◎ Why Is It You? ◎

Gu Qiao smiled. Her energy still needed to be conserved for other things, and she had no time to explain herself to Lin Haichuan. Gu Qiao tucked a thick manila envelope into Qiu Shuang’s bag and said quietly, “Everyone has worked hard lately. Have a proper meal on me.” She had never made a habit of letting her employees cover expenses out of their own pockets.

Lin Haichuan said to Gu Qiao, “If you’re busy today, then forget it.”

“How can we forget it?” Gu Qiao formally introduced Qiu Shuang: “Our head of the East China region is hosting you, our big star, today — and we’ll be counting on you to go and lend your prestige to our other stores in the future.”

Lin Haichuan burst out laughing. “East China? You only have one store right now, don’t you?” Gu Qiao really could spin a tale.

“Not for much longer.”

It was Qiu Shuang’s first time at the Hong Kong Cuisine Restaurant. Although Gu Qiao paid her a decent salary, a place rumored to cost several thousand yuan for a casual meal was absolutely somewhere she would never come to on her own initiative.

Halfway through the meal, Lin Haichuan teased, “You’ve ordered so much — your boss Gu isn’t even here. Won’t she be heartbroken when she finds out?”

“Not at all. Our boss said, whatever you’d like to eat, just order it. It’s an honor for us to be able to treat you.”

Acting on Gu Qiao’s instructions, the store staff heaped Lin Haichuan with such lavish praise throughout the meal that he was in urgent need of expression management. In Gu Qiao’s presence he could still let his guard down a little, but in front of others he maintained considerably more of a celebrity’s reserve. Inwardly he happily accepted every compliment, while outwardly he feigned complete indifference — the laughter in his eyes waging open conflict with the curve of his mouth.

“You were all coached to say this by your store manager, weren’t you.”

“Our store manager is always saying nice things about you behind your back too. If she didn’t genuinely admire you, would she insist on having you come to such an important event?”

Lin Haichuan only believed half of this. The other half he kept to himself — he had no desire to let the story of that leather jacket advertisement become common knowledge. On that score, Gu Qiao had kept her mouth admirably shut. Both the one who shot the ad and the one who was shot had been barely twenty years old at the time.

That man who had been by her side — he never appeared again. No idea where he’d gone. Perhaps that was just as well. It was better if the witnesses to his early history stayed out of sight.

After the meal, when the bill was settled, Qiu Shuang made a point of boxing up the leftovers to bring back to Gu Qiao. Lin Haichuan watched this and couldn’t help feeling a private sense of admiration: sure enough, you got the employees you deserved as a boss — truly thrifty and hardworking, not a scrap wasted.

Qiu Shuang had eaten the entire meal with her mind elsewhere. She had barely finished seeing Lin Haichuan into a taxi when, before she even had a chance to call and check on the situation, she received a call from Gu Qiao.

“You didn’t drink, did you?”

“No.” Qiu Shuang had grasped Gu Qiao’s unspoken meaning perfectly and had saved them the cost of drinks.

“Come help me draw up a contract right away.”

Qiu Shuang listened as Gu Qiao read out the contract details over the phone one point at a time — nothing in her voice betrayed the fact that the person on the other end of the line had already put away over a bottle of baijiu.

“You sorted out the blank floppy disks this fast?” Qiu Shuang hadn’t expected Gu Qiao to resolve the floppy disk problem so quickly — getting hold of this much stock on such short notice was practically an impossibility.

“More or less settled.” Gu Qiao told Qiu Shuang the address of the karaoke lounge where she was. “Call me when you get here.”

Gu Qiao knew this karaoke lounge’s location all too well — she had booked a room at this very hotel back then. Stepping into the lobby, she experienced a brief moment of disorientation.

By the time Qiu Shuang arrived at the karaoke lounge entrance with the freshly typed contract in hand, it was close to midnight. She hadn’t even bothered to wait for change from the driver — she dialed Gu Qiao’s phone directly.

Gu Qiao was pressing one finger against the back of her throat, waiting for the alcohol to come back up. To keep herself alert at all times, the moment her head started spinning even slightly, she would step out and get sick. She had made dozens of phone calls — locally, only Factory Director Yin had expressed any interest in supplying enough blank floppy disks in stock. And this Factory Director Yin happened to be a complete alcoholic who insisted on using drinking as a test of her sincerity.

Gu Qiao had only eaten a single bread roll at lunch. After bringing up the alcohol, her stomach burned with wave after wave of acid.

The moment her phone rang, Gu Qiao immediately snatched it up.

