The next day, after getting up, Fang Long felt a bit listless, not sure if it was from taking a cold shower the night before, or from blowing cold wind while looking at the river view after dinner — her legs felt weak and her head heavy as she walked out of bed.
She dug through her luggage for the small medicine pouch Zhou Ya had packed for her, found the banlangen (isatis root) granules, and mixed a cup to drink.
Luo Xin had to go to her stall today. Fang Long helped her carry the heavy luggage downstairs, and the two had breakfast in Shaxian before heading together to a large clothing wholesale market nearby.
Luo Xin had looked into it before coming — every district in the provincial capital had different wholesale markets, varying in scale, and combined with the shops clustered nearby, they formed commercial districts that handled both wholesale and retail.
The Baiyun area was mainly focused on clothing — clothes, pants, shoes, socks, hats, bags, underwear, accessories… from head to toe, inside and out, everything was available.
Fang Long also remembered that Lin Tian’s cousin — the boutique owner — had said that the wholesale markets in this Baiyun area specialized in higher-quality goods, though the prices were also steeper.
The stall Luo Xin was about to work at was located in a clothing complex made up mostly of women’s clothing shops, with styles centered on the currently trendy magazine looks.
Today was already the eighth day of the new year, so only a small portion of the stalls had their shutters closed; most others were already open for business.
Though it was still winter, many shops had spring and summer clothes hanging on their display boards already, fashionable in style and diverse in design. The two girls felt like they’d wandered into a grand garden, looking this way and that, unable to take it all in.
The mall’s corridors were narrow and winding, full of people coming and going — customers looking around everywhere, and workers pulling goods from nearby warehouses, nearly everyone pushing a handcart, wheels grinding against the tiled floor with a clattering racket.
There were also young women dragging suitcases just like Luo Xin, one after another walking into different small stall units.
Fang Long waited off to the side for about ten minutes before getting a call from Luo Xin, saying she had to start work right away and get familiar with things; she said that when she got off work in the evening, a coworker would take her back to the dormitory.
“Thank you, Fang Long.” Luo Xin thanked her sincerely. “Thank you for coming all this way with me, and for cheering me on. Next time we meet, it’s my turn to treat you to a big meal.”
Fang Long curved her lips into a smile: “Deal, you’d better treat me to the most expensive Western restaurant in Guangzhou!”
After saying goodbye to Luo Xin, Fang Long wandered around the mall a bit longer.
Some shops were quite particular about things, having even hired a lion dance troupe, banging gongs and drums at the shop entrance — dong dong qiang, dong dong qiang — the red-headed, red-bodied “great lion” shook its head and swished its tail, leaping high to bite at the lettuce hanging from the door frame.
There were plenty of people watching the spectacle, and the narrow corridor was packed to bursting. Fang Long got stuck in the middle, unable to move forward or back. The clanging drums rattled her nerves, the air wasn’t circulating well, and soon even breathing became a bit difficult.
She finally managed to squeeze her way out of the crowd, walked some distance away, found a relatively quiet corner, and leaned against the wall to rest.
She rubbed her aching temples and only then realized her body temperature felt somewhat feverish.
She had originally planned an itinerary — she wanted to go to a gold shop to pick out a “golden longevity peach” for her aunt, go to the busiest pedestrian street in the city to buy souvenirs for the guys at the food stall, and also go to the young people’s hotspots Liuxing Qianxian and Diwang Plaza to get some new clothes and things for a certain “uncle.”
—His body was in such good shape, and his looks weren’t bad either, it’s just that he wasn’t particular about how he dressed — tank tops and shorts in summer, leather jacket and jeans in winter. He’d occasionally buy new clothes, but they were always similar styles to what he already had.
Also, using just one bar of soap to wash from head to toe, fine, whatever — but he didn’t even own a single tin of Dabao skin cream. No matter how humid the south’s winter got, there was still a north wind that blew through. These past few days she and he had gotten a lot more intimate, and with their faces pressed together, the contrast in their skin was even more obvious. In the end she couldn’t stand it anymore and rubbed her own lotion hard onto his face.
But now Fang Long felt increasingly unwell — her temples throbbed as if pricked by needles, and there was a dull ache low in her belly, with soreness all through her waist and legs.
She left the wholesale market and slowly walked back to the inn.
Just as she entered her room, Zhou Ya’s call came in. Fang Long took a sip of water to clear her throat before answering: “Hello—”
“Long Long.” Zhou Ya was sitting in the delivery van, the back loaded with today’s ingredients. “Are you still at the wholesale market?”
