◎ Boiled Water ◎

Originally Lou Deyu had been in a four-person ward. Gu Qiao had taken the initiative to upgrade to a double room. The patient in the adjacent bed was a mother whose daughter was staying at her bedside; apart from Lou Deyu, everyone in the room was female, and Gu Qiao hadn’t felt the least bit ill at ease.

Once Luo Peiyin arrived, late at night he moved Lou Deyu, along with everything he owned, to a private room. In the middle of the night, Lou Deyu sat up in bed, switched on the light, and reached for his cup to pour himself some tangerine juice.

At first he had been on a liquid diet only; to give him something with a bit of taste, Gu Qiao had specially bought him tangerine juice. When Gu Qiao was sick as a child, Lou Deyu would buy her tangerine juice and all manner of other things — it was one of the rare moments when he expressed his love as a father. Only when Gu Qiao was ill did Lou Deyu treat her like a little child rather than a rival. But Gu Qiao had always been healthy from a young age, bouncing around full of energy most of the time; it was rare for her to get sick.

Lou Deyu cast a sideways glance at Luo Peiyin, who lay on the floor with his arm as a pillow. Lou Deyu thought to himself: *What kind of person is this — lying there rigid as a plank? Who sleeps without even relaxing?*

In the light, Luo Peiyin opened his eyes. He saw Lou Deyu sitting up in bed, cup in hand. He took the cup from Lou Deyu, picked up the thermos, and poured him a cup of boiled water.

This was the second time Luo Peiyin had taken his cup and poured him boiled water. Although Lou Deyu hadn’t actually wanted boiled water, he still managed to force himself to say thank you.

With Gu Qiao present, the two of them had been somewhat awkward. Without her, they were thoroughly unfamiliar with each other.

Lou Deyu waited for Luo Peiyin to lie back down so he could add some tangerine juice to his cup — but Luo Peiyin showed no sign of wanting to sleep. He pulled a chair over and sat down beside Lou Deyu’s bed.

“Uncle Lou, how did you get hurt?”

Lou Deyu gave a brief account: someone had hurled a large rock directly through the window of the freight truck, and it had struck and injured him. He had assumed Luo Peiyin was just making conversation, but Luo Peiyin continued to ask follow-up questions, getting into specifics: what time, which stretch of road, whether he had seen the person who threw the rock.

Lou Deyu answered these questions from memory. When his recollection was hazy, Luo Peiyin pressed for more detail.

Lou Deyu couldn’t help wondering: “Why are you asking so carefully?”

“Shouldn’t you report highway bandits to prevent them from harming others?”

Lou Deyu was puzzled: “Are you going to file a report? We didn’t even get a clear look at their faces — how would you report them? Besides, these things are almost always organized gangs. Plenty of them have blood on their hands — if they could be caught, they’d have been caught already. This was an unfortunate incident, but also a case of being lucky in misfortune.” Although Lou Deyu was lying in a hospital bed right now, he still felt grateful — grateful that it had been him and not Gu Qiao, and grateful that nothing worse had happened to him.

Lou Deyu let out a sigh and drank his now-cooled boiled water.

Early the next morning, Luo Peiyin went to the hospital canteen to get Lou Deyu’s breakfast. While Lou Deyu ate, he slipped away to the attending physician’s office and carefully inquired about Lou Deyu’s condition. By the time he returned, Lou Deyu had already finished his meal. Luo Peiyin picked up the thermos and refilled Lou Deyu’s empty cup with boiled water.

Lou Deyu asked Luo Peiyin: “Have you seen my black bag?”

Moving from the double room to the private room had left Lou Deyu disoriented about where all his belongings had gone.

Luo Peiyin found the bag and handed it to Lou Deyu, who clutched it to his side like a recovered treasure and tucked it next to his pillow.

Luo Peiyin then picked up the used meal bowl and was heading off to wash it, when Lou Deyu quickly said: “Never mind that.”

“If I don’t wash it, who do you think will?”

Without waiting for Lou Deyu to answer, Luo Peiyin had already left the ward with the meal bowl in hand.

Gu Qiao arrived just as Luo Peiyin was coming back from the washing room. She was still wearing the same army coat she’d had on the night before, though the clothes underneath were fresh. Unlike Luo Peiyin, who was still in yesterday’s clothes.

