. There were people she spent time with more easily than him. Both men and women among them. But when he said it like that, she suddenly wanted to try — whether she and this person could truly have something casual together.

A casual relationship — one concerned only with the present, with no thought for the future. In the past, she had been making promises about the future, while he had been building toward it. As for the present — back then they had rushed through it too, always hurried. The time they’d had together had been too short. There had been no time to linger over their feelings.

Rushing to declare themselves, rushing to be together, rushing through everything a pair of lovers ought to do. Neither of them had been the patient type back then — everything had moved at speed. Though the time they’d had together was limited, they had managed to do everything two lovers should do within it. When Gu Qiao thought back on it, she felt no regret — if anything, a touch of relief that they had managed to do all of those things while they had the chance.

Under the starlit sky, his voice struck into her heart once more: “You don’t need to answer me right away. You have plenty of time to think it over.”

Gu Qiao didn’t say yes or no. She simply asked Luo Peiyin: “Where is your constellation? Point it out for me.”

Gu Qiao’s reply came quickly — the small, thin cloud from his last words had barely dispersed before she breathed out another of her own. The two clouds drifted together until it was impossible to tell which belonged to whom.

She didn’t get an answer right away. Instead, she received a kiss. It was as though he meant to draw her entire self into him, leaving her no room to catch her breath.

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