◎ To be continued ◎

Chen the elder Mrs. gazed at the heavy snow outside and said to her daughter, “Tomorrow, have your brother take some of the New Year’s provisions we’ve set aside over to big Qiao. She’s so busy with work, she probably hasn’t had time to prepare.”

The elder Mrs. Chen had a particular reason for wanting Chen Hui to be the one to go. Her son had no girlfriend at the moment, and she hadn’t heard that Gu Qiao had a boyfriend either. They were roughly the same age and knew each other well — it seemed a natural enough fit.

No one knew her mother better than Chen Qing. “I know what you’re thinking. I’m telling you — the two of them have absolutely no chance.”

“What do you know? Your brother isn’t the same as he used to be. He really appreciates Gu Qiao now. They’re about the same age, they’ve known each other forever — how is there no chance?”

“You think the world revolves around my brother? He appreciates her, so she’s supposed to be with him? Little Gu is a pretty, independently wealthy woman now. There are plenty of men who appreciate her, and my brother might not even make the shortlist.”

“Is that any way to talk about your own brother? He’s educated, he’s decent-looking, and his salary is nothing to scoff at. And I can see that Gu Qiao genuinely enjoys talking to your brother. Besides, she hasn’t been in a relationship for all these years — maybe it’s because of him—”

Chen Qing fixed her gaze on the mole at the corner of her mother’s mouth, making sure she had heard correctly. “What are you imagining? Little Gu has dated before — that cousin of hers, remember? You even met him. If anything, it would make more sense to say she’s been pining for her cousin all this time, since they actually dated. My brother has absolutely nothing to do with any of this. Personally, I think the reason Little Gu isn’t in a relationship right now is simply because she’s too busy making money.”

The elder Mrs. Chen took a moment to place the memory of Gu Qiao’s cousin. “Her cousin — that young man who came looking for us when Gu Qiao was staying in Xinji? As I recall, he was quite good-looking.”

“Your eyes must be extraordinary to have made out anyone’s appearance in all that darkness.” Chen Qing thought back to that winter night several years ago when Gu Qiao’s cousin had appeared at their door out of nowhere — she had been startled, thinking something must have happened to Gu Qiao. Why else would a cousin with no blood tie show up that late at night? Unlike her mother, she didn’t lead with appearances. What had stuck with her were two things: he was well-dressed, and he was in a hurry. The kind of urgency that didn’t look like a cousin’s — more like a brother’s. And yet they had still broken up in the end.

Seeing her mother lost in thought, Chen Qing smiled. “Stop trying to match my brother with Little Gu. From what I can tell, Little Gu is just like her mother — she’ll probably have her children take her surname too. Could you live with that? Their whole family is basically a nation of women. Lou Deyu walked in there like he’d stepped into a matriarchy. Honestly, he must be something else — most men couldn’t take it as graciously as he does.”

Chen Qing had even made an embarrassing mistake over this once. When Gu Qiao’s family had come to Beijing and the two families had all gotten together, Chen Qing’s memory had mixed things up — she forgot that Lou Deyu had a different surname and called him “Uncle Gu.” Gu Qiao’s youngest sister promptly corrected her: “My dad’s surname is Lou.” Chen Qing had received a sharp look from her own father. That sort of mistake could be taken any number of ways — a man whose own children bore his wife’s surname, then being called by that wife’s surname himself, might easily feel it as a slight. But Lou Deyu hadn’t batted an eye. There wasn’t a trace of embarrassment on his face.

Gu Qiao’s youngest sister had taken the opportunity to give a formal introduction of her father’s surname with great solemnity: “My dad’s surname is Lou — a very fine surname, because it contains the characters for rice and for daughter. But my dad says it still doesn’t capture the full extent of his good fortune. Heaven has been exceedingly kind to him, giving him not one but three daughters, so he must work very hard to earn enough rice to raise them all.” One portion of rice simply wasn’t enough.

When she was little, some children had mocked her for sharing her mother’s surname, calling her father useless. She had been furious. “My dad buys me bread and milk every day! I have a whole collection of beautiful hair clips and ribbons! Can your dad do that? My dad is tremendously capable!”

Later, when Lou Deyu had gone away on the matter of the frozen family assets and money became tight, there was no more daily milk and bread, and the pretty hair clips didn’t feel right to wear anymore. The adults never said anything directly, but the youngest felt that wearing pretty clips while the family owed money wasn’t something she could do with a clear conscience — even if the clips had been passed down from her sister and cost her nothing. What she did have, during that time, were her socks. Gu Qiao had sent her many pairs of bright, patterned socks from the city, letting her have this small, quiet, secret prettiness.

The same children now had more ammunition to mock her father with. Unable to defend him with her old arguments, she abandoned the supporting evidence and stood firm on the conclusion alone: “My dad is better than your dad! My dad is just better!” It may have sounded unreasonable, but her fingernails and teeth helped bring a number of her classmates around to her point of view. Her teacher, witnessing this departure from civilized debate, reproached her: “You’re nearly as wild as your eldest sister was at your age.”

In terms of mischief, Gu Qiao as a child had been the more formidable — though she had always preferred a battle of words over fists. She had been particularly fond of sharing mythology with any child who questioned whether she was her father’s real daughter, framing her arrival in the world seven months early as something on a par with Nezha’s three-year gestation — a divine sign setting her apart from ordinary people. She genuinely was fearless: as a small child, she would climb to the top of the tallest tree in the village to chew on milk candy, she could swing standing up higher than any other child, and she could turn a somersault as neatly as anyone twice her size. Even the boldest boys were thrown off by her, and they would offer up their precious sweets as tribute in exchange for more stories about her past life. It was a bargain that created its own demands — having accepted their offerings, Gu Qiao was obligated to rack her brains day after day, wide-eyed and earnest, spinning mythology for her devoted classmates.

When the teacher made that remark, Gu Qiao’s youngest sister took it as a compliment. Her big sister had taught her everything — of course she should turn out just the same.

On one occasion, Chen Qing had teased the youngest about what kind of brother-in-law she hoped for. She had said, without hesitation: he had to be handsome. Everyone laughed. Everyone except Gu Qiao, whose eyes held a faint, quiet sadness.

Now the snow was blowing thick against both their faces, melting on each other’s lips. But Gu Qiao was, at heart, a thoroughly Eastern woman, and she could never quite settle into a kiss in the open air — even with the street completely still and nothing but the soft hush of falling snow around her, some part of her remained on edge, like someone kissing another person’s boyfriend. Unlike Luo Peiyin, dressed all in black and absorbed into the night, she was the only warmth of color in the snowy dark, the yellow of her coat the single bright note against all that white.

By the time they went inside, the snow outside was still falling without end.

—

Gu Qiao went through the refrigerator in search of anything edible and turned up nothing but dried noodles and eggs. Every time she had offered to take over the driving, Luo Peiyin had told her to save her energy for cooking when they got home. He had driven for over ten hours, and with the snow added in, by the time they reached the city, the shops had already closed. With nothing to buy, all that carefully saved energy had nowhere to go but into a pot of boiled noodles.

Ten-odd hours of anticipation, and what arrived was plain noodles.

Gu Qiao looked at him with an apologetic smile. “If I told you right now that all we have is plain noodles — would you be very disappointed?”

“Is that really all it takes to disappoint me, in your estimation? We have all the time in the world ahead of us, and every opportunity to make up for it.” He shifted seamlessly: “If you’re worried about disappointing me tonight, you could fry me an extra egg.”

Gu Qiao was generous. “I’ll fry you two!”

Luo Peiyin finished the noodles with evident appreciation. Gu Qiao attributed this to the exhaustion of driving — when you were hungry enough, plain boiled noodles tasted like a feast.

From where he sat, he had a clear view of the family photograph on the dresser. In it, Gu Qiao’s two younger sisters were visibly older than when he had last visited her family home — clearly taken after the breakup.

Gu Qiao in the photograph was beaming.

She hadn’t noticed where he was looking. “Driving that long must have been exhausting. You really should have let me take over.”

“If you really want to help with the fatigue, there might be something you can do later.”

As it turned out, she didn’t end up helping at all — even the dishes were done by Luo Peiyin. He was considerably better at it now than the first time.

She still remembered how he had cut his finger washing dishes that first time. Those deft hands of his had been absurdly clumsy at the sink.