She had scrubbed the bathtub clean the night before and given herself a proper bath. While at the hospital, there hadn’t been the leisure for bathing — but with her hair cut short, she had at least been able to wash her hair there. After her bath, she had buried herself in the blankets, the thick curtains shutting out everything outside. By the time she drew them open again, the sky was already fully bright. That morning, Gu Qiao found several messages on her pager — all wishing her a happy birthday. One number had sent her two messages: one read, *When you see this message, you can still sleep for another hour*; the other read, *New ward moved to 605*.

The two of them ran into each other at the doorway. Gu Qiao lowered her voice: “Last night must have been hard. I’ll take over today — you go to the hotel and rest.”

“What if your father thinks I look after him better and doesn’t want the switch?”

Gu Qiao thought to herself: *That’s not possible.*

Luo Peiyin was looking at Gu Qiao’s ears: “Why aren’t you wearing them?”

Gu Qiao had opened the bow-tied box early that morning to find a pair of red earrings inside — a vivid, striking red, like two large droplets of water.

“I didn’t think they’d match what I’m wearing.”

“I think they match perfectly.” Luo Peiyin reached out and gave her ear a gentle flick. His hand had just been in the water and hadn’t fully dried yet; Gu Qiao’s earlobe absorbed that faint trace of moisture.

His fingers left her ear: “I spoke with the doctor. Your father’s condition is such that in two days it would be fine to head home and have the wound cleaned and dressed at another hospital. We’ll leave the day after tomorrow. As for how we’re getting back, you don’t need to worry about that — I’ll handle it.”

“Is that Da Qiao?” From inside the ward, Lou Deyu heard voices outside and called out.

Hearing that summons, Luo Peiyin stepped to the side and, brushing past Gu Qiao, reached over to turn the handle for her, letting her go in first.

The moment Lou Deyu saw Gu Qiao, he immediately reached for the black bag beside his pillow. Inside was a Russian camera he had bartered for — a bottle of Erguotou, a ballpoint pen, some cooling ointment, and a box of Dada bubble gum.

He looked at Gu Qiao and smiled with obvious delight: “Da Qiao, this is Dad’s birthday gift for you.” He had once opposed Gu Qiao being with Luo Peiyin because he thought the young man was a spoiled idler. Now his opposition had a different reason: he felt that even if his daughter managed to build something lasting with someone this withdrawn and reticent, she’d be suffocated sooner or later. Having that young man beside him at the hospital last night had been genuinely grueling.

Gu Qiao was quite familiar with this camera — she had seen similar ones at the barter market in Erlian several times. She had always wanted to have a camera of her own. The last time Luo Peiyin left, he had deliberately left his camera with her, taking only the developed film. By using his camera, she had left him without one.

“This is wonderful! You have such a good eye — I love this kind of camera!” After exclaiming over it, Gu Qiao noticed that the tangerine juice she had bought for Lou Deyu was at exactly the same level as when she had left the day before.

She picked up Lou Deyu’s cup — it was filled to the brim with boiled water. “Dad, I thought you liked tangerine juice. How come you didn’t drink any yesterday?”

Lou Deyu let out a sigh.

Gu Qiao turned her attention to Luo Peiyin’s lips — they looked a little dry. She had forgotten to tell him yesterday that he could use her cup. He probably hadn’t had a single sip of water up to now.

Luo Peiyin picked up his coat and bent toward Gu Qiao: “I’m going to meet a friend. I should be back around eleven.”

Gu Qiao found it slightly odd — Luo Peiyin had come here on the spur of the moment yesterday, so how had he arranged to meet a friend today? But he hadn’t said anything more about it, so she didn’t ask.

Once Luo Peiyin had gone, Gu Qiao showed Lou Deyu the birthday message his mother had sent through the telephone pager service.

“Mom, my younger sister, and Grandma are all doing well at home.”

Lou Deyu looked at his daughter’s pager. He knew full well that this pager wasn’t something Gu Qiao had bought herself. If she had truly had the money to spare before going to Erlian, she would have used it to stock more pig-leather jackets and earn more money — not spend it on something that would depreciate in value the moment she bought it. It was obvious who had given Gu Qiao the pager. Lou Deyu thought to himself: *I have to earn money. Only when I have money can I tell her to stop accepting things from that young man — that we don’t need his charity, and Dad will get her something even better.*

But for now, having no money to give something better, he had no choice but to remain silent on the subject.

