◎ End of Main Story ◎

On the last day before Luo Peiyin’s return to Shanghai after the Spring Festival holiday, Gu Qiao finally put the question she had been turning over for several days into words: “How much do you make at LC in a year?”

That she would ask this directly probably didn’t come as a complete surprise to him. Even so, rather than treating her as an outsider, he told her everything in full.

Before asking, Gu Qiao had already prepared a whole speech in her mind. LC was ultimately working for someone else — why not go into business together with her instead? He had experience, vision, and connections, all things she needed to expand her chain of stores quickly. With someone like him as a partner, it would be like having a marquee name on the storefront. If nothing else, hiring would be a great deal easier.

But after hearing the full breakdown of his income, Gu Qiao let out a quiet internal sigh. Sighing because a partner’s earnings exceeded her expectations — a strange thing to admit, one that might make anyone question the nature of their feelings.

She hid it well. He apparently didn’t notice — he reached out and pinched her cheek lightly. “What’s that look for, proprietress Gu? Is it because he makes less than you, and you’re secretly pleased?”

“No — you’ve misread me.” Gu Qiao was confident in herself, but entrepreneurship carried real risk, unlike his current position with its steady income rain or shine. Her own money was always in circulation, always being reinvested — and reinvestment, too, carried risk, especially if she was going to hit her store-opening targets for the year, which would require taking out loans. She and Luo Peiyin couldn’t be compared on that front — everything he earned, he could spend. Quietly, Gu Qiao shelved her plans for recruiting him. She couldn’t yet afford to sustain a person who lived year-round in hotel suites. She herself stayed in standard rooms even on business trips.

“Not secretly pleased? So it means you’re disappointed he doesn’t make as much as you — you’re not afraid that if the two of you get married someday, he’ll be taking advantage of you financially?”

“How could I—” And then Gu Qiao caught the smile on his face and realized she’d been played. She gave him a sharp look.

She had assumed Luo Peiyin would treat this as a passing joke and let it go. Instead, on the fifth day after his return to Shanghai, he transferred a seven-figure sum directly into her account.

Gu Qiao felt she had been gravely misunderstood. She had asked about his income — she hadn’t been asking to borrow money. And the fact that it took him five days to transfer it suggested this money hadn’t been quietly sitting in a bank waiting — it had required some maneuvering to free up.

“You didn’t borrow it from anyone, did you.”

“What kind of impression do you have of me?” He sighed. “Rest assured — you’re the only person I’d borrow from.”

Gu Qiao accepted the money without hesitation, treating it as Luo Peiyin’s personal investment in the chain stores. She was confident there would be no losses. The last time he had invested in her leather jacket venture, she had more than doubled his return. She even wanted to say: don’t just put the money in — put yourself in too.

—

In 1995, the two-day weekend became official national policy, and the alternating-week system that had served as a transitional arrangement passed into history. Gu Qiao saw none of the benefits — she was still running from morning to night without a break, every single day.

She proved once again that Luo Peiyin’s judgment was sound. The antivirus software she had exclusively licensed was on the market for just over a month before it surpassed the combined total sales of every anti-virus board manufacturer releasing at the same time. And the antivirus software company was one of Luo Peiyin’s primary investments.

From spring into summer, their nightly phone call before sleep was a fixed and unshakeable item on Gu Qiao’s schedule. If she woke the next morning remembering something she hadn’t said, she would write a long email and send it over.

They talked about everything — over the phone and over email. When the conversation turned to an American website that had started selling books online that year, Gu Qiao immediately wondered whether software could one day be sold over the internet too. The Gu Jia stores already offered citywide software delivery services. Though the BBS on her company’s website was still essentially limited to announcements and discussion — a far cry from a functioning online sales platform — and though the country’s online population, barely past five digits, was nowhere near the eight-figure American user base that could support e-commerce, none of that stopped Gu Qiao from imagining what the future might look like.

She shared the idea with Luo Peiyin over the phone. He was not particularly optimistic about the prospect of her selling floppy disks online ten years from now. By the time online commerce became genuinely profitable, the cost of internet access would have dropped dramatically from what it was today. Once that happened and connection speeds improved, software would no longer need a physical medium — it could be downloaded directly.

He might not be optimistic about selling floppy disks online, but he was very optimistic about her capacity to sell. She had distribution channels and understood logistics — even if the floppy disk era became history, it wouldn’t touch her prospects.

The online floppy disk dream was still distant. The physical stores, meanwhile, kept opening — faster than she had imagined. Alongside the directly operated branches, franchisees were coming forward of their own accord.

Every new store that opened stirred in Gu Qiao the impulse to tell Luo Peiyin to quit LC and come work with her.

As the chain grew, investors began knocking on her door.

She shared the news with Luo Peiyin and laughed over the phone: “Do you remember when I told you I didn’t need to work with LC specifically, that there were other companies interested in investing? You couldn’t see my face through the phone — I wonder if you thought I was happy about it, or just petty enough to hold a grudge.”

