The year Shang Zhitao came back to Ice City for good was a hard one.
There was the mortgage paperwork to chase down, and the renovation details to sort out. One evening before the New Year, Da Zhai was in a good mood and cooked a full table of dishes. Da Zhai's cooking really was something else. Shang Zhitao ate with real appetite, and between bites she said, "Mom, I think the reason I can't cook is that you never passed the cooking gene down to me."
"Cooking needs a gene now?" Da Zhai took off her reading glasses. "It's because you never bothered to learn! I don't even know how you managed to eat those years in Beijing. It's a miracle you didn't starve."
Shang Zhitao shoveled in a mouthful of rice and suddenly thought of Sun Yu's specialty Guizhou dishes, her hot and sour noodles, and the meals Luan Nian used to throw together that always turned out delicious no matter how little effort he seemed to put in.
"My roommate cooks really well. Sun Yu, you actually talked to her once!"
"Oh right. Sun Yu and Lu Mi both loved my pickled vegetables. You should mail them some more sometime."
Shang Zhitao thought about it. "Maybe in a while? Things are too busy right now." She took a sip of sour cabbage soup and wiped the sweat off the tip of her nose. "Mom, what do you think about you and Dad opening a little restaurant? Doesn't have to be big, just five or six tables. It'd be a shame to waste your cooking."
"I can't stand at the stove that long, it's too tiring."
"So hire someone!"
"That's true. Your dad and I have some savings put away. We could try our hand at starting something, even at our age." Shang Zhitao laughed. "After I sell my stocks and put money into the restaurant, I'll still have plenty left over. If you two are on board, I'll start figuring out how to set it up."
"I think it's a good idea." Da Zhai kicked Old Shang's good leg. "What do you think?"
"Let's do it. But the money doesn't come from our daughter, it comes from us. Money's no use to us in the coffin anyway."
"Deal!"
The three of them settled the whole thing over dinner. That was pretty much how the Shang family operated: no grand dreams, but no fussing over the small stuff either. After dinner Shang Zhitao bundled up in a thick down coat and headed out the door. Da Zhai trailed after her asking, "Where are you off to now?"
"Just going to look around for a good spot for the restaurant."
Ever since she'd come back, Shang Zhitao had been going out walking every night, rain or shine, wind or snow. A breakup was like being killed with a dull knife. Cutting it off felt clean and satisfying at first, and for those first few days she'd even felt proud of herself, telling herself how tough she was for ending it so decisively. Then a few days later, at some ordinary moment, the emptiness would hit without warning. The day it hit her was the day she was unpacking the books she'd shipped back. She opened one and found a photo of the two of them in Lhasa tucked inside.
It was like touching a live wire. She snapped the book shut in a panic and threw it aside, not daring to look again. From that day on she needed to walk at night. If she stayed home instead, the walls started closing in.
She wandered the streets of Ice City with no destination in mind. Ice City winters were brutal, and after enough time outside her nose and ears went numb to the point of feeling like they might fall off. She ended up buying one of those hats the old popsicle vendors wore, the kind with two flaps covering the ears completely. She looked ridiculous in it.
One day, outside a hotel, she saw a man walking in. From behind he looked exactly like Luan Nian: broad shoulders, narrow hips, long legs, standing perfectly straight with that same distant bearing. Something in her chest cracked open right there on the sidewalk.
Maybe she'd been too young when she broke up with Xin Zhaozhou, young enough to let go and move on without much trouble. Now, almost thirty, one breakup nearly finished her off. She'd tried her best not to think about everything that had happened in that city, in Beijing. But a person was a person, not an animal, not some creature without feeling. There was no way to walk away from someone she'd shared her days and nights with and simply not think of him at all.
Her going out every night worried Old Shang and Da Zhai. The two of them whispered to each other.
"You don't think something happened to her, do you?"
"Maybe she's just trying to lose weight."
"She's not even fat."
She wandered the streets until she knew every alley and corner of Ice City like the back of her hand, like a true local wandering fool. And that was how she stumbled onto a place, tucked beneath an old residential building on a side street. She pressed her face to the glass storefront and looked in by moonlight. A little over a hundred square meters, just a handful of tables.
An idea took shape in her mind almost instantly. An old couple running an ordinary little stir fry place, home style dishes, nothing fancy, but every single one refined until it tasted just right. That was the plan.
She pulled out her phone right there and dialed the number posted on the window. A young man picked up. "Hello, I saw a shop for rent."
"The one on Second Street?" the man asked.
"That's the one. Can I take a look inside?"
"Sure, but you'll have to wait a bit. Twenty minutes or so."
Shang Zhitao bought a candied hawthorn skewer and ate it on the street while she waited, the sweetness and tartness chasing away that lingering sadness in her chest. The man arrived just as she was biting into the last hawthorn.
"Here to see the place?"
"Yes."
