◎ Osmanthus Blossoms ◎

Zhou Zan didn’t look closely at Gu Qiao’s face — it would overstep the boundaries of propriety for an elder to scrutinize a young girl too carefully.

A flicker of suspicion arose in his heart, but it vanished as quickly as it came. He immediately recalled that Gu Jinghui had mentioned that Gu Qiao’s birthday was in May.

Occasionally Zhou Zan would wonder: if he had a child who truly carried his genes, would that child resemble him? Resembling him would be exhausting — perhaps it was better for such a child not to resemble him at all. He sometimes marveled at how two people like himself and his wife had produced such an unsophisticated daughter. But unsophistication had its advantages too — at the very least, it meant she had never suffered.

He would never have a child carrying his genes for the rest of his life. He had begun to pretend he was a good person; society treated him as a good person; and so he came to hold himself to a good person’s standards in truth.

Chen Hui noticed that Gu Qiao had glanced in his direction before going to greet Zhou Zan. Continuing to avoid her now would make him look guilty — though in fact he was more afraid of making Gu Qiao uncomfortable. After all, how they had come to know each other was through her father. She might not want people she’d newly met to know about her family’s old affairs.

“Gu Qiao, is work going smoothly lately?”

Hearing it was Chen Hui asking, Gu Qiao immediately smiled and said: “Very smoothly!” With the person who had arranged the job sitting right there, even if she had complaints, she wouldn’t air them in front of everyone.

“Send my regards to your auntie and uncle — I’ll come visit them when I have time!”

Zhou Zhining watched Gu Qiao and Luo Peiyin settle into a corner table, then turned to ask Chen Hui: “Do you know Gu Qiao?”

Chen Hui didn’t want to explain that his father and someone like Lou Deyu had been old buddies for years: “My dad and her dad knew each other back in the day. We met a few times because of that.”

“Is her father really still away after being swindled, not yet come home?” Because of the exaggerated inaccuracies in that thank-you letter, Zhou Zhining wasn’t even fully convinced by Gu Qiao’s earlier account of things.

Chen Hui looked surprised: “She told you?” From Zhou Zhining’s tone, they weren’t particularly close — she was still regarding Gu Qiao with some suspicion. Why would Gu Qiao share something like this with someone she barely knew? It wasn’t exactly a point of pride.

“More or less.” Zhou Zhining vaguely glossed over her source of information, since she had promised to keep Luo Peiyin’s thank-you letter confidential.

Since Gu Qiao herself had apparently already spoken of it, Chen Hui didn’t feel any need to keep her secret: “Her father was indeed swindled and is in debt.”

Zhou Zhining couldn’t suppress her curiosity: “A lot of debt?” Enough to keep him from coming home?

“Quite a lot.” Earlier that year, the city had for the first time offered commercial housing for sale to all residents — at nearly two thousand yuan per square meter. Because the price was so high, sales had been rather slow. Chen Hui’s father, Old Chen, had sighed over the newspaper, saying that without the work-unit housing allocation, he could work a hundred years and still never afford a place to live. But the total of what Lou Deyu had been swindled out of, counting both savings and debts combined, was almost enough to buy a two-bedroom apartment. In this, Chen Hui actually admired Gu Qiao somewhat — she had come to terms with this reality remarkably quickly.

Even before Lou Deyu was swindled, Chen Hui had never particularly liked him. Every year Lou Deyu would turn up with his good cigarettes and good liquor to visit Chen Hui’s father, and judging by the gifts alone, one would never doubt his sincerity — but the constant self-aggrandizement woven into Lou Deyu’s every sentence was genuinely insufferable. He’d go on without end about his motorcycle, his color television, his stereo system, his four-speaker tape recorder, his five-room tiled house with a covered walkway — and look down on them for living in the city and yet having to share a public toilet and bathe at a public bathhouse in winter. But however fine the house, it was still a village house — the construction cost per square meter was at most a hundred yuan.

Chen Hui continued: “The creditors couldn’t find her father, so they took over her family’s home. Gu Qiao was just about to sit the university entrance exam, and she dropped out because of it. Not long ago she came to the capital to find her father — knowing nobody, unfamiliar with the city, she figured my dad and her family were old acquaintances and came to ask if we had any news of her father. Since we weren’t very close, I later lost track of how she managed to find him.”

Zhou Zhining was more indignant on Gu Qiao’s behalf than Gu Qiao herself probably was: “What kind of father is that — what was even worth going to find him for?” She felt genuinely sorry for Gu Qiao now. Having someone else’s father for comparison only made it clearer how blessed her own family life was. Though at home they had never hidden the fact that she was adopted, she had never told anyone else — did people who shirked responsibility deserve to be called her parents? She only acknowledged Zhou Zan as her father. The fortunate tend toward generosity; at this moment, Zhou Zhining felt that Luo Peiyin treating Gu Qiao to dinner privately was perfectly understandable — it simply showed that Luo Peiyin liked helping others.

