◎ You Don’t Recognize Me, Do You! ◎

Gu Qiao didn’t ask another word. She stepped aside to let the boy pass and watched until he and his cargo bike, loaded with leather jackets, disappeared from sight. Only then did her gaze shift from the jackets to the sky.

The sun was still up, but whatever small warmth it had been offering now seemed to have vanished.

The yellow Dafa was parked outside the alleyway.

She didn’t go looking for Peng Zhou, and she didn’t return to the trading market. In order to pool her funds for the leather jackets, she had basically cleared out all her other inventory — including the cotton-padded coats and knitwear that had been selling best. To move it quickly, she had reduced the price on the padded coats, and her largest buyer had been none other than Boss Zhai. At the time, she only wanted to clear the goods — it didn’t matter to her who she sold to, as long as they moved.

At seventy-five yuan per leather jacket, after deducting the final payment and various miscellaneous costs, each one sold in Erlian could net at least forty to fifty yuan profit. Under the original thirty percent deposit arrangement, her own capital was enough to first secure one thousand pig leather jackets. Not counting Peng Zhou’s share of the cut, one trip out and back — less than half a month — could conservatively bring in forty thousand yuan. One deal like that would not only solve her family’s problems; she’d have money to spare for a hotel room. Under those circumstances, selling her other inventory quickly at a discount had been worth it. But with the deposit raised to eighty percent or even full payment, she wouldn’t be getting Peng Zhou’s cut at all — and she could only afford around three hundred jackets. A batch that size wasn’t worth the cost of renting a truck, let alone hiring an escort. Two train trips would be enough to sell it all off.

If she had been like Peng Zhou and could pull together ten or so ten thousand yuan through savings and loans, even with the deposit this high, the border trade deal might still be worth attempting. But she didn’t have that kind of money.

Gu Qiao drove straight to the courtyard she rented. She needed to tell Lou Deyu to trim down the number of escorts needed — she should let them know properly so as not to waste their time doing other work. She had originally hoped to bring him along to make some real money this trip. Now it looked like she might have put him to a lot of trouble for nothing.

Lou Deyu had put considerable effort into finding the right people for the escort team.

These days, Lou Deyu was immersed daily in reading the map Gu Qiao had bought. He had never been to Erlian, yet he had been struck by his imagination of it — vast stretches of desert, not a soul visible ahead or behind, and if you were robbed out there, there would be no one to call out to for help.

He had never personally escorted goods to the border, but he knew well how dangerous the job was. Escorts needed to be bold yet careful, willing to endure hardship, and for a haul this size, they’d have to help unload goods as well as guard them — which meant they had to have some physical strength. Most importantly, they had to be honest — someone who stole from the very cargo they were guarding was a far more terrifying prospect than any outside threat. Eventually, he settled on looking for candidates among the young men who worked at the packing stations. With the surge in Eastern European trade, a number of packing stations and temporary packers had appeared in the market.

Among the packers, Lou Deyu spotted a fellow villager — young Han. A person from the same hometown was someone you knew inside out. He knew this young Han had been an honest, straightforward boy from childhood. Land in the countryside was limited, yet every family had a number of children, and with so many mouths and not enough fields to go around, young men from the village had been pouring into the city to find work over the past couple of years. Young Han was one of them; when Lou Deyu found him, his head was bent over someone’s luggage, packing without a moment’s pause.

Young Han was the first escort Lou Deyu confirmed. Through Han, he came to know several other young men from the same county — equally hardworking and eager to earn. Lou Deyu made a point of looking into each person’s background before committing.

Lou Deyu was busy in the little kitchen of the courtyard, chopping filling and rolling out dough, waiting for Gu Qiao to come home for dumplings. Once they were out on the road doing business, there’d be no mood for a proper meal.

Since moving in with Gu Qiao, Lou Deyu had been cooking for her every day. He had known, even before arriving, that things probably hadn’t been easy for her — but Gu Qiao always described things in the best possible light, so he’d told himself it probably wasn’t that bad. The Gu Qiao he remembered had never been the type to gloss over hardship; back in high school, she would complain readily enough about particularly awful dishes in the cafeteria.

But when he arrived, he saw the truth: Gu Qiao went from morning to night without a single warm meal. Lou Deyu wasn’t much of a cook himself, but he thought it didn’t have to be good — as long as the child had something hot to eat.

