Love Like Sand Through Your Fingers

Drifting Dust 11

Gu Xiang waved Zhang Qirui forward. Holding his umbrella, he walked over slowly. The rain was fairly heavy, and the hems of his trousers were already wet, but his manner remained entirely easy, as if such a small inconvenience did not matter at all.

"I'm really sorry to have made you come all this way." Gu Xiang smiled at him. "If you don't mind, come in and sit for a while."

"Thank you for having me." Zhang Qirui nodded. He was carrying a basket of fruit, probably bought along the way. Gu Xiang felt a little embarrassed. Such politeness also revealed just how distant they had become.

The lights in the corridor of the old building had long since broken. The hallway was cluttered with abandoned tables, chairs, flowerpots, and all sorts of odds and ends. Gu Xiang led Zhang Qirui carefully through it, glancing back now and then to remind him to watch his step. He had barely answered when, the next moment, he kicked a flowerpot.

A muffled grunt sounded in the dark. Gu Xiang jumped in alarm and hurriedly turned around.

"Are you all right? Does it hurt? I'm sorry. My place is really..."

"It's fine." Zhang Qirui sounded all right.

Gu Xiang was sweating nervously. "I'm terribly sorry. My place is just ahead. Please watch your step."

She raised a hand to motion him onward, then realized that in the darkness he could not see. Without thinking, she reached out and caught hold of his hand.

A man's hand was always warmer, and his warmth startled her. Gu Xiang was so shocked that all the blood rushed to her head. Although they parted at once, it still felt as though she had been burned.

The darkness concealed the embarrassment well enough. Zhang Qirui did not say anything either. Flushed, Gu Xiang unlocked the door and switched on the light.

After spending so long in darkness, Zhang Qirui needed a moment to adjust to the brightness.

Gu Xiang's room was even more bare than he had imagined. There was almost nothing inside besides the absolute necessities. But the room was neat, so it did not look quite as shabby as it might have.

"I'm sorry. There's only this one stool in the house." Gu Xiang moved it over and set it beside the bed. "Everything here is so crude. Please don't laugh at me. I'll go make tea."

Zhang Qirui wanted to tell her not to bother, but Gu Xiang had already fled into the kitchen as if escaping.

Luckily, she had happened to buy a little chrysanthemum tea a few days earlier. It was not fine tea by any means, but at least it was fresh. Before going out to meet him, she had set water to boil on the stove, and now it had just come to a boil. She quickly prepared the tea and carried it out.

Zhang Qirui was standing by the table, looking down at the unfinished little wallets spread across it. He was frowning. When Gu Xiang approached, he turned and saw the glass cup in her hand.

"Sorry. This is the only cup I have." Gu Xiang smiled awkwardly.

Zhang Qirui made no move to take it. Nor did he say anything. He only looked down at the cup in her hands. Ever since entering the room, his handsome face had remained cold and severe, and his whole person seemed out of place here.

Then Gu Xiang remembered that Zhang Qirui had already been somewhat fastidious back in high school. If someone else used his pen, he would even wipe it down with a handkerchief afterward. A person like that would naturally not drink tea made in somebody else's cup.

"Right, the cup is very hot. I'll just set it here." Giving herself a way out, she put the cup down on the table.

"You..." Zhang Qirui began slowly. Gu Xiang hurriedly looked up at him. He glanced at the little wallets on the table and asked, "Did you make all these yourself?"

"Yes." Gu Xiang nodded. "The volume isn't very large. If I hired somebody else, I'd have to pay wages, and it wouldn't be worth it. So I do everything myself."

The severity in Zhang Qirui's expression eased slightly. "Is it hard work?"

Gu Xiang smiled faintly. "Once you're used to it, it isn't hard."

"I saw injuries on your hands."

"Ah?" Gu Xiang instinctively drew her hands back.

Zhang Qirui's brow tightened again. "I saw them clearly. Are they from this work?"

Gu Xiang had no choice but to open her hands.

They were long, well-shaped hands, the nails trimmed short. Because she had worked since childhood, the joints were somewhat pronounced and the skin no longer soft. Both index fingers and both thumbs bore tiny cuts. Gu Xiang's skin was pale, so even the smallest wounds showed clearly.

"It's nothing." Gu Xiang rubbed her hands together, unconcerned. "I mostly work with leather and coarse cloth. Sewing them takes effort, and sometimes I prick myself by accident. These little cuts heal in a day or two."