Luo Peiyin asked Gu Qiao: “What would you like to eat?” He knew her taste well; he had no idea what hers were. Last time at the Western restaurant he had ordered for her, but Chinese food was an entirely different matter.

Gu Qiao thought privately: *everything I love is exactly what you’re allergic to*. She adored tomatoes — whenever Luo Peiyin wasn’t around, she made tomato and egg stir-fry, tomato beef stew, tomato and potato soup. She also loved bananas and could make candied banana fritters. Her cousin was treating her, and she’d have difficulty treating him back anytime soon, so she proactively ordered dishes she knew he liked — it wasn’t as though she’d be getting something for nothing.

Hearing Gu Qiao order dishes that she’d cooked for him before, Luo Peiyin said: “Order what you actually like.”

“I quite like these too.” His favorites weren’t things she disliked.

She noticed her cousin watching her, with a look she couldn’t quite interpret, and Gu Qiao turned over her own words in her mind — was something off? She genuinely didn’t mind eating these things.

She had ordered to suit her cousin’s tastes, but the moment the food arrived, Gu Qiao could tell he wouldn’t enjoy it much — judging by the color alone, too much soy sauce had been used.

“Older cousin, can you manage with this food?”

“I’ve long since gotten used to it.” In a canteen setting, cooking to his actual preferences would probably mean the place couldn’t stay in business. And if he’d insisted on his own preferences, he would have starved long ago. But preferences seemed more tenacious than habits — he had never come to actually like the mass-produced canteen food, no matter how accustomed to it he’d grown.

Beside Luo Peiyin sat a small half-bowl of water. Occasionally he would dip a piece of food in the water before eating it, though more often than not he’d simply eat it directly.

Watching Gu Qiao devour everything in front of her with such enthusiasm, Luo Peiyin couldn’t help but be curious: “Do you genuinely like all of this?”

“It’s quite good.” Someone else’s money, dishes she herself had ordered — it would be unreasonable to complain. To avoid waste, Gu Qiao ate substantial amounts of everything.

Luo Peiyin didn’t ask why Gu Qiao was eating so much today. Her own cooking was considerably better than this, yet she hadn’t eaten this much then. Today she had emptied every plate in front of her. He assumed she was famished from skipping lunch, and looking at the empty dishes before her, he asked: “Shall we order another dish?”

Gu Qiao waved her hands hurriedly: “No, no — truly, no more.”

Sitting on the rear rack of Luo Peiyin’s bicycle and riding through the evening autumn breeze, Gu Qiao still felt her belly somewhat distended.

Cycling past a bakery, Luo Peiyin made a deliberate stop and bought a slice of red velvet cake, handing the neatly packaged box to Gu Qiao: “You can have this as a late-night snack.”

“Older cousin, you should have it yourself.”

“I bought it for you.”

“Older cousin, I’m truly not being polite — I genuinely can’t eat another thing.”

“Then keep it for breakfast tomorrow.”

When Gu Qiao and Luo Peiyin came through the front door together, his stepmother was not in the living room. Had it not been for Auntie Zhang’s booming voice, she wouldn’t even have known Gu Qiao had come back.

“Little Gu, I saved dinner for you.” Partway through, Auntie Zhang lowered her voice: “Today somebody — I don’t know which relative of Teacher Gu’s — sent over so many things; these peanuts are wonderful.”

“Auntie Zhang, I’ve already eaten.” Hearing about the peanuts, Gu Qiao thought of her mother.

Luo Peiyin’s stepmother came downstairs, but by that point Luo Peiyin had already gone back to his own room.

“Gu Qiao, your mother sent you something today — and there’s a letter for you.”

Holding the letter her mother had sent, Gu Qiao didn’t even hear her cousin-aunt asking whom she’d eaten dinner with tonight.

Seeing how a single letter could make Gu Qiao glow like that, Luo Peiyin’s stepmother suggested: “Why don’t you give your mother a phone call?”

“It’s so late — calling to the village office and having it relayed to my mother would mean she’s probably already asleep. I’ll write back instead.” A letter was different from a phone call. Once a phone call ended, it was over; a letter could be read again and again.

Gu Qiao sat under the lamp in her small room, reading the letter. It said that the family’s house had already been recovered. The creditors had taken it over — how had her father managed to get it back? But her mother was different from her father — her mother never lied. Her mother said everything at home was fine, not to worry. But when it came to Gu Qiao, her mother worried about everything.

How to prove to her mother that she was doing well? Perhaps she should send more photographs.

The next morning Gu Qiao woke early as usual. Eating the red velvet cake Luo Peiyin had bought her the previous evening, she wondered — who might she borrow a camera from?

That question hadn’t yet been settled when Gu Qiao had already started cooking. Debts of kindness that could be repaid promptly should be repaid promptly. As it happened, there was enough food in the refrigerator for several days. Her cousin had treated her to dinner yesterday — she would make him two dishes in return; her cooking wasn’t worse than the canteen’s.

Luo Peiyin saw Gu Qiao in the kitchen; he’d been away from home for two weeks and wasn’t sure about the domestic situation: “Isn’t Auntie Zhang doing the cooking now?”