Gu Qiao was driving fast. On the way home, she passed a block of export-grade apartments and suddenly slowed down. These units were mostly occupied by foreign nationals. Commercial housing in the city center was selling at two thousand yuan per square meter and still had trouble moving; yet these export apartments were listed at two thousand US dollars per square meter, and reportedly sold out within days. Luo Peiyin’s sister lived here. Before Luo Peiyin left, he had written down his sister’s contact information and address for Gu Qiao, telling her to find her if she ever ran into trouble. He had told his sister about their relationship.

He wasn’t the type to ask for favors easily. The fact that he had specifically written down the address meant he was worried about her.

Gu Qiao pulled over to the side of the road and took in the facade of the apartment building. A security guard in uniform was standing ramrod straight at the entrance.

After a long while, Gu Qiao gave a small, self-deprecating smile. She had originally dared to take this risk because it could have earned her enough for a few square meters of this building. Now, after all the sleepless nights of planning — the trucks, the escorts — after dragging Lou Deyu all this way to run around on her behalf, she might not be able to earn even the price of a single square meter.

Gu Qiao slumped forward over the steering wheel, all the energy she needed to drive forward suddenly draining away. She used to feel as if there was only one road in life, and all she had to do was run along it. But now, just as she was running, something had come out of nowhere to block her path. Could the road not be a little easier to travel?

An older woman with a red armband who had been keeping watch by the roadside noticed Gu Qiao slumped motionless over the wheel and came over to tap on the window. “Young lady, are you all right?”

Moments later, the woman saw the girl in the car lift her head and smile at her. “I’m fine! Thank you!” Her voice was bright and clear, even though the corners of her eyes seemed faintly wet.

“Good, then!”

Gu Qiao straightened her back. She looked at the road stretching ahead until it disappeared beyond what she could see. It was far too early to say the road was impossible.

She reached over and picked up the CD player. Ever since Luo Peiyin had told her he hoped she would feel good about each today rather than spending every day waiting for a better tomorrow, she had hardly listened to *Tomorrow Will Be Better*. But today she put on that familiar melody again.

This was the sixth recording Luo Peiyin had made for her.

Gu Qiao didn’t go home. She drove without any particular destination, as if the road ahead had no end. *Tomorrow Will Be Better* played on inside the car. The sky in the fields had turned dark; someone by the roadside was selling sweet potatoes — sixty cents for one, or two for a yuan. A young mother who had only meant to buy one apparently decided that two for a yuan was the better deal and bought both.

Sixty cents for one, one yuan for two. Gu Qiao slapped her own forehead. She really must have lost her mind — this was such a simple thing, and it only just occurred to her now. It was exactly what she did every day when selling clothes. How had she not thought of it until this moment?

She put her foot down on the accelerator and drove straight home. Lou Deyu had finished wrapping the dumplings and was waiting for her.

Gu Qiao said to Lou Deyu, “Dad, go ahead and eat without me. I’ve got a contract to sign tonight — don’t wait up.” She had come back specifically to get some money, and she wanted to let Lou Deyu know so he wouldn’t worry.

“So urgent — can’t it wait until tomorrow? At least have dinner first before you go! Or maybe—”

“I’m not eating!”

Before Lou Deyu could say another word, Gu Qiao had already jumped back into the yellow Dafa.

When Peng Zhou heard that the manufacturers had raised the deposit to full payment, he was stunned. “Full payment? Even if we pool all our money together, we won’t have enough for two truckloads!” Between his own savings and what he’d borrowed from friends, he had managed to put together one hundred and twenty thousand yuan.

“These people have no decency — it was you who got them started on leather jackets in the first place. All those jacket styles didn’t they come from samples you tracked down all over the place? Now that they’ve made their money off leather jackets, they’ve forgotten you entirely, and they’re going back on their word too…”

Gu Qiao was surprisingly calm now. “Nobody’s money falls from the sky. It’s only natural to be afraid of a loss. Besides, the fact that I’ve managed to get deposit rates lower than anyone else all along has already been a matter of their goodwill toward me.”

“So you’re just going to accept this? How much are we even going to make on this batch? We’ll be working ourselves half to death and taking on all this risk — it won’t be much different from me doing a few more trips to Moscow. At least I know Moscow well by now.”

Rather than laying out her plan directly, Gu Qiao continued, “Only profit can overcome people’s fear of risk. If you want people to stop worrying about the risk, the only way is to increase their profit.”

“You mean pay them more?” Peng Zhou steeled himself. “Fine. Pay more it is. How much more?”

Instead of giving him a number, Gu Qiao pulled out a calculator and showed Peng Zhou a figure.

“That much more? Can we come down a bit?”