Zhang Qirui raised a hand and nudged his glasses up the bridge of his nose. His nose was straight, his lips thin, and his features delicate.

"I came here on holiday with a friend," he said. "We'll still be staying another four days. Our flight back to Shanghai is next Wednesday."

"So you work in Shanghai now." Gu Xiang said, "That's wonderful. Your job must be a good one, right?"

"I work in a hotel." Seeing the confusion in her eyes, Zhang Qirui added, "My family's original hotel business has now grown into a chain across East China. I help my father with some of it."

Gu Xiang understood at once. She might be poor, but she was not ignorant. Of course she knew what a hotel chain meant.

They had once sat in the same classroom. Now one was a market vendor and the other a rich man's son. Fortunately, the Zhang family had always been much better off than Gu Xiang's even back then, so the contrast did not hit her as sharply as it might have.

Zhang Qirui asked again, "Do you plan to keep doing this business forever?"

Gu Xiang did not really know how to answer.

The truth was that her life had become little more than living from day to day. She concerned herself only with what was in front of her, because there was no room to think about the future and no future left that she could truly plan for. A quiet life was all she wanted. She was alone, with no one else to carry and no one to care whether she stayed or drifted elsewhere.

As long as this little business could continue, she would continue it. If it failed, she would simply do something else. Sell flowers, snacks, clothes, anything. Small-scale work meant she did not have to agonize over gains and losses, and life could remain loosely, idly bearable.

More importantly, after living through that sort of life, she no longer knew how to merge back into a crowd. She was timid. She was suspicious. In the depths of her heart, she recoiled. So a life lived at the margins suited her best.

But there were too many reasons, and she had no idea how to explain them to Zhang Qirui.

He seemed to sense that there was far too much left unsaid. At last he picked up the tea, tested the temperature, and took a sip.

Gu Xiang could not help feeling a little surprised, and a little touched. Zhang Qirui had become much more worldly than before. Then again, none of them were the brash, restless high-school students they had once been.

"I went back to see the teachers after I returned to China last year," Zhang Qirui said. "Teacher Liu is already the principal now. Teacher Chen transferred to Yingcai High to teach physics. Teacher He got married, and her daughter is already five. Do you remember that awful librarian, Teacher Zhang?"

Gu Xiang nodded.

"Dead," Zhang Qirui said flatly. "Cancer. And Teacher Ma, who taught history..."

"He's dead too?" Gu Xiang's eyes widened in alarm. She had liked Teacher Ma rather a lot.

"No." Zhang Qirui looked at her, and there seemed to be the hint of a smile in his eyes. "He's vice dean now."

Gu Xiang let out a long breath. Two seconds later she realized belatedly that she had just been teased. She looked up at him at once in disbelief. This man who had always been so serious could actually joke with people?

Drifting Dust 12

Gu Xiang remembered very clearly that the Zhang Qirui of high school had actually been aloof by nature, proud, and sharp-tongued. When she had first entered the school, she had been shabby and full of inferiority, and the little gang of privileged kids in the class had privately called her "Little Cabbage." Zhang Qirui himself had coined the nickname. Later on, almost every trick that group used to tease and bully her had originated in his head.

The foolish Sun Dongping had never been clever enough to come up with any of it.

Remembering those old days, Gu Xiang wanted to smile, but the corners of her mouth seemed to weigh a thousand pounds and would not lift.

"If you're living here alone and run into any difficulty, you can come to me." Zhang Qirui took out a business card and handed it over. "I'm far away, but I know people here. They can look after you."

Gu Xiang accepted the card. The room was dim, and she did not hurry to read it carefully.

She smiled. "Thank you. Life is a little hard, but I can get by. I don't have any grand ambitions, and I'm used to being alone."

The refusal in her words was plain. Zhang Qirui's brow tightened slightly, but he said nothing.

"Meow..."

A fat calico cat climbed in through the window, leapt onto the table, and immediately stamped a row of muddy paw prints across it.

"Fugui!" Gu Xiang cried in dismay. She snatched up the old cat at once and hurriedly looked for a towel to wipe her paws.

Fugui protested weakly and struggled in her arms. There was a stranger in the room, which made her uneasy. Her claws slipped out, and all the fur on her tail bristled.

Gu Xiang complained as she held her, "Honestly. Going out in the rain again. Look how filthy you are."

Zhang Qirui studied the cat in confusion, then asked tentatively, "Could this cat possibly be... the one you and Sun Dongping raised together back then?"