Gu Qiao felt saying “still” would sound odd, so she smiled and said: “I’d originally planned to cook this and bring it to work for lunch, but I just remembered I’ve arranged to eat with a colleague at noon. I thought you like this too, older cousin — if you don’t mind, you could take it to school for lunch.”

“Thank you for the trouble.”

Gu Qiao, preoccupied with other thoughts, didn’t examine the phrase “thank you for the trouble” too carefully.

She took a deep breath and said: “Older cousin, are you using your camera on Sunday?”

“Do you want to use it?”

“I’d like to take some photographs to send to my mother. If it’s not inconvenient…”

“It’s not at all.”

By the time Auntie Zhang came to prepare breakfast, Gu Qiao had already tidied up the kitchen. Auntie Zhang looked at the stovetop and had a moment of confusion — she didn’t remember wiping it this clean yesterday.

That morning, the moment Jiang Kai stepped into the office, the thermos was already filled with freshly boiled water. Needless to say, Gu Qiao had done it.

Jiang Kai was a little puzzled — whoever had taught Gu Qiao to be so proactively diligent in the office? That older cousin of hers he’d met yesterday — one look at him and you could tell that if he came to this office, he would absolutely never go fetch boiled water.

The others hadn’t arrived yet. Jiang Kai asked Gu Qiao: “What does your older cousin do?”

“He’s a student.”

“At this school?”

Gu Qiao made an affirmative sound. Jiang Kai was about to ask more, but Gu Qiao deflected: “The weather is particularly nice today.”

Jiang Kai shared the coffee creamer he’d brought with Gu Qiao and offered her some to try.

“I don’t know why, but my stomach is quite economical — it’s perfectly happy with just plain boiled water.”

Jiang Kai glanced at the office door, then said in a lowered voice: “As for fetching the boiled water — don’t completely make it your own job to do. No one will think more highly of you for it; they’ll just automatically think of you whenever there’s a chore to be done. If you really want to get ahead, you have to work toward it from a different angle…” The most important thing was to transfer to a department with more prospects. Jiang Kai was being moved to the materials procurement department soon — he hadn’t told anyone else yet.

Unfortunately Jiang Kai didn’t finish what he was saying before the others began arriving. Hearing Jiang Kai’s remarks about fetching the water, Gu Qiao recognized them as genuine and well-intentioned. But if Jiang Kai himself proactively went to fetch the water, she would admire him more for it. She would rather take a leisurely stroll to fetch fresh water every day than drink overnight water.

Old Yuan brewed his tea with Gu Qiao’s freshly boiled water and praised her aloud: “Little Gu is so diligent — every work unit needs young people like you.” Fetching water was a young person’s task — a veteran like him wouldn’t be getting involved. He wasn’t sure how long Gu Qiao’s enthusiasm would last, but he’d enjoy it for as long as it continued.

That morning, a representative from the trade union sub-group came around the office to find out who was going on the autumn excursion to Fragrant Mountain on Sunday. It was a special employee benefit for the National Day celebration — not only were admission tickets provided, but bread and drinks as well. Everyone in the office signed up. Gu Qiao thought that taking photographs of Fragrant Mountain to send to her mother would be quite nice too. The Summer Palace could wait for another time — who knew if the osmanthus blossoms her cousin had mentioned would still be there by then.

At noon, Jiang Kai told Gu Qiao about his department transfer. Gu Qiao simply offered him her congratulations.

At the end of the workday, Jiang Kai ran into Gu Qiao’s older cousin again.

What kind of older cousin turns up at his younger cousin’s workplace every single day? Jiang Kai was beginning to have his doubts.

“Older cousin?”

“Didn’t you want to use the camera? I brought it for you.”

“Thank you.” There really wasn’t any need to have rushed it like this.

“Where are you going on Sunday?”

“The trade union has organized a hike up Fragrant Mountain.”

“You’re going to Fragrant Mountain to take photographs?”

“I’d originally planned to go to the Summer Palace, but Fragrant Mountain is nice too.”

“Do you have anything else on today?”

“No.” If Luo Peiyin hadn’t asked, she would have gone to the Zhongguancun area for a look around — to observe and gather information.

Along the way, Luo Peiyin rode his bicycle at a flying pace; Gu Qiao clung tightly to the rear rack for fear of being flung off.

“Older cousin, this doesn’t seem to be the way home.”

“You haven’t seen the osmanthus blossoms yet, have you? Right now is the perfect time — all the visitors have dispersed. Otherwise we’d only see a sea of heads.” Not too early, not too late — any later and photographing would also become difficult.

But with the park nearly closing, she couldn’t possibly walk through all of it, yet the ticket price would be the same regardless.

She was still formulating a refusal when Luo Peiyin had already arrived. He went straight to the ticket window and bought two tickets.

He’d apparently been here often — they didn’t take a single wrong turn, going directly to the osmanthus trees.

The fragrance of a whole tree full of blossoms drove away Gu Qiao’s regret at having come so late. The osmanthus flowers were the same color as her headband.

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