She was in no hurry to accept investment. Other people were evaluating her, and she was evaluating them — even though her money was tied up in the stores and she was carrying loans. Lin Haichuan couldn’t figure it out: the chain was well into double digits now, but she was still driving the yellow Da Fa and hadn’t bought a single apartment. But Gu Qiao was patient. Time was long, and she knew it would all come in due course.

The one thing she was impatient about was Luo Peiyin. Long-distance had its advantages, but she still wanted to pull him into her orbit professionally. She had designs on him with absolutely no ulterior motive — even if he hadn’t been her boyfriend, she would have wanted him as a collaborator. She looked at him and saw someone she needed.

But no phone call, no email ever gave her the faintest sign that he had any desire to resign and go into business with her.

She sometimes wondered whether part of the issue was that the company bore her own surname. Even as a co-founder of Gu Jia, “Gu” would be his partner’s name on the door — which could easily read as living off her. But she felt his character was broad enough to rise above something like that; if he genuinely believed in the company’s future, he wouldn’t let himself be stopped by appearances.

If the mountain would not come to her, she would go to the mountain. After turning it over for several days, she laid out the company’s development first, then asked him plainly: “Would you like to come and work with me?” She made clear that it would be as an equal partner, not as an employee.

She waited for him to say yes. He didn’t. There was only silence. She had a gift for persuasion — the regional manager for the southern stores was someone she had headhunted at great expense from a competitor. But she had never tried to bring those same powers to bear on Luo Peiyin.

He declined. He said he would be very glad to work with her — but he didn’t pursue things that offered no challenge. Gu Qiao’s company would do extremely well without him. He said this with complete sincerity, and she believed at least half of it was true.

“Compared to being your business partner, what I want more is to be your partner in life.”

Gu Qiao borrowed his own logic and turned it back on him: “Does that mean you find living with me challenging?”

After a brief silence, she heard him say: “In life, I prefer things that are easy. And easy things are easier to sustain. Falling in love with you was the easiest thing I have ever done. Nothing in my life has come more naturally.”

The confession was warm enough that she temporarily forgot his answer hadn’t quite addressed her question. She let the silence stretch out between them over the phone, his words drifting through her thoughts.

When the call ended, Gu Qiao had no choice but to accept that Luo Peiyin’s desire to be her business partner was nowhere near as strong as his desire to be her life partner, and she quietly made peace with the idea of indefinite long-distance. A few hours by plane was infinitely better than separate countries.

Long-distance romance was not without its advantages — all the time they might have spent together could instead go toward work. The people at her company found it a source of endless bafflement: how did she fit so much into a single day? At minimum one new store opened every month; on top of that, the software promotion campaigns required her personal oversight. And yet somehow she still found time to respond to posts on the BBS every single day.

When the internet first entered the country, it was pure curiosity that drove her online each day. By autumn, she had her technology team build and launch a BBS for Gu Jia Software.

One of the BBS’s weekly fixed features was a sales ranking of the software across all the chain stores. Gu Qiao had once had many dinners with Luo Peiyin in Shanghai using this ranking as a pretext, and even then she had known: this was something that went beyond his personal interest.

She had her newly established information department aggregate the weekly sales data sent in from each store by category — games, education, office software — and publish the ranking. Internet users were still too few to rely on the online platform alone, so she had the ranking printed as large-format posters and displayed in every branch, offering the industry’s most current firsthand information free of charge. That still wasn’t enough — each month she also ran the rankings in the newspapers.

The ranking’s influence grew in direct proportion to the number of stores. The software companies that made the list were naturally pleased — it amounted to a major free advertisement. Those that didn’t make it were a different story. One office software company, determined to get on the list, told her outright that the outstanding balance of thirty thousand yuan was forgiven. Gu Qiao of course refused. Her credibility gone — what would she have left to sell?

The owner of one company that hadn’t made the list called every day begging to take her to dinner, and one afternoon materialized at her front door. Gu Qiao relented and showed him in. He was extremely courteous — upon seeing her, he immediately produced a Motorola flip phone, the newest model, and offered it as a gift.

One look at the phone told her exactly what it was about. He pressed the point with calculated flattery: “This is the world’s first flip phone. A person as stylish as you, Director Gu — this phone was made for you.”

She didn’t accept the phone, and she didn’t let the company cheat its way onto the ranking. But she was taken with the phone itself, and she made a mental note: next time she saw Luo Peiyin, she would buy one and give it to him.

—

Dr. Zhu had long enjoyed telling friends that he had been lured to Shanghai by Luo Peiyin over a single meal. He had been perfectly content in Silicon Valley, where a trip to Chinatown for a bowl of noodles was enough to hold the homesickness at bay — until Luo Peiyin passed through and insisted on taking him to dinner. By the end of that meal, he had inexplicably developed an urge to see Shanghai, and once he arrived and tasted what it had to offer, he could never go back.