“Show me all the photos you took while we were apart. Every single one.”

He went through the album page by page — from shortly after the breakup to now. In nearly every frame, Gu Qiao was smiling. Not a single trace of heartbreak anywhere. Anyone who looked at these photographs would reach the same conclusion: the breakup had been the right call.

Gu Qiao felt a faint twinge of guilt. She looked far too happy in these. Turning it around — if Luo Peiyin had smiled this freely in every photo after their split, she would have taken it as proof that the breakup had come as a relief to him.

But he knew her well enough to know that Gu Qiao smiled through everything — the harder things were, the more she insisted on smiling. What actually gave him pause was a single photograph in which she wasn’t smiling at all. She was bent over a book, absorbed in reading. The date written on it placed it squarely in the period after the breakup, before the lawsuit was won. The colors of her clothes that day were muted, stripped of their usual brightness.

“Who took this one?”

“Chen Qing. I was staying at her place then.” In case he’d forgotten who that was, she added: “Chen Hui’s sister. You remember Chen Hui, don’t you? Your junior from school.”

Of course he remembered. Though not because of the school connection.

“Is your dad still trying to set you up with that junior of mine?”

Gu Qiao looked startled, then firmly denied it. “That was never a thing.”

“Your father told me directly — that you and he had an arrangement. I thought, here we are almost in the nineties, and someone is still being matched by their parents.”

Gu Qiao had never heard a word of any such thing. “I had absolutely no idea…”

“Don’t worry — I’m not the jealous type over something like that. But you were going through a difficult time and had to stay with the Chen family, and I wasn’t there to help you with any of it. I suspect I rank even lower than this phantom fiancé of yours in your parents’ estimation.”

“That’s not—”

He cut her off, watching her with a small smile. “Given all that, your parents’ opinion of me is probably even worse than last time. Tell me — what would it take for me to restore my image in their eyes? I hope they won’t be chasing me out of this apartment when they arrive.”

“They know I was the one who ended things.” She had explained it to them. She hadn’t wanted her family holding anything against him.

“The way you clarified things for the Fourth tonight?” He looked at her steadily, asking the question straight to her face. “Do you think that kind of clarification actually helps? When a relationship ends in hardship — if I ended it, it means I can’t be relied on; if you ended it, it means you believed I couldn’t be relied on at the time. Someone as close to me as you were, and you still didn’t think I could be counted on. What good opinion of me can your family possibly form from that?” He didn’t usually care what others thought of him — but Gu Qiao was the exception.

She met his eyes without looking away and said, each word slow and deliberate: “I have never — never — thought you were someone who couldn’t be relied on.”

“Then if you believe I can be relied on—” Luo Peiyin drew her close, letting her head come to rest against his shoulder. “Lean on me. The next time you hit a wall and need someone’s help, come to me first. That, more than any explanation, would be the clearest thing you could say on my behalf.”

His hand moved gently through her hair. “I really do want you to lean on me.”

Her head rested against his shoulder as they looked through the photographs together — he, tracing the years he had missed through pictures, watching her win her case, open her first shop, move to a better location. He studied the curve of her smile in each one and tried to read what she had been feeling.

He was right every time.

Turning one of the pages, he came face to face without warning with a photograph of the two of them together.

It was a thoroughly casual shot, the kind that looked like someone had applied color filters after the fact. He had always disliked posed tourist photographs, but that day, in the city where he was born, Gu Qiao had pulled him into one. It was the only photo they had together. Both of them looked slightly foolish. Gu Qiao’s cheeks were flushed — whether from shyness or the cold he couldn’t say — and the color in her face was so vivid she looked like the girl on a 1970s propaganda poster making her first trip to the city from the countryside, fresh off a tractor.

He shared this description with her out loud.

Gu Qiao gave a short, indignant sound. “Is that really supposed to be a compliment?”

“We look good together in this photo — don’t you think? Lucky we’re back together, though. Anyone seeing that version of me might start to question your judgment.”

Gu Qiao didn’t let him finish. She reached up and stopped him with her mouth. Outside, the snow fell without pause. She set aside the instinct toward shyness and, in a way entirely unfamiliar to her, went to him.

—