Shang Zhitao glanced at him. Something about him seemed familiar, though she couldn't place it. She followed him in as he unlocked the door and turned on the lights. The inside was clean. The last tenant had run a spicy hot pot stall and lost money.
"How much a year?"
"Sixty thousand. My family's got several shops around here, and this particular spot's been bad luck for everyone who's tried it. Rent it if you want, no pressure." The man seemed a little slow on the uptake. Only after he said this did he actually look at Shang Zhitao and realize there was a young woman's face under that old man hat. He looked again and something clicked.
"Your surname's Shang?"
"Yes. How did you know?"
The man laughed. "I'm Xing Yi. We were in high school together, different classes, next door to each other."
Shang Zhitao pushed the brim of her hat up and studied him more carefully. It really was him. "What a coincidence."
They both laughed.
"What do you want the shop for?"
"Thinking of opening a restaurant."
"This place has run through a few tenants already."
"I don't think I'll have that problem."
"Tell you what, since we know each other, fifty thousand a year." Xing Yi dropped the price on his own, eager to finally get the wretched place rented out.
"Well, thank you. Should we sign a contract?" Shang Zhitao asked him.
"Let's sign."
They found a coffee shop nearby. Xing Yi went home to grab the contract while Shang Zhitao waited with her coffee. He moved quickly, and when he set the paperwork on the table and took off his coat to sit down, he noticed her hair was pressed flat under her hat and her face was flushed red from the cold.
"You're just like you were in high school," Xing Yi said.
"Huh?"
"That same look in your eyes."
"You remember me from high school?"
"Of course. Weren't you always the one helping the teachers with everything?"
"..."
Shang Zhitao hadn't brought her ID, but Xing Yi didn't seem to mind. His family owned seven or eight shops, all bought up over the years with whatever extra money they'd had, so a few tens of thousands in rent wasn't going to make or break them. And Shang Zhitao clearly wasn't the type to cause trouble.
So they signed the contract just like that. Shang Zhitao transferred the money and Xing Yi handed over the keys. As they went their separate ways he said, "Call me if you need anything. We're old classmates, after all. That counts for something."
When Shang Zhitao brought the signed contract home to show Old Shang and Da Zhai, her parents' eyes went wide. They hadn't expected her to move so fast. Shang Zhitao herself hadn't quite noticed it either, but the past six years had changed her down to the bone. Once she made up her mind, she acted immediately, without hesitation.
With the New Year coming up fast, she'd settled two major decisions before it even arrived, and threw herself into renovating both the new apartment and the shop.
That New Year's Eve, with Shang Zhitao no longer traveling far from home, the holiday felt unusually relaxed. She and Old Shang strolled to the market and the supermarket together to stock up on New Year's goods. She loved the atmosphere of the holidays in Ice City best, the New Year prints and spring couplets and frozen pears and frozen persimmons all laid out on the ground for sale, a wash of red as far as she could see.
She was holding Luke's leash, squeezed onto a crowded bus with Old Shang, when it occurred to her that maybe they should buy a car, just to make getting around easier. The family used to have one, but Old Shang never liked driving it, so it had sat there unused for years, practically ready for the scrap yard.
So she put a down payment on an SUV worth over two hundred thousand yuan total.
Life went on like that.
On New Year's Eve, she and Luke curled up on the couch watching the Spring Festival Gala while firecrackers popped somewhere far off in the distance. Luke didn't even fuss to go outside and look. It seemed dogs lost interest in the holidays as they got older too, just like people.
Ling Mei's last gift to Shang Zhitao came after the New Year.
That year, once the holiday ended, at the start of 2017, Ling Mei's stock hit five straight days of the daily limit up, dropped for three days, then climbed the limit up again for four more days straight. The rise left Shang Zhitao a little unnerved, and she pulled out her phone to check the news, where she found a story about Ling Mei pushing full force into online advertising. The industry seemed to think highly of this major shift. While reading the article, she also came across footage of Luan Nian being interviewed at the American headquarters, still wearing that same unsmiling expression.
The comments under the interview were full of praise: so handsome, I love him, I'd marry him.
Shang Zhitao watched that interview twice. Luan Nian's eyes were steady and certain, which told her this probably wasn't going to go wrong. She didn't rush to sell her stock. If Luan Nian was confident, she could afford to wait. She held on for nearly another month, and by mid to late March the total value of her shares had climbed almost 40 percent. On a sunny day, she finally sold.
That cut off the last thread connecting her to Ling Mei for good.
With that money in hand, the gains covered the renovation costs for both properties, and what remained was set aside to start an events company.
Starting a business wasn't easy, and given how roundabout a path the money had taken to reach her, Shang Zhitao was especially careful with how she spent it. She started with market research and did it all herself, running around to hotels and tourist sites, meeting all kinds of people to understand the events market in Ice City. Once the research was done, she moved on to budgeting. Her numbers were precise: company registration, office rent, staffing, miscellaneous costs, every line item accounted for clearly.