He had expected to be working alongside Luo Peiyin in Shanghai indefinitely. But Luo Peiyin was now setting up a Beijing office and might not be in Shanghai for much longer.

Dr. Zhu followed the Gu Jia sales rankings every week — they were one of his reference points for investments in the software sector. One day, chatting with Luo Peiyin, he brought up Gu Jia’s rankings, and the conversation drifted to Gu Qiao herself. Dr. Zhu had heard this Miss Gu was quite striking in appearance, and that her sense of style was even more famous than she was — people in the industry had taken to assuming that any woman in a vivid-colored suit with long, wavy hair was probably Gu Qiao in person.

That style of dress was not so unusual in other industries, but in the domestic software world, she was singular.

“This Miss Gu has a remarkable talent for personal branding — to build such an image purely through her way of dressing.” Given how long he had known Luo Peiyin, and since they were well outside of office hours, Dr. Zhu allowed the topic to wander slightly further: “I’ve heard that among unmarried men in the industry, at least half are waiting for Miss Gu to break up with her boyfriend.”

Luo Peiyin’s voice was neutral. “Is that so.”

“Might be more than half. They’d need her to be single first to stand a chance. Word is she’s quite beautiful. Though beauty is secondary — having such a brilliant, capable girlfriend to do your market planning means your software practically sells itself.”

Dr. Zhu let the subject drop and moved on to analyzing the investment potential of the Gu Jia Software chain.

Luo Peiyin cut him off. “That topic — I’ll have to recuse myself.”

Dr. Zhu’s expression formed a silent Oh? Surely only someone with a direct conflict of interest would need to recuse himself. Which meant…

“Gu Qiao is my girlfriend.”

The smile on Dr. Zhu’s face froze and did not come down. He ran a rapid internal review of everything he had just said. Fortunately, he had not said anything disrespectful about her boyfriend. That would have been awkward.

—

Once again it was the season of heavy snowfall. Over the phone, Gu Qiao told Luo Peiyin: “You’ve received my invitation letter, I hope? Every manufacturer that’s appeared on our sales rankings will be at this conference, along with representatives from the Science and Technology Commission. Since you’re doing software investment, you won’t want to miss it.”

He asked her over the phone: “Is it snowing where you are?”

“It is.” She wanted very much to be standing in it with him. Separated by two cities, they knew each other’s local weather as intimately as their own. Every time she checked the forecast, she checked Shanghai’s as well.

Gu Qiao took photographs of the snow with her camera, to show him when he came back.

—

The writer Zhang came to the capital for a literary symposium. He had no idea why the symposium was held at a five-star hotel when the lodging was arranged elsewhere. As fate would have it, Zhou Zan was also there — as a featured guest.

Walking into the hotel lobby, Zhang saw a banner stretched across it reading: Gu Jia Software National Partners Conference. For a moment he wondered if he had wandered into the wrong place in a dream — he was here for a literary symposium, but the banner was about software. In fact, he had not gone wrong at all. Gu Qiao’s conference occupied the hotel’s largest multi-function hall, while the literary symposium was in a separate meeting room.

During a break in the symposium, Zhang brought Gu Qiao up unprompted: “Capability determines how high a person rises; character determines how far they go. That girl — I believe in her. Not only capable, but with the right instincts, and above all, a good person. Five thousand yuan — she offered a reward of fifty thousand yuan just to recover my manuscript. And look at her now — how long has it been, and how many stores does she have?”

At the software conference, Gu Qiao wore one ring on her hand in the morning. By the afternoon, she was wearing two — and the new one was on her left ring finger. A camera in the audience captured this small, quiet change.

During the midday break, a thirty-point diamond ring had been placed on Gu Qiao’s left ring finger.

She didn’t ask why the rings kept getting smaller — from three carats to thirty points. She only laughed, when he asked if she was willing to spend her life with him: “Isn’t that a question you already know the answer to?”

She brought her hand up close and looked. A thirty-point stone still caught the light, throwing it back in glints. The sun coming through the gaps between her fingers slipped into her eyes: “When did you buy it?”

“1992.” He said it easily, without elaborating on why he had bought it then. But Gu Qiao understood.

The sunlight was almost too bright. It nearly made her eyes sting.

She looked at the thirty-point ring and said softly: “Actually, at the moment you bought it — I would have said yes.”

But saying it now was not too late.

—

Author’s note:

1. The main story ends here. I’ll spend about a week revising the full text, after which I’ll begin posting the bonus chapters.

2. The ending arrives at the inaugural year of China’s commercial internet. The bonus chapters will follow the story year by year up to 2000, though not necessarily with the main couple as the central focus.

I also intend, time permitting, to write an alternate timeline — what would have happened if the two of them had gotten together in 1990. I’m genuinely curious how things might have unfolded.

3. Thank you to everyone who read this far. Red envelopes for the first two hundred comments.

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