The Physical Rewards appeared directly in her carry-on bag. Under the pretense of fetching a tissue, she unzipped the bag and peeked inside—a bundle of deep gray cashmere was nestled at the bottom, impossibly soft, alongside a candle wrapped in kraft paper and a pair of brown leather gloves. The cuffs of the gloves were trimmed with light-colored reindeer fur, which felt soft and warm to the touch.
The System was too thoughtful. She had already planned to bring back some local specialty souvenirs for her mom. The scarf and gloves would come in handy these next few days, so she decided to keep them for herself. She would take the candle back for her mom, placing it on the coffee table in the living room of their new home. When lit in winter, it would fill the entire room with the scent of Nordic pine forests—her mom had never been abroad before.
After the group discussion ended, she stepped into the hallway and checked her phone. The deposit was estimated to be nearly two hundred thousand yuan. Not only had she recouped the entire cost of the winter camp, but she had also made a tidy profit.
Pausing by a vending machine, she bought herself a can of hot coffee and picked up a hot cocoa for Zhang Yue.
The cost of living here was high. When she first arrived, she couldn’t bring herself to splurge on drinks, always making do with free water. Now, she waved her hand dismissively without even glancing at the prices—since she was here, she might as well experience everything.
The vending machine swallowed the coins with a clatter and dropped the cans. Bending down to retrieve them, she felt the warmth of the two cans in her hands. Outside the hallway window, snow was falling—large, leisurely flakes drifting downward.
The next few days were packed with activities, one after another like a whirlwind. At the Christmas market, she and Zhang Yue each held a cup of non-alcoholic hot apple cider. Zhang Yue took a sip and remarked that it tasted like heated Huiyuan juice, but she still held up her cup and had Jiang Lai take over a dozen photos for her.
At the reindeer farm, Zhang Yue was chased by a reindeer, a small patch of its saliva staining the back of her down jacket. She screamed as she ran halfway around the enclosure, while Jiang Lai crouched outside the fence, laughing so hard she nearly dