◎ I Won’t Let You Live a Hard Life with Me ◎

With five days left before the New Year, Gu Qiao turned down Luo Peiyin’s suggestion that they spend New Year’s Eve together — and the refusal was not without its difficulty.

Luo Peiyin asked Gu Qiao whether she wanted to stay for the New Year’s Eve Gala. He had tickets to see it in person. He himself had little interest in that kind of variety show, but he guessed someone as curious as Gu Qiao would probably want to see it. The only time he had watched the Gala in person had been seven years ago, when it was held at the Workers’ Stadium. Afterward, even his grandmother remarked that it looked dreadful on television — all dark and murky — and asked him how it had been in person. That year was the first time the production team had moved the Gala from the studio to the stadium, and lacking experience, there had been quite a few on-site mishaps during the live broadcast, with nearly a third of the show running in a state of barely controlled chaos.

But Luo Peiyin, unlike most of the audience around him, had found a great deal of amusement in that unpredictable disorder.

Gu Qiao very much wanted to go, but it was on New Year’s Eve, and she hadn’t been home in a long time — her family must be missing her terribly. She had been away all year, and her family had been very worried. If she didn’t come home for the New Year on top of that, they would be sick with worry and would surely come looking for her.

What made Gu Qiao most torn was not the lost chance to explore something new, but having to turn down spending New Year’s Eve with Luo Peiyin.

She asked whether they could see it together next year. She thought that by next year she would have more money, and she could rent an extra room so her family could come spend the New Year with her. When he came back for the next New Year, she would have more chances to see him.

In Luo Peiyin’s eyes, Gu Qiao glimpsed something like disappointment. She understood — just as she would have liked him to come home with her and see her a few more times. But she didn’t suggest it, knowing Luo Peiyin wouldn’t be willing. And her family might have their good mood spoiled by his arrival. Gu Qiao bluntly attributed all of these problems to a lack of money. Without enough money, her family would always worry she was being taken advantage of. And without enough money, she couldn’t have a warmer, more spacious home to bring her family to for the New Year.

The day before she went home, Gu Qiao and Luo Peiyin finally made it to the Summer Palace together.

Ever since Gu Qiao had decided against driving her yellow van in icy and snowy conditions, her mode of transport had shrunk from four wheels to three. And when Luo Peiyin took her to the Summer Palace that afternoon, she found herself on a two-wheeled vehicle instead.

Gu Qiao wore a red coat that day, which looked especially vivid against the winter scenery. She had also pinned the little bird brooch Luo Peiyin had given her to the coat. Her slender neck was wrapped in a white scarf — she didn’t own anything so understated herself; Luo Peiyin had forcibly wound his scarf around her neck.

The moment she stepped off the bicycle, Luo Peiyin took her hand. They were both wearing knitted gloves, but even through them she could feel his warmth. She was so absorbed in that warmth that she momentarily forgot her main purpose in coming today — to take photographs of him.

By the time she remembered, he had already been leading her by the hand for quite a long stretch. In some places the snow had not yet melted, and Gu Qiao deliberately stretched her foot out and pressed it firmly into the surface, leaving a deep footprint. She told Luo Peiyin to make one too.

Luo Peiyin didn’t leave a footprint in the snow. Instead, he left a fingerprint on Gu Qiao’s face. It was far less visible than a footprint in snow, something only Gu Qiao herself could feel.

By the time Gu Qiao finally remembered her mission for the day, she pulled her hand decisively out of Luo Peiyin’s large one. Any slower, and she would have surrendered herself entirely to the warmth of it — just like reluctantly leaving a warm bed on a winter morning. And this past year, she hadn’t let herself linger in bed even once.

Luo Peiyin had only just realized Gu Qiao was photographing him when she had already rattled off several rapid-fire shots of his face, with no thought whatsoever to composition. She felt that however she photographed this person, she was satisfied. She didn’t spare even a glance for the historic architecture dusted with snow — though she had talked endlessly about coming to see the snow-covered Summer Palace, the centuries-old buildings didn’t make it into a single frame. Her lens held only Luo Peiyin’s face.

She had seen him smile, but somehow she couldn’t recall having seen him laugh outright.

As the Year of the Monkey was almost upon them, Gu Qiao suddenly made a monkey face at Luo Peiyin — baring her small teeth in a grinning simian expression — and shouted at the top of her voice: “Happy Year of the Monkey!”

Her voice carried so powerfully that the surrounding visitors all turned to look, but she paid no attention to anyone else, concerned only with watching Luo Peiyin’s face for the expression she was after.

His mouth curved ever so slightly, then he reined it in, and his face returned to calm — then the suppressed smile resurfaced, refusing to stay hidden. The two of them looked at each other and laughed, and in that vast expanse of park, it felt as if the whole world held no one else but the two of them.

Gu Qiao had forgotten to take the photo in that moment, and by the time she remembered, Luo Peiyin had already taken the camera.

Luo Peiyin was far more attentive to composition than Gu Qiao. In the glow of the setting sun, Gu Qiao was smiling brilliantly, the snow-covered red and green rooftops behind her. If they had come before January, at around this hour they might have been able to see the golden light streaming through the Seventeen-Arch Bridge.

Because Gu Qiao had been so insistent on coming to the Summer Palace after the snow, every photo Luo Peiyin took of her had snow somewhere in the background — and every one had a different backdrop.

What was the same was that in every photo Gu Qiao was smiling. But look closely, and her smiles were different in each one. As the session went on, she began to lower her gaze, as if she wanted to conceal part of her smile within her eyes.

Gu Qiao said several times, “Stop taking photos of me — give me the camera back,” but Luo Peiyin ignored every request and kept capturing her expressions.

By the time Gu Qiao finally reclaimed the camera, it was already dark. The park had no tradition of lighting up at night since it opened, and most of the visitors had dispersed. The wind blew harder, and only now did Gu Qiao begin to feel the cold at last. In weather like this, only someone like Luo Peiyin, in an overcoat, could avoid feeling chilly.

The road was dark and slippery, so Luo Peiyin folded Gu Qiao inside his outer coat, wearing only a shirt underneath. Through the thin fabric, Gu Qiao could feel his warmth. Pressed together like this, they were both warmer.

Nestled in that warmth, Gu Qiao gazed up at the sky and sighed, “How does time pass so fast — it gets dark just like that.” She muttered on, answering her own question: “I suppose that’s why it’s called ‘happiness’ — if it weren’t fast, it would be ‘slowness’ instead.”

Luo Peiyin didn’t answer her in words. He lowered his head and kissed her face. Though Gu Qiao had grown somewhat accustomed to his touch over these past few days, this was the first time they were in such a vast and open park at night. Her eyes darted quickly in every direction — seeing no one nearby, she pulled her scarf down from her mouth like a thief and pressed a quick kiss to his lips. Her lips, sheltered by his white scarf, were warmer than his. After this brief contact, Luo Peiyin’s lips did not grow warmer — when he kissed her again, Gu Qiao still found them a little cold.

The darkness of night had settled over everything, the snow offering a faint luminosity. Luo Peiyin held Gu Qiao close as they walked forward, and from time to time he would lower his head and brush her lips. During these moments, only Gu Qiao looked around furtively — Luo Peiyin was entirely unself-conscious. Even though the night was dark and from a distance no one could tell, Gu Qiao’s heart pounded inexplicably, partly from the repeated light contact of their lips, and partly from the possibility of someone appearing.

Luo Peiyin was nearly moved to laughter: “You must be born in the Year of the Rat.”

Gu Qiao heard two layers of mockery in those words — first, that she was behaving like a furtive thief with her eyes darting everywhere; second, that she was as timid as a mouse.

Refusing to be outdone, she tipped her head back and bit his lip, then quickly lowered her head again. He had her tucked so close she could barely breathe — she was practically being frog-marched forward — her heart thudding, but her words undefeated: “My courage is not one bit smaller than yours.”

“I hope you mean what you say.”

“Of course I mean what I say.”

Gu Qiao swung onto the back of Luo Peiyin’s bicycle. On the ride back, the wind howled fiercely, and Luo Peiyin started off at a fast pace. Gu Qiao gripped his back to keep from being blown off. The north wind swept away the color from Gu Qiao’s cheeks but did nothing to slow the pace of her heartbeat.

Gu Qiao reminded him, “Slow down a little. I always mean what I say. And be careful — your injuries from last time haven’t fully healed yet.”

Luo Peiyin’s pace slowed.

Along the road, a vendor was selling grilled lamb skewers, the smell of roasting meat and charcoal drifting into Gu Qiao’s nostrils. She sniffed. Luo Peiyin seemed to sense it, skipping any inquiry about whether she wanted some, and asked directly: “How many do you want?”

“None.” Who eats lamb skewers right before kissing someone? Better not. Besides, she recalled that Luo Peiyin didn’t seem to like lamb. It was as if he had drawn a line between himself and the world from birth — this side he liked, that side he didn’t — unlike her, who wanted to try everything.

Luo Peiyin didn’t listen to Gu Qiao. He simply pulled the bicycle to a stop in front of the barbecue stall.

A middle-aged man, dressed up in an approximation of Xinjiang style, asked in a deliberately accented voice how many skewers he wanted.

Gu Qiao immediately recognized that this man was faking being from Xinjiang — the embroidered cap and the accent were both performances designed to make his food seem more authentic. But the aroma was real.

She sniffed again, and stopped Luo Peiyin, pointing to the candied hawthorn vendor nearby: “I’ll have hawthorn skewers instead.”

The surrounding snow had not yet fully melted, and only a sliver of moon hung in the sky. The streetlamps cast a hazy glow. Gu Qiao pulled the scarf down from her mouth to her slender neck, and with a look of great resolve, bit off the first hawthorn with her small white teeth. Luo Peiyin watched her eat. Her expression at that moment looked very much like the little bird on the brooch at her chest — a small bird earnestly carrying a morsel home to its nest.

Gu Qiao was not someone who embarrassed easily. Being watched like that, she immediately held out the remaining skewer to Luo Peiyin: “They’re very sweet — try one. If you like them, I’ll buy you your own.”

In Gu Qiao’s thinking, since they had already kissed, sharing food was perfectly normal. But Luo Peiyin seemed somewhat surprised by her offer.

“You eat it.”

Though Gu Qiao didn’t quite understand, she immediately said: “Then eat the one at the bottom — that one I haven’t touched.”

Luo Peiyin just looked at her. Gu Qiao smiled back at him: “Try one — you’re not allergic to hawthorn, are you?”

Luo Peiyin took the hawthorn skewer from Gu Qiao. He didn’t eat the untouched one at the bottom — he bit off the topmost one, the one Gu Qiao had already touched.

Gu Qiao smiled at Luo Peiyin: “Aren’t they sweet?”

“Very sweet.” But he didn’t like sweet things.

Gu Qiao sat on the back of the bicycle in her knitted gloves, eating her hawthorn skewers. As they turned a corner, a black car suddenly appeared out of nowhere, scraping swiftly past them.

Gu Qiao heard Luo Peiyin curse twice under his breath — a side of him that seemed unfamiliar. But she immediately concluded the problem lay with that car. Fortunately Luo Peiyin had swerved in time. If it had been someone else, being hit could have been serious.

Still, this did nothing to dampen Gu Qiao’s good spirits.

With sympathetic understanding, she said to Luo Peiyin, “You’re always the one taking me places. Why don’t I take you for once? You sit on the back and enjoy it.” She suspected Luo Peiyin had never experienced that simple pleasure.

To convince him she was fully capable, Gu Qiao added: “I can carry several hundred jin of cabbage on my cargo bike.” The implication being that carrying him would be no problem whatsoever. She had barely gotten the words out before she thought it might not be the most fitting comparison, but before she could rephrase it, she heard Luo Peiyin ask: “Are you enjoying yourself right now?”

Gu Qiao nodded.

Realizing he couldn’t see her nod, she pressed her face against his back.

She thought this was wonderful just as it was, and asked: “Do you want to switch now?”

“Sit properly.”

Gu Qiao pressed her face against Luo Peiyin’s back and sang him a song — one she had learned from the stack of CDs he owned.

*I used to ask without rest*

*When would you come with me*

*But you always laughed at me*

*For having nothing*

*I want to give you my dreams*

*And my freedom*

Gu Qiao’s voice singing this song was entirely different from the original — hers carried a trace of youthful rawness.

Halfway through, Gu Qiao suddenly said to Luo Peiyin: “I won’t let you live a hard life with me in the future. We’ll have a car too, one with a CD player, air conditioning, and a heater. But I would never drive without watching the road, just because I’m in a good mood — and certainly not almost hit someone and act as though nothing happened.”

Xiao Peng had proposed to Gu Qiao that they go into business together: with Gu Qiao sourcing the goods, they would hire a truck after the New Year and haul leather jackets to Erlian Haote to trade at the border. Selling leather jackets in a border city fetched far more than selling them at her stall. Part of the reason Xiao Peng had approached Gu Qiao was that he knew she could get goods from the workshop with only a twenty percent down payment. With five ten-thousand yuan from him, they could get over two hundred thousand yuan worth of goods, haul them to Erlian Haote, and after deducting labor and transport costs, a net profit of several tens of thousands would be no problem.

Gu Qiao told him he was being too optimistic. She took goods from the workshop to her stall and settled the full payment within a week at the latest — that was why they were willing to let her take goods on credit. If the goods were hauled all the way to Erlian Haote, a twenty percent deposit certainly wouldn’t be enough. And what if the truck was robbed along the way? Even on the train she had been afraid of being robbed — as the train approached Erlian Haote, she had looked out the window to nothing but desert in every direction. Thinking back on the dread she had felt in that moment still gave her a chill. In a place like that, if robbed, you would be utterly helpless. And if goods taken on credit were lost, what would she use to pay the workshop back? But the greater the risk, the greater the profit — and that profit stirred something in her heart. She needed to think this through carefully.

As Gu Qiao turned this over in her mind, she talked through the future with Luo Peiyin.

After a long while, Gu Qiao asked Luo Peiyin: “Will you only ever like me, and no one else?”

After two seconds of silence, she got the answer she was hoping for.

She took a fierce bite of her hawthorn skewer.

Very sweet.