◎ A Reprimand ◎

Luo Peiyin didn’t take the gloves Gu Qiao held out to him. Instead he asked: “Weren’t you going to buy leather jackets wholesale? Where’s all your merchandise?” A leather jacket was certainly not something that bag she was clutching could hold.

Gu Qiao was startled — Luo Peiyin actually knew she had gone to buy leather jackets wholesale. He must have gone to the Chen family home; there was no other way he would have found out. Could it be that because he hadn’t received her message by nine o’clock, he had gone to the Chens’ looking for her, and had come all the way to the train station just to pick her up?

Gu Qiao said quietly: “They didn’t have any there.”

“What made you think of going there to buy leather jackets?”

Gu Qiao didn’t treat Luo Peiyin as an outsider — she shared everything she’d observed recently with him, holding nothing back. From the crowds queuing at the leather jacket counters, to the man in the same gondola on the Ferris wheel who had taken notice of Luo Peiyin’s jacket — everything had made her feel that leather jackets had a promising market ahead. Having heard that Xinji produced leather goods, she had gone straight there.

“You made this whole trip and only bought one pair of gloves?”

“Not just one — I bought a few dozen pairs.” It wasn’t a complete loss. But only his pair was what the stall owner had called genuine lambskin; the rest were pigskin gloves. Pigskin was far cheaper than lambskin, and Gu Qiao thought cheaper gloves would be easier to sell. If only there were pigskin jackets — she was sure she could make a good profit on those.

“Who else are you planning to give a pair to?”

Gu Qiao instinctively flashed her teeth in a smile, but gave no answer. The smile carried a touch of sheepishness. She had no plans to give away any more pairs — everything except this one was for selling at the stall. In theory she had gone out of town, but she had gone to source goods, not to travel for pleasure the way her cousin-brother and cousin-sisters did, always bringing back a little something for everyone when they returned.

But in Luo Peiyin’s eyes, that smile read differently.

Luo Peiyin continued: “Since you’re planning to get into the leather goods business, you should have done some research on leather first. Could you give me a rundown?”

Gu Qiao naturally shared her thoughts on leather without reservation, and took the opportunity to recommend the gloves she was presenting to Luo Peiyin: “Cousin-brother, try them on. I think they’re quite warm. This is lambskin — the same material as your jacket from before.” The lining was wool; she had specifically tested it by sliding her own fingers in earlier, and it was wonderfully warm. She felt that today’s Cousin-brother was somehow different from before — his brow and eyes seemed sharper than usual. She was aware that she had caused him trouble, but since the trouble was already done, there was no point in saying she hadn’t meant to cause any.

Luo Peiyin smiled: “Can you actually tell the different types of leather apart right now? These gloves of yours are probably not genuine lambskin.” The jacket he used to wear was horsehide, and the gloves Gu Qiao had given him were not pure lambskin either. Even he, as a simple consumer, had a slightly better understanding of leather than Gu Qiao did.

Gu Qiao fell silent. Her knowledge of leather was quite superficial — she didn’t have great confidence in it.

“Since you’re thinking about going into this line of business, you should study and research it properly. The fact that you didn’t manage to source the goods you wanted this time is probably not a bad thing.”

If she had, she might have ended up being cheated out of even more.

Gu Qiao quietly drew back the gloves she’d been holding out to him. A faint smile lingered at the corner of her mouth: “Thank you for the reminder, Cousin-brother.”

Luo Peiyin didn’t respond to her. Gu Qiao felt the situation growing more serious. She hadn’t lied to Cousin-brother about going to the Chens’ — which meant he must have heard it from her cousin-aunt.

She couldn’t help asking: “Does Cousin-aunt know I went to Xinji?”

“Don’t worry — your cousin-aunt doesn’t know yet that you went out of town. She still thinks you’re studying at a friend’s house.” Luo Peiyin fixed his eyes on Gu Qiao. “But you lie every single day now, and so fluently — can you still tell which words are true and which are false?”

Gu Qiao’s face immediately flushed. Since she had arrived at the Luo family home, she couldn’t recall Cousin-brother ever having said anything this harsh to her. She lowered her head and said nothing.

“Did you forget your promise — that I’d receive your message every night by nine?”

“I was on the train, there was no way for me to…”

“And you couldn’t have told me before you boarded the train?”

“I…”

“At the very least, you should have made sure that if you didn’t come back on time, someone would come looking for you and would know where to look.” Luo Peiyin found himself unable to suppress the feeling that Gu Qiao was a little bit foolish. He recalled Gu Qiao’s father saying that Gu Qiao and Chen Hui seemed to be engaged — at the time he had found the whole claim laughable, and now it seemed even more so. Chen Hui’s level of concern for Gu Qiao was comparable to the concern the Aunt Zhang of their household had for her. Gu Qiao had informed the Chen family of her plans, but if she hadn’t come home tonight, the Chens would not have come looking for her — they didn’t even know she wasn’t home yet.

Gu Qiao knew she was partly in the wrong and could only apologize with a smile: “I’ve caused you trouble, Cousin-brother.”

“If you truly don’t want to cause me trouble, then you should tell me the truth. Honesty saves far more time — don’t you think?”

