Friday noon. Xu Ye brought Zhang Xinzhou and Yang Fei to the fruit shop for the delivery — twenty-odd minutes to get everything on the shelves, then all three of them went to the cafeteria together.

They each ordered a chicken cutlet rice and were just about to sit down when Zhang Xinzhou shot Xu Ye a look. Xu Ye glanced back and found himself looking at Jiang Wei.

She was wearing a pale pink blouse today, high-waisted jeans, a thin silver bracelet on her wrist, white sneakers. Her eyes were clear and lively beneath a set of lashes that could have belonged to a doll — long, dense, curling upward. Still the most striking person in any room she entered.

The moment Xu Ye saw her, he picked up his tray and walked straight over.

Yang Fei’s jaw came unhinged.

What are you doing? Who just does that?

Jiang Wei noticed him by then.

Xu Ye smiled. “Got a minute to talk?”

“Eating. Busy.”

“I’ll wait until you’re done.”

“Suit yourself.”

He sat down across from her without any further ceremony. Jiang Wei ate slowly and methodically, and it took about twenty minutes. The second she set her chopsticks down, Xu Ye collected her tray and carried it to the return cart himself.

Her three roommates assumed another prospective suitor had materialized. They said nothing — the unspoken knowledge that Jiang Wei’s admirers, since freshman year, had been many and successful at zero was enough.

They came out of the cafeteria.

Xu Ye got straight to it. “I need to meet your uncle about a business matter. I need you to make the introduction. You can name your terms, within reason.”

She’d already guessed as much from last night’s message. She heard him out, then asked directly: “What do you need to see my uncle for?”

“Well—”

“If you don’t tell me, I can’t help you.”

“Fair enough.” He explained the vending machine idea — the placements, the revenue, the need for facilities approval. “Your uncle has the authority to sign off on something like this, which is why I need your help. So what do you say, campus belle — will you do me this favor?”

Jiang Wei fell into thought.

Money mattered to Xu Ye, but it mattered to her too. Had for a while.

He waited. When she didn’t speak, he waved a hand in front of her face. “Hello? Are you going to answer?”

She came back. “I can take you to see my uncle. I can even put in a good word. But I have a condition.”

“What condition?”

“I want in.”

“…I’m sorry?”

Jiang Wei said it with complete seriousness. “I want to join your team.”

“You’re not serious.”

“I absolutely am.”

“Do you even have capital?”

“If I put in a hundred thousand yuan,” she said, “what percentage do I get?”

“Twenty-five.”

“Then it’s settled.”

She turned to leave. Xu Ye called after her. “Aren’t you going to stop by the shop for those apples?”

She paused and said, without turning around, “You can’t sort this out without me. Don’t think a handful of apples is going to cover it.”

“But we’re basically partners now.”

“Not yet.”

“Then what do you want?”

“Dinner. Somewhere nice.”

“Done.” He added quickly, “When can you take me to see your uncle?”

She smiled — back still to him. “I’ll message you.”

…

Back in the dorm, her three roommates gathered around the moment she walked in.

“Jiang Wei, what did Xu Ye pull you aside for?”

“Nothing. Just a chat.”

“Sure didn’t look like nothing. You two seem pretty well-matched.”

“I think so too.”

Jiang Wei smiled. “You’re reading into it. We’re friends at most. But…”

They all leaned in. “But what?”

Her dimples deepened as her mouth curved. “But we might end up as business partners.”

“Business partners?” None of them understood what she meant, and she offered nothing more, no matter how many angles they tried.

That evening.

Jiang Wei crouched in the empty dorm corridor with her phone, dialing an unsaved number. It rang twice before a middle-aged man’s voice came through — and it carried a note of barely suppressed excitement.

“Weiwei! Have you eaten?”

“Give me the money Mom left me.”

“Weiwei, your mother’s money has been with your grandma this whole time — are you running short? I’ll transfer it to you right now.”

She hung up.

On the other end, the man stared at the dead line, his expression caving in on itself.

It was the first time she’d called him since his wife died — since he remarried, the second year after, to the woman who had been his wife’s closest friend.

After that, Jiang Wei had moved out of the house and gone to live with her maternal grandparents. Father and daughter had been strangers ever since.

In a spacious high-floor apartment somewhere in Shanghai, Jiang Chao set his phone down and sank onto the sofa, his face drawn.

A woman of about thirty-five came out of the bedroom and, seeing him, sat down beside him. “Was that Weiwei?”

“Yeah.”

She leaned close, her voice quiet with guilt. “She still won’t come home? Should we arrange to sit down with her properly, the three of us, and actually talk?”

“She doesn’t want to see me.”

“Then why did she call?”

He didn’t answer. He dialed his younger brother instead.

“Jiang Ping. Has Weiwei been short on money lately?”

Jiang Ping, puzzled: “Not that I know of. She hasn’t mentioned anything to me.”

“She just called me out of nowhere asking for the money her mother left her. Find an opportunity to feel her out — I want to know what she actually needs it for.”

“I can try. But — are you going to keep things like this with your daughter indefinitely?”

“What am I supposed to do? You know what she’s like.” Jiang Chao’s voice rose slightly, then fell again with a long exhale. “She has every right to hate me. If I’d paid more attention to Xiaohui, she wouldn’t have left so soon.” [TL: 小慧 — Jiang Wei’s mother, addressed by a pet name here; the cause of her death isn’t stated, only that it was illness, and that Jiang Chao has spent years carrying the particular guilt of a husband who wasn’t attentive enough]

Jiang Ping said nothing more. He and Jiang Chao were brothers — but this was not territory where he had the standing to say much.

Jiang Wei stood on the dorm balcony, and something rose up in her — a memory from childhood, its edges soft with age.

A golden autumn.

Back home.

Her grandmother, her mother, and her, leaning together against a headboard, singing an old, old nursery rhyme.

Stars hanging low in the sky
bright constellations drifting by
Little bugs fly
little bugs fly
who are you thinking of tonight?
…

(End of Chapter 94)