“No, Luo Xin started work right away, so I left.” Fang Long forced herself to sound energetic. “I’m about to — about to go to Shangxiajiu and Beijing Road.”
“Going shopping?” Zhou Ya took the cigarette the stall owner had just given him from behind his ear, didn’t light it, just twirled it between his fingers. “Be careful out there on your own, keep your belongings safe — crowded places attract petty thieves too, you know?”
“I know, I know— ah-choo!” Fang Long’s nose suddenly itched, as if something were crawling inside it, an itch she couldn’t suppress no matter how she tried. She barely had time to move the phone away before covering her mouth to sneeze. “Achoo! I— I didn’t— achoo!”
The sneezes wouldn’t stop, one after another, until tears streamed from her eyes.
Zhou Ya frowned: “Did you catch a cold?”
Fang Long pinched her nose, her voice thick and nasal: “Mm, maybe a little bit of a chill… but it’s fine, I drank banlangen this morning, my nose just suddenly got itchy, I feel better after sneezing.”
She emphasized: “Really, I’m fine!”
Zhou Ya asked her a few more questions about her condition; Fang Long kept insisting she was okay. The two chatted for a while, then Fang Long said she needed to go catch the subway and hung up on Zhou Ya.
She didn’t want Zhou Ya to worry — it was just a small cold, she could handle it herself.
She brewed another packet of banlangen and drank it, then burrowed into the covers to sleep.
Before falling asleep, she didn’t forget to send Zhou Ya a message telling him not to worry about her, that she was fine.
With illness in her body, Fang Long naturally didn’t sleep comfortably — her body alternated between cold and hot; her hands and feet were clearly icy, yet her cheeks and forehead were warm and burning.
The inn’s blankets were of average thickness, so she also pulled over the blanket Luo Xin had used, piling it on top of herself, trying to sweat it out.
But the sweat wouldn’t come. She felt dizzy and muddled, too weak to even open her eyes, and having drunk so much water, she kept having to get up to use the bathroom.
Tossing and turning, she didn’t know when she fell asleep, and when she woke again, the room was dim.
It turned out night had already fallen; through the thin gap in the curtains seeped red and yellow light from outside, and she could faintly hear the noise from downstairs.
It was the speaker at a clothing shop diagonally across, playing a looped sales pitch — something like “closing sale, everything must go,” “don’t miss this chance” — shouted from morning till night.
She sensed something was wrong. She forced herself upright and pushed away the blanket, and the first thing she saw was blood staining her pajama pants.
Her period had come.
The sheets had suffered too — a small pool of bright red marking her distress.
Fang Long sniffled, and just from blinking once, her eyes were already wet.
Before she could sink into her frustration, at that moment, a buzzing sound came from somewhere in the room. She followed the sound and searched, only to discover her phone had fallen into the crack between the nightstand and the bed.
The phone was wedged in too deep; she had to push the bed away with some effort to retrieve the dust-covered phone, but by then the call had automatically hung up.
It had been Zhou Ya calling.
Fang Long wanted to call back, but Zhou Ya called again first.
This time Fang Long answered quickly. Before she could even get out a “hello,” she already heard through the receiver, in the muffled background noise, that same “don’t miss this chance” she’d just heard.
Her heart rate shot up instantly, like a rocket blasting skyward.
Listening to Zhou Ya, his voice suppressing anger, ask her “what’s the room number,” Fang Long ran to the window, pulled it open, and leaned half her body out, quickly spotting the person on her mind.
She couldn’t wait and shouted down at him: “Zhou Ya!!”
Zhou Ya had been standing outside the inn for about ten minutes.
He’d been worried the whole afternoon, unable to reach Fang Long for a long while, and combined with the area’s less-than-great environment — a chaotic mix of people, noisy and disorderly — his patience had hit rock bottom. He’d decided that if he couldn’t get through on the phone again, he’d storm into this shabby little inn and make the front desk tell him Fang Long’s room number directly.
All kinds of sounds surrounded him, but that person’s voice fell from the sky, piercing through everything like an arrow, striking straight into his head.
He abruptly looked up, took a deep breath, and his heart finally settled back into place.
Fang Long, afraid he wouldn’t see her, waved her arms outward, tears silently rolling down one after another: “You came to find me?”
Zhou Ya let out a soft “tch,” pointed a finger toward her, and said into the phone: “Yeah, I’m here.”