◎ Off to Work! ◎

After half a day of wandering together, Chen Qing felt considerably closer to Gu Qiao and voiced the conclusion she had quietly been drawing: “The clothes you wear — were they all chosen by your aunt?”

Gu Qiao was impressed: “How did you figure that out?”

“Instinct.” Chen Qing switched topics. “I’ll tell you something, but don’t let on that I told you.”

“What is it?”

“My brother has fallen for a girl at their university — I think she studies journalism. Zhou something-ning. That’s right, Zhou Zhining! The daughter of that fairly well-known Zhou Zan.” Chen Qing had previously heard her father and Gu Qiao’s father sitting together and talking about joining the two families. She was telling Gu Qiao on purpose — so she wouldn’t go fixating on her brother.

“Oh.” Gu Qiao thought again of what her aunt had told her. She wondered whether she should mention to Chen Qing that Zhou Zhining might have feelings for her cousin. But in the end she chose to say nothing. She wasn’t a party to any of this, and she didn’t actually know what was in anyone’s heart. Besides, they were all young — feelings weren’t set in stone. It wasn’t her place to get involved.

Chen Qing noticed a flicker of something odd in Gu Qiao’s expression and moved to reassure her: “My brother isn’t that remarkable anyway. Isn’t your cousin at the same school as him? Your cousin really does seem to care about you. And I think he’s genuinely good-looking. Your aunt and your mom must both be very beautiful.”

Gu Qiao latched on to the part about her mother: “My mom really is beautiful. It’s a shame I don’t have a photograph — otherwise I’d definitely show you.”

Chen Qing invited Gu Qiao back for a meal, but Gu Qiao thanked her and declined: “You head back — I’ll wander around a little more on my own.” She went back to the beginning of the market and started again, this time paying attention only to the stalls with the most customers and those with the fewest, and observing what kinds of clothes sold best. Gu Qiao observed freely and openly; this time, her appearance worked in her favor — the air she carried in these clothes gave absolutely no impression of someone with an interest in becoming a street vendor. Even the most perceptive stall owner who judged people by their clothes would never have taken Gu Qiao for a competitor scoping things out. They saw a potential customer and eagerly drew her into conversation, enthusiastically recommending item after item. Gu Qiao played along warmly with every pitch, right up until the stall owner asked whether she’d take all of them — at which point Gu Qiao said she hadn’t brought any money.

It was past three in the afternoon by the time she got back to the Luo household. She had spent six or seven hours browsing, and by the end, the only thing Gu Qiao had bought for herself was a bright yellow hairband for ninety fen. The stall owner had started at three yuan; Gu Qiao had held firm until it came down to ninety fen.

Gu Qiao hadn’t expected to come home and still find Luo Peiyin there — she had thought he would have left long ago. Catching sight of him, she called out brightly: “Cousin!”

“Here’s a map of the school — for you.”

“Thank you, Cousin!” Gu Qiao took the map and found it quite comprehensive — every dining hall marked, along with a few sparse handwritten notes scattered around, which she guessed were additions her cousin had made. His handwriting was quite nice.

Gu Qiao wanted to say something more, but Luo Peiyin had already gone upstairs. When he came back down, he was carrying only a single backpack.

It was only when Luo Peiyin walked out into the courtyard that Gu Qiao realized he was heading back to school. She watched his retreating figure: “Goodbye, Cousin!”

The campus was apparently so large that even after nearly a full month of working there, Gu Qiao still hadn’t once run into Luo Peiyin. She did occasionally hear his name mentioned by others when wandering the campus at lunchtime.

The office where Gu Qiao worked fell under the Campus Maintenance Department. Including herself, there were six people in the office. Apart from Director Wei — whose surname was placed first in address — the others were all referred to by their approximate seniority: Old Li, Old Yuan, Xiao Wang, and Xiao Jiang. Gu Qiao was the youngest in the office and held the lowest rank, serving as a general administrative clerk. Everyone called her Xiao Gu, following convention. Xiao Wang and Xiao Jiang were somewhat older than Gu Qiao and were said to both hold university degrees. Xiao Jiang had a part-time evening division diploma from Z University.

By Gu Qiao’s second week, her colleagues had formed a preliminary impression of her: even if she had connections, they weren’t particularly powerful ones. From the moment Gu Qiao arrived, she had taken on the task of fetching hot water for everyone, and the thermos was never empty. A girl with real backing wouldn’t have such a keen eye for what needed doing, and wouldn’t be so quick about doing it either. Xiao Wang, for instance — also young, and when she had first joined the office, she hadn’t been willing to fetch the hot water either. Xiao Jiang was more diligent but would only step forward to fill the thermos when he saw Director Wei about to do it himself. In general, before Gu Qiao’s arrival, it had been whoever was thirstiest who went to fetch the water; there had been passing discussions about taking turns, though nothing had ever come of it. The office had on the whole been a relatively egalitarian place — neither the seniors nor the juniors felt they should be doing more than anyone else.

Old Yuan noticed that Gu Qiao was exceptionally eager to be useful. Things like fetching the hot water, Old Yuan was perfectly happy for Gu Qiao to take on enthusiastically. But other things didn’t need to be handled with quite so much urgency.

Old Yuan had once taken it upon himself to impart some wisdom to Gu Qiao with great gravity: “Xiao Gu, you need to be more steady. When things come up, assess their importance and urgency — methodical and grounded. The renovation projects approved at the start of the year — those are what matter most, and we push those forward step by step. But something like a burned-out hallway bulb in the single staff dormitory building — there’s no need to rush on that. I don’t know if you’ve heard this saying: *People are creatures of habit.* If something that normally takes a week to handle gets done in two days for some reason, people will later complain that a week is too slow. The way you’ve been carrying on, people who don’t know better would think we’ve been dragging our feet on purpose. There’s nothing wrong with a young person being ambitious, but maintaining team cohesion is more important.” Old Yuan had a profound personal relationship with the concept of “people are creatures of habit.” He had once fetched his own hot water, but now that Gu Qiao had taken it over, he had come to regard it as rightfully hers. Fortunately Gu Qiao kept it up, so his expectation was never disappointed.