“I never told Mom about your accident.”

“What would be the point of telling her — she has enough to worry about already.”

Lou Deyu reflected wistfully: “I wonder if my face will ever recover its former handsomeness once this heals.”

It was quite a melancholy remark, but the way Lou Deyu said it made Gu Qiao want to laugh despite herself.

“Don’t laugh. Your father was quite the rare handsome man for miles around in his younger days — there were plenty of families who wanted me to marry into theirs. How else do you think I was worthy of your mother?” Lou Deyu was the youngest in his family; given what their finances had been like back then, finding him a wife in the traditional sense would have been out of the question. Before he was even eighteen, his family had already begun making plans to have him marry into someone else’s household. Quite a few families had indeed expressed interest in him — but later, when word spread of his idle, good-for-nothing reputation, no one came calling anymore.

“Dad, don’t worry — your face won’t leave any scars.”

He was getting old anyway; scars or no scars hardly mattered. As long as the family didn’t see and worry, that was all that counted.

Gu Qiao poured Lou Deyu a cup of tangerine juice. Lou Deyu reflected that, when all was said and done, a daughter was a daughter — better than any outsider, no matter what.

Lou Deyu reached into his clothes, pulled out what remained of his money, smoothed the bills out one by one, and handed them to Gu Qiao: “Go out and eat something good today. It’s a fine day — don’t spend it cooped up in the hospital.” He looked up at the ward clock: “It’s already eleven — why isn’t he back yet?” Though he wasn’t exactly impressed with that Luo boy, he still hoped he would take Gu Qiao out for a while. Otherwise, what had the young man come all this way for?

Luo Peiyin returned carrying a cake.

His coat pocket seemed to function like a treasure chest — from it he produced a candle, then struck a match and lit it.

Gu Qiao puffed out her cheeks and blew out all the candle flames in a single breath. When she had finished, she began to cut the cake. As she handed a piece to Luo Peiyin, she noticed that his lips were no longer so dry — he must have had something to drink at his friend’s place. While cutting the cake, Gu Qiao’s fingers had somehow gotten a small smear of cream on them. As Luo Peiyin took the piece from her, his fingertip wiped away that little bit of cream.

In itself it was nothing at all — but with her father right there between them, Gu Qiao couldn’t help but feel like a thief caught in the act. Fortunately, Lou Deyu seemed to be pondering some great question of life and hadn’t noticed a thing.

The cake was enormous; the three of them couldn’t possibly finish it. What was left over was divided out among the medical staff. Gu Qiao was rewarded with a great many birthday greetings in return.

After the cake had been distributed, Lou Deyu said to Gu Qiao: “Go out and take a walk this afternoon. Come back after dinner. The doctors and nurses are here — I won’t get into any trouble while you’re gone.”

“Dad, I’ll be back before dark.” It wasn’t that Gu Qiao had taken what Lou Deyu said earlier to heart — she wanted to be back before dark purely for the practical reason of sorting out Lou Deyu’s evening meal.

Luo Peiyin stopped her: “I’ll be staying again tonight. Uncle Lou, you don’t mind, do you?”

“I… don’t mind. Sorry for the trouble.”

“Please don’t mention it.”

Since neither of the people directly involved had any objection, Gu Qiao still couldn’t help saying to Luo Peiyin: “You’ve gone to all this trouble coming back. Tonight you should go to the hotel and rest properly — you don’t need to worry about things here.”

“I slept perfectly well at the hospital last night.” Luo Peiyin looked down at Gu Qiao. “Let’s not disturb your father’s afternoon rest — we can talk outside.”

The two of them left the inpatient building. Luo Peiyin introduced her to a few local sights: “Where would you like to go this afternoon? I’ll take you.”

“Let’s go to the hotel. You should rest too.”

“I came back to spend time with you, not to rest.”

“If you go to the hotel to rest, we can still spend time together.”

This time an expression finally flickered across Luo Peiyin’s face: “Did you not see the sign inside the hotel?” Even without that sign, surely she knew what it meant for a man and a woman to go into a hotel together?

“Don’t worry — if we go in together there won’t be any problem. Yesterday at the hotel, one of the aunties even thought I was a young man!”

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