“Any lower and it won’t work.” Gu Qiao said. “At minimum, each leather jacket earns more than double. As long as we can buy more goods, it’s nothing but profit. If you feel it’s unfair — paying more on top of giving me a cut — you don’t have to do this deal with me. You can go negotiate directly with the workshops yourself. With some patience, you can probably still get an eighty percent deposit on your own, or talk them down to a number you’re comfortable with — and without paying me a cut. I won’t take it personally. Business is business; naturally you want the highest possible profit, and I completely understand.”

Peng Zhou stomped his foot. “If you’re going to put it like that, there’s nothing more to say! Pay more, then! I’ll do it your way. Though who knows if they’ll even agree to lower the deposit once the price goes up.”

Gu Qiao had already decided to continue this deal with Peng Zhou. “Have you got the money ready? We’ll go sign the contracts tonight — no point in dragging it out. When the time comes, don’t say a word. Let me do the talking.”

The workshop owners were meeting Gu Qiao for the second time that day. They had assumed she would come to beg them to lower the deposit, so they had all tried to make themselves scarce. Gu Qiao had been the first person at the trading market to start selling pig leather jackets; these workshops owed their leather jacket business indirectly to her. Having already demanded such a steep deposit, they felt a bit ashamed to refuse her a second time.

But Gu Qiao sat down and simply didn’t leave, so the workshop owners had no choice but to come out and face her. Gu Qiao didn’t say a single word about lowering the deposit. Instead, she placed a tiered pricing chart on the table in front of them. At an eighty percent deposit, the per-jacket price remained what it had always been. But for every ten percent reduction in the deposit, the unit price increased by two yuan. At eighty percent, a jacket cost eighty yuan; with the deposit at thirty percent, it rose to ninety yuan. And if the deposit dropped from thirty percent to twenty, the price jumped by an additional five yuan per jacket.

“I understand your concerns. But I’m in this for the long term. If I were the type to vanish over a deal this small without caring about my reputation, you’re all underestimating me. But since I’ve committed to buying your goods, I’ll stand by that.” Gu Qiao pulled out her money pouch and placed the cash on the table with a smile, inviting each of them to consider their options. “This is the money I’ve brought to buy your goods. I’ve brought all of it today. How much I can take away with me tonight is entirely up to you.”

Gu Qiao went home that night with contracts for four truckloads of leather jackets. The night was already very late, and Lou Deyu was waiting at the door.

The moment Gu Qiao arrived, Lou Deyu went to boil the dumplings.

Some of the skins had split, but Gu Qiao didn’t comment on it. She just kept her head down and ate.

“Da Qiao, I’ve been turning this over in my mind for several days now. You tell me how to sell them, what price to sell at — I’ll do exactly as you say. You don’t need to go yourself. A girl out in a place like that…”

“What does being a girl have to do with it?”

“The drivers, the escorts, the person you’re partnering with — they’re all men. Having one girl in the middle of all that isn’t convenient. You should rest for a while. Let your father go in your place this once.” Lou Deyu sniffled. Now that he was getting older, he’d become prone to unexpected fits of emotion. “Trust me with this. Every coin of the money — I’ll bring it back intact. Not a single cent will go missing. Trust me just this once. This time I won’t run away from trouble and leave everything to you and your mother.”

Lou Deyu wanted to explain that the sniffling wasn’t because he was about to cry — he had a cold. But he thought: if she knows I’m sick, she’ll trust me even less with this. So he said nothing.

“Dad, it’s not that I don’t trust you. But you’ve never been to Erlian, and the details of the leather jacket business are too complicated to explain all at once.”

Then came a long silence. Lou Deyu kept his head down and wouldn’t meet Gu Qiao’s eyes. “I’ve been a burden to you. I’m sorry, Qiao…”

“Just do right by this family from now on — that’s all I need!” Gu Qiao took a fierce bite of her dumpling. “Dad, these dumplings are really good.”

The day before they set out, Gu Qiao made a special trip to the hair salon and cut her hair short. She knew that long hair, like earrings and necklaces, didn’t just attract attention — it gave people something to grab hold of. Once someone had you by the hair, you had no chance to fight back.

On the day of departure for Erlian, Peng Zhou almost didn’t recognize Gu Qiao. She was wearing a lamb’s wool hat, a military greatcoat, and a pair of trainers. From behind, Peng Zhou even assumed she was one of the escorts. He asked Lou Deyu, “Uncle Lou, where’s Gu Qiao?”

Gu Qiao turned around. With her waves cut off, the short hair made her face look even smaller, and her eyes all the more striking by contrast. Her eyes curved in a smile. “You don’t recognize me, do you!”

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