“Cousin-brother, I didn’t expect to be back this late…”

“And you didn’t expect anyone to worry about you either? The bigger the web of lies you spin, the easier it is to unravel. If you want this story to hold together a little longer, you’d better tell me the truth.”

If anyone else had spoken to her this way, Gu Qiao would have had no shortage of rebuttals. But Luo Peiyin’s assessment of her had caught her completely off guard — to discover that in Cousin-brother’s eyes she had become a dishonest little nuisance made her face burn hotter and hotter. She couldn’t bring herself to say “I don’t need you to come pick me up, I can get home perfectly fine on my own” — because having someone come to pick her up genuinely made her happy.

Luo Peiyin saw Gu Qiao cast her eyes downward, lashes fluttering, her face flushed to the tips of her ears, every trace of the smile gone from her eyes and brow. Such silence from her was genuinely rare.

Luo Peiyin looked at her face: “Are you upset?”

Gu Qiao denied it, her face still red: “No.”

The rims of her eyes, like her cheeks, were growing redder. She had spent the whole day on edge and in fear, and in the end had come away with nothing she had hoped for — and on top of that, she had become this sort of figure in Cousin-brother’s eyes: a dishonest little nuisance. And she couldn’t entirely deny the image either — she genuinely had caused him considerable trouble. His criticisms and reminders were all justified. In the past, no matter how hard or tiring things got, no one had ever spoken to her this way. Yet now, she didn’t even have the confidence to accuse him of being unreasonably harsh with her.

The tears that had been welling in her eyes did not fall — she felt it would be shameful to cry in front of others.

Luo Peiyin picked up the gloves Gu Qiao had given him and put one on: “These gloves really are warm. I’d been meaning to buy a pair, actually.” He deliberately held his gloved hand up close for Gu Qiao to see.

Hearing this, Gu Qiao’s heart felt a little lighter, though the burning in her face hadn’t subsided. She kept her eyes down without looking at Luo Peiyin’s gloved hand and said softly: “As long as Cousin-brother likes them.”

Luo Peiyin took off the glove and set it aside, then reached out and gave Gu Qiao’s flushed cheeks a gentle pinch, as if trying to coax a smile back into her face: “Don’t be upset anymore. I’ll take you out to eat. You’ve been busy all day — you must be tired. What do you feel like eating?”

Gu Qiao’s face turned even redder at that. Even after his fingers left her cheek, she felt as though their impression still lingered. But she knew the meaning she sensed and the meaning Cousin-brother intended were likely two different things entirely. His tone and manner were completely that of coaxing a small child.

Back home, the elders had always treated her as a child, and she, though sensible, would sometimes throw a childish tantrum. But ever since she came to the city, she had never thought of herself as a child, and no one had treated her like one either — from helping out at the Luo household to now working, she had naturally regarded herself as an adult. No one had indulged her, and she hadn’t indulged herself; before she even had a chance to throw a temper, she had already talked herself back down.

Gu Qiao suddenly covered her eyes with both hands, then quickly pulled them away, replacing the expression with a smile — only the faint trace of moisture at the corners of her eyes was slightly telling. She said to Luo Peiyin with a smile: “I had a box lunch on the train — a very generous portion. I’m still quite full.”

She reached up to untie the silk scarf knotted around her head, marveling as she did so: “Strange — why is it so warm in here.”

Luo Peiyin rolled down the car window. The breeze outside swept in, and quickly carried away the heat lingering on Gu Qiao’s face.

Luo Peiyin asked Gu Qiao what music she would like to hear.

Gu Qiao thought for a moment and said: “Tomorrow Will Be Better.”

Learning that the tape didn’t have that song, Gu Qiao smiled and said: “Cousin-brother, put on what you like then. I can broaden my horizons a little.”

“Since you like that song, you must know how to sing it. I hope you don’t mind having me as an extra audience member.”

Gu Qiao smiled shyly: “I’m not much of a singer — I wouldn’t dare show off in front of you.”

“That’s not how I see it. And I haven’t heard it before. So your version will be the definitive one, as far as I’m concerned.”

When Gu Qiao first started singing, her voice was nowhere near as clear as when she spoke, but as she went on, the shyness in her voice melted away, and was replaced by something bright and happy.

The wind from outside the window lifted her hair. Compared to when she had first arrived in the city, Gu Qiao’s hair had grown considerably — it reached her shoulders now. She tucked the loose strands behind her ears and sent her voice out into the wind.

By the time the song ended, her mood had lifted considerably, and she felt filled with hope for tomorrow again. But this trip had given her a reminder: she shouldn’t rush off like this in the future without doing proper research first. The money lost on travel fare was a small matter — sourcing the wrong goods would be a far costlier mistake.

“Cousin-brother, thank you.” She had so many reasons to thank him, she didn’t know where to begin.

“If you really want to thank me, then promise me one thing.”

“Go ahead — as long as it’s within my power.”

“In the future, if you’re going to leave Beijing to travel, let me know in advance.” That way, if he went to pick her up, he’d be spared the trouble of specifically calling to look up train timetables.

“Alright, I will.”

Gu Qiao said nothing about asking Luo Peiyin to keep it a secret. She knew he would never bring it up to her cousin-aunt on his own.

—