It was as if Gu Xiang had been stung without warning. Her grip loosened. Fugui seized the chance to wrench herself free, kicked off Gu Xiang's body, and sprang away, leaving two muddy paw prints on her clothes as well.

"Honestly..." Gu Xiang lowered her head and brushed at her shirt.

Her bangs cast a shadow across her face, and Zhang Qirui could no longer see her expression. He felt a little guilty for his own recklessness.

Gu Xiang was still like a person living eight years in the past. Time seemed to have stopped on her. She was clearly still guarding the wreckage of what had been, submitting to fate and simply living on. As for everything that had happened in the eight years since then, he did not even know how much she knew.

Thinking of that, Zhang Qirui once again failed, in that rare way, to hold back what was on his tongue.

"I heard that after that incident, Sun Dongping tried many times to see you?"

Gu Xiang still kept her head lowered and answered softly, "Yes... he came to visit me several times, but I never saw him. He must have been in great pain. I just really didn't know how I was supposed to face him. Later he went abroad and kept writing to me for a long time..."

"And you never replied," Zhang Qirui finished for her.

Gu Xiang smiled faintly. Zhang Qirui and Sun Dongping had grown up in the same compound and were as close as brothers. Of course Sun Dongping would have told him all that. So Gu Xiang felt there was no need to hide anything from Zhang Qirui.

"No, I never replied to his letters." Her voice rose a little. "First, it wasn't easy, since they had to be mailed overseas. Second, if something has to be cut off, then it's better to cut it off cleanly. That's better for everyone."

Zhang Qirui touched his nose. "So that was it."

"You've always stayed in touch with him, haven't you?" Gu Xiang took a breath. "How is he? Is he all right?"

"You really haven't heard any news of him?"

Gu Xiang smiled faintly. "It's been a very long time... but I can't blame him. I never wrote back, so he probably gave up in the end. Is he doing well now?"

"Very well." There was weight in Zhang Qirui's tone. "He finished his undergraduate studies in England, then went to the United States for an MBA, and now he's stayed on there to work."

"Oh." Gu Xiang listened carefully, still wearing that slightly blank expression. Even though Zhang Qirui had tried to make it sound casual, it was impossible not to hear that Sun Dongping's life over the past eight years had been successful, bright, and glorious.

Against that, her own life looked all the dimmer.

Her back bent a little more.

Zhang Qirui turned his eyes away, unwilling to keep looking.

That was the difference between them. What could he possibly do about it?

"Thank you." Gu Xiang lifted her face. Her eyes were moist, pure as they had been in those old years. "Knowing that he's doing well puts my mind at ease. I wish him well. But please, don't mention me to him."

Zhang Qirui frowned. "He's still been wanting to reach you."

"There's no need." Gu Xiang said, "The way I am now, I really have no face to let him see me..."

"But..."

"Please." Her tone turned firm. She looked directly at Zhang Qirui. "We're not children anymore, and I have my own life now. Let what is past remain in the past."

Zhang Qirui felt a heaviness in his chest, as though some feeling had been pressed down and trapped inside him.

Gu Xiang took up her umbrella again and walked him back out.

The rain had eased, and the night air was cold. The neighborhood was quiet, the streetlights dim and weak. They had to rely on the light falling from people's windows to see the road. Gu Xiang walked half a step behind him and slightly to one side, and neither of them spoke until they reached the entrance to the neighborhood.

The area was remote. They had to wait a long time before they managed to flag down a taxi. By then Gu Xiang was already shivering with cold and had sneezed several times in succession.

"Go back quickly. Don't let the illness get worse." Just before getting into the taxi, Zhang Qirui told her, "I interrupted your rest today."

"Not at all." Gu Xiang shook her head and gave him a sincere smile. Her deep black eyes were bright and wet with light. "Thank you for coming to see me today. Truly, thank you. It's been a very long time... since I've seen anyone I knew..."

The taxi pulled away. Through the car window, Zhang Qirui turned his head and watched Gu Xiang standing in the night, dressed so thinly that she looked all the more frail, as if even a gust of wind might knock her down. Slightly bent at the back. So humble, so small.

He let out a long breath, as though he wanted to vent the emotion pressing heavily inside his chest.

He still vividly remembered the scene from Gu Xiang's senior year, when she had led him and the other top students from their class to a provincial academic quiz competition. She had been lively, confident, full of youthful spirit, urging the others to work hard and compete. She truly had been a class monitor people admired, and even he had been forced to admit it.

Back then, though he had not liked her much, he had never once imagined she would end up like this.