By June, she'd rented a two hundred square meter office in a mixed residential and commercial building in the new district, and her company officially set sail.
When it came to hiring, plenty of people doubted a company this new, especially one where the office held exactly one person: the boss. Only one recent graduate showed interest, a young man who'd been head of the sports department in college, in excellent physical shape and sharp looking besides. After talking with Shang Zhitao for half an hour, he decided this boss was impressive, sharper and more knowledgeable than any HR person he'd met at other companies, and a lot more trustworthy too.
He asked her, "Can the salary be a little higher?"
"Seven thousand." Shang Zhitao offered generously, more than fair for a fresh graduate in Ice City. The young man grinned, flashing a row of white teeth. "Deal, boss. Let's start today then. I've got nothing else going on anyway."
The young man's name was Fu Dong, from Qiqihar, and he'd gone to university in Ice City. Both his parents were teachers, and he didn't have any grand ambitions about work. In his own words: "As long as I'm happy."
The two of them spent two days setting up computers and phones, arranging plants and a snack cabinet, then a third day scrubbing the office top to bottom. It finally started to look like an actual company.
Once they were settled in the office, Fu Dong couldn't hold back any longer. "Boss, if you don't mind me asking, where exactly are we going to find clients?"
Shang Zhitao laughed at that. She pulled out her phone, walked into her own office, and made a call. When it connected, she said, "Sun Yu, it's me."
The years between them had swept past both of them, and for a moment, Shang Zhitao on one end of the line and Sun Yu on the other, neither of them said a word. There was a quiet ache in the silence.
After a long moment, Shang Zhitao heard the sound of Sun Yu wiping her nose, and then Sun Yu asked, "You're doing okay now?"
"I'm doing okay. This is my number." Shang Zhitao sniffed and said, "I bought an apartment. It's already renovated. I put in a whole wall of bookshelves and filled it with the books Sun Yuanzhu gave me. I opened a small restaurant too, it's been running for a month now, lots of good reviews online. And I started an events company."
"An events company, huh?"
"Yeah."
"I'll have someone from our marketing department reach out to you. My company's offline events in your province happen to need a new vendor."
Maybe this was just how it worked with real friends. You could go without talking for a long time, but the moment you reached out, they'd be there. Shang Zhitao felt a rush of gratitude. "Sun Yu, want to come to Ice City and have a drink with me?"
"I think I can do that. I'll head over tomorrow."
Shang Zhitao invited Lu Mi and Sun Yu over to her new place for drinks.
Luke went wild the moment he saw Sun Yu and Lu Mi, circling them again and again, jumping up to hug one and then the other, unable to contain his excitement.
Lu Mi clutched her bag protectively. "Hey! You little thief! Watch it! Your Auntie Lu's bag is expensive, don't you dare scratch it up!" She dropped the bag aside and crouched down to scoop Luke up, panting from the effort. "Look at this guy! Grandma's really been feeding you well, huh! Keep this up and you'll never find a wife!"
Her new apartment was beautifully decorated, with a large balcony where Shang Zhitao had planted flowers and set up a writing desk. The best part of all was that wall of bookshelves, packed full of books.
Sun Yu stood in front of that wall for a long time. Carefully, she pulled out one book, Twilight of Humanity. The book was pristine, but Sun Yu knew Sun Yuanzhu had held it and read it closely, because tucked inside were his reading notes: read.
Sun Yu understood what state of mind he must have been in when he wrote "read" like that. It had to have been from those final days. Before, his notes had always been concise and sharp, drawing out the ideas from what he read, always marked with the date.
Without realizing it, tears streamed down her face. She wiped them away quickly. I'm supposed to be the strong career woman in everyone's eyes. I can't just cry whenever I feel like it.
That day they ate Da Zhai's best dishes, along with the pickled vegetables the two of them loved so much.
Shang Zhitao's new apartment had only just finished its renovation, and she hadn't hosted anyone there yet. When she finished cleaning it, the thought had crossed her mind: I should invite Sun Yu and Lu Mi over.
That night, all three of them drank too much.
And once they'd had too much to drink, the talking never stopped.
Lu Mi called Will and rambled at him on the phone, the gist of it being: if you keep testing me, I'm walking out, and don't think I won't do it, I mean it, I'm not messing around. And when I go, I won't even tell you where, so you won't be able to find me.
Will asked her, "Where are you right now?"
"Ice City."
Shang Zhitao and Sun Yu both burst out laughing at that.
The three drunk women laughed until they couldn't sit up straight in Shang Zhitao's new apartment. The laughter was so loud that Luke sat off to the side, thoroughly confused. He probably thought he'd never hear laughter like that again in his whole life.
In the middle of all that laughter, Shang Zhitao felt like she was starting over.
Everything felt right again.