When Qiu Shuang saw Gu Qiao at the karaoke lounge this time, she looked completely different from six hours earlier. Gu Qiao was now wearing trousers, a shirt with only one button undone at the collar, and her hair pinned up — she looked extremely capable and composed. Qiu Shuang knew Gu Qiao kept two sets of clothes at the Huangdafa, switching her outfit to match the occasion at any given moment. What truly astonished her most was one occasion when she had accompanied Gu Qiao out of the store to negotiate a distribution authorization — Gu Qiao had only stepped into a restroom, and five minutes later when she emerged, she had changed not only her outfit but her hairstyle and earrings as well.

Gu Qiao took the contract. “Take a crown taxi straight home, don’t bother waiting for a Xiali — I’ll cover the fare.”

Qiu Shuang caught a whiff of alcohol on Gu Qiao’s breath, but the fact that she was still focused on the specific type of taxi to take home was proof that her mind was still extraordinarily sharp.

“When are you leaving? I’ll drive you home. You’ve been drinking — you can’t drive.”

Although Shen Zheng from the game company had come here with Gu Qiao, Qiu Shuang could see Gu Qiao had been drinking and was ultimately not entirely at ease.

Gu Qiao fished her car keys out of her pocket. “Go wait in my car. You’re staying at my place tonight — just call home and let them know so they don’t worry.”

Qiu Shuang watched Gu Qiao walk back into the private room. Gu Qiao’s stride was steady and assured — you would never know, looking at her, that she had already put away nearly two bottles of strong baijiu.

Even Factory Director Yin himself was quite taken aback: after all that drinking, Gu Qiao could still stand before him with complete composure, handing over the contract. “Please look it over carefully. If there are no issues, we’ll sign.”

“Miss Gu is certainly decisive and efficient — you’ve gotten the contract ready this quickly. But let’s finish this song first before we talk.” Factory Director Yin had someone cue up the song *You’re Crystal Clear to Me* — a male-female duet love ballad.

Gu Qiao kept her smile intact. “I’ve never heard this song, I really don’t know how to sing it.” She smiled and looked over at Shen Zheng. “Do you know this one?”

Shen Zheng immediately understood her meaning. “Factory Director Yin, this is a song Shopkeeper Gu doesn’t know — but I do. Let me sing it with you.”

Shen Zheng had come here together with Gu Qiao. Failing to secure blank floppy disks would have been no less devastating for him than for her. His game company had been banking on *The Chivalric Romance* to make a name for itself with a single explosive hit. If it didn’t sell, that would have been one thing — a failure on his own part for not preparing stock in time was something he couldn’t even face himself over. He had spent his entire career cooped up in an office developing game software, and had no experience whatsoever with business entertainment — his alcohol tolerance was especially terrible, earning him the nickname “one glass and down.”

—

Driven by some inner heroic impulse, he felt it was completely unconscionable to leave everything to Gu Qiao, so he steeled himself to offer to drink in her place. After half a glass of baijiu — before it had even reached his stomach — his face had already turned bright red. He was still trying to force the remaining half into his mouth when Gu Qiao gave him a sharp kick. He looked at her, and she shot him a look that said: *stop making things worse*. If he got drunk, he’d be nothing but a liability.

Gu Qiao not only drank her own share, she drank on his behalf as well. Even the self-proclaimed worldly Factory Director Yin couldn’t help remarking: “Director Shen, you’re a man, you have people working under you, you’re supposed to be a man of standing — how can you let a woman like Miss Gu drink on your behalf? I have never seen anything like this in my life.” Factory Director Yin seemed to have something of a thing for Gu Qiao, and had apparently assumed she and Shen Zheng were a couple — he was deliberately humiliating Shen Zheng in front of Gu Qiao. Every remark dripped with implication: a beauty deserves a hero, a real man’s greatest quality is backbone, each sentence designed to leave Shen Zheng without a shred of dignity. Shen Zheng practically wanted to smash the wine bottle over Factory Director Yin’s head — but reason kept him in check. They hadn’t bothered to correct the man’s assumption either, since if Factory Director Yin started getting ideas he shouldn’t, that would only cause more trouble.

Shen Zheng adjusted his glasses and forced out an ingratiating smile. “Factory Director Yin, give me a bit of face here.” As dim as he was in such matters, he had understood perfectly well what this Yin fellow was really after. If only he had listened to Gu Qiao from the start and prepared the stock properly — they wouldn’t be sitting here tonight entertaining this man with drinks and songs. What was done was done. With the future sales figures in mind: forget dignity.

Factory Director Yin glanced at Shen Zheng and felt like someone had told him a joke. Who the hell wanted to sing a love duet with some bespectacled man? The more he looked at this guy, the more irritating he found him. Useless when it counted, letting a woman take his place drinking, and now that the topic of singing had come up, he had the nerve to jump in.

Without waiting for Factory Director Yin to decline, Shen Zheng — suppressing his discomfort — turned directly to Factory Director Yin and began to sing:

*You are crystal clear to me*

*I long for a love that’s truly real*

*Once I was broken by love’s pain*

*Why do sweet dreams so easily fade?*

The next verse was Factory Director Yin’s cue, and the screen flashed the lyrics:

*You have a pair of gentle eyes*

*You have a heart that understands*

Factory Director Yin was completely incapable of singing these lines to a bespectacled man. Shen Zheng had to prompt him: “It’s your turn.”

And so Factory Director Yin sat there as the bespectacled man stared fixedly at him and sang the female part:

*The starlight shimmers, the breeze blows light*

*Most lonely is a young girl’s heart…*

Factory Director Yin found it utterly unbearable — a man gazing at him like that without even a flicker of awkwardness. He turned his head and said to Gu Qiao, “Even a lonely girl needs to be selective — some men are spineless by nature. Being with that kind of man is lonelier than being alone.”

Shen Zheng kept his future sales figures firmly in mind and acted as though he hadn’t heard a word. Factory Director Yin refused to cooperate, so he sang on alone, continuing to stare directly at Factory Director Yin while doing so. He had figured it out now: if you want to make someone else miserable, you first have to be willing to be miserable yourself.

Once the song was finished, Gu Qiao produced the contract again and handed it to Factory Director Yin.

Factory Director Yin began to stall again. Gu Qiao said in a joking tone, “If you still won’t give us a clear answer, we’ll have no choice but to drive to Qingdao tonight. The timing is tight, but we’d still make it.” Gu Qiao had done her research beforehand — Factory Director Yin operated between Beijing and Tianjin and was not familiar with supply sources in Shandong. Gu Qiao’s story to Factory Director Yin was that they had already found sufficient stock in Qingdao, but considering the distance, they had decided to approach him at three percentage points above the original price instead.

Although in reality, Gu Qiao had no choice but to pin all her hopes on Factory Director Yin’s blank floppy disks, she still carried herself as though she had many options available.

Of course she wouldn’t have come to find him if she weren’t in a hurry — but if Factory Director Yin realized just how desperate they were, he would definitely demand an outrageous price. Earlier, when Gu Qiao had proposed three percentage points above market price, Shen Zheng had thought it was too little and wanted to push it to ten. Gu Qiao had laughed at him then: *You think offering a higher price means he’ll sell to you — you’re wrong. Once he can see how desperate we are, the whole deal will fall apart. Never let him see our bottom line.* Three percentage points worked out to just about the cost of transportation — Factory Director Yin would believe their software could hold on a while longer, that going to Qingdao was still a viable option, and that they had come to him purely for convenience.

“Is Miss Gu in a hurry?”

“I’m not particularly rushed — but the buyers are. What if we sell fifty thousand copies in two weeks? We need to get ahead of that.”

Factory Director Yin knew nothing about this game software, but he could say with certainty that fifty thousand copies in a month was impossible. This advance preparation was completely unnecessary. Still, selling at three percentage points above market price right now wasn’t a bad outcome — if he waited, Gu Qiao might not need his blank floppy disks at all.

“Since Miss Gu is being so sincere, then let’s become friends.”

Qiu Shuang sat in Gu Qiao’s Huangdafa. Half an hour had passed, and Gu Qiao still hadn’t come down. She was fighting off drowsiness with all her strength, struggling to stay awake.

Suddenly, Qiu Shuang heard someone tapping on the car window with their fingers.

Thinking it was Gu Qiao, she quickly lowered the window — and in the night, she found herself looking at a face she would never have expected to see here. A surge of astonishment flooded her expression. She almost wondered whether she was so exhausted she was dreaming. The person knocking on the window was clearly equally unprepared to see her.

Even though she and he had only met a handful of times, and even in this darkness, there were some people who, the moment you saw them, automatically surfaced from memory paired with their name.

But she and Senior Luo had barely any connection at all — she truly had absolutely no reason to be dreaming about him. Besides, wasn’t he in Singapore? What was he doing here?

Astonishment drove Qiu Shuang to cry out: “Are you Luo Peiyin?”

—