Gu Qiao listened to Old Yuan with genuine attentiveness. Old Yuan had never been a teacher, nor was he anyone’s superior in the office. Having someone listen to him with such focused sincerity was a first for him, and he found himself unable to stop — he went on to share the full wealth of his years of accumulated wisdom on the art of doing as little as possible. When he finished, he felt a pang of regret: what if Gu Qiao took his advice seriously and started waiting until the thermos was long empty before going to fetch the water? As it turned out, after hearing Old Yuan out, Gu Qiao continued going to fetch hot water every single day. The side effect was that everything else she did remained equally enthusiastic. Old Yuan told himself that Gu Qiao would gradually settle into the same pace as him soon enough — because in his younger days, he too had been exceptionally driven. And then? He had once had the opportunity to transfer somewhere better, but the leadership had kept him back precisely because he was so capable. All that hard work, and instead of a promotion, he had simply been rewarded with the chance to keep being a workhorse. Little by little, his enthusiasm had cooled, and he had become the calculating, take-nothing-lying-down kind of person he was today.

Xiao Jiang, whose full name was Jiang Kai, sat across from Gu Qiao in the office. When Gu Qiao first arrived, he would regularly organize lunch trips to the dining hall with her and the others — mainly Xiao Wang, who was closest in age to them both. But Xiao Wang often went home at noon since her family lived nearby, and so it became just Jiang Kai and Gu Qiao going to the dining hall together.

On a Thursday at noon, Jiang Kai said to Gu Qiao: “Come have lunch together.”

Gu Qiao smiled and said: “I’m going out for a bit today — I’ll skip the dining hall.” Every time Jiang Kai ate with her, he ordered quite generously, and she, not wanting to seem like she was taking advantage, had to order at a similar level. After a few times, she realized this was doing real damage to her savings. On top of that, the two of them — a man and a woman — eating together every day was drawing a certain kind of look from their colleagues. She didn’t think much of it herself — after all, of the three office members close in age, Xiao Wang often went home, which only left Jiang Kai looking for someone their age to eat with, and naturally he’d turn to her. But in a small office where you saw the same faces every day, misunderstandings could make things awkward. For both of these reasons, Gu Qiao now just found a dining hall that Jiang Kai didn’t frequent and ate a couple of steamed buns there while walking around the area.

“Let’s walk out together then — there are a few things I want to say to you.”

“All right.” Since he specifically had something to say to her, Gu Qiao didn’t feel she could decline.

“You’ve just started working, and you’re young — there are things you might not know yet.” Jiang Kai smiled. “You won’t think I’m acting like some kind of senior lecturing you, will you?”

Gu Qiao smiled: “Of course not.”

What Jiang Kai wanted to address was precisely her smile. When Gu Qiao first joined the office and smiled at him like that, he had thought she was showing him particular warmth. He later realized Gu Qiao gave every person that same smile equally — right down to the younger electricians and plumbers she had to coordinate with for the office’s work.

And so Jiang Kai offered his suggestion: “Being warm and friendly is a good thing, but there are some people it doesn’t pay to be quite so friendly with. If you smile at certain people, they start thinking you’re… easy to take advantage of.” In the end, Jiang Kai changed “easy to get” to “easy to take advantage of,” feeling the former might offend Gu Qiao. He found her a little hard to read. Gu Qiao’s openness and ease made her seem like someone with no secrets, yet having spent all these days working alongside her, he knew only that she was from out of town, had a high school education, was staying with a relative, and had got into this office through some connection — the nature of which he had absolutely no idea.

Gu Qiao’s own view was that being warm to everyone from the outset was the most efficient approach. Differentiating on first meeting went against her principles, took far too much mental energy, and was prone to error — misjudging a decent person as bad was a net loss she couldn’t afford. If someone mistook her friendliness for weakness and decided to take advantage, well, that person was simply someone to keep at a distance. Why build walls against everyone because of one bad apple?

Seeing that Gu Qiao had gone quiet, Jiang Kai took it as a sign that his words were landing. He continued: “Old Yuan may not amount to much, but what he said the other day made sense. Being too eager isn’t good for team cohesion.”

Hearing herself described the same way again, Gu Qiao couldn’t help but feel a flicker of frustration: “Bad for cohesion — but I’m only doing my own work. I haven’t asked anyone else to help me with anything.” She had voluntarily taken on the hot water duty because the communication cost of coordinating with her colleagues was too high, and she wanted to be sure of a fresh cup of tea when she wanted one.

“When you do more, it makes others look like they’re doing less. If people used to think ten things a week was normal, and then you suddenly start doing twenty, it makes everyone else look incompetent.”

Gu Qiao found this genuinely puzzling. To her mind, the obvious logic was: in any given time, do as much as you can. If ten things were possible in a day, why do only five? She was putting in the effort and not even getting praised for it — and now Jiang Kai was saying it was bad for team cohesion. Old Yuan had said the same thing, but she had assumed he was just speaking for himself; yet here was a second person making the same observation…

Seeing that his words appeared to be having an effect on Gu Qiao, Jiang Kai pressed on: “Think carefully about what I’ve said — I’m saying all this for your own good.”

This time Gu Qiao didn’t say thank you. She simply smiled and said: “Go on to the dining hall. I should be on my way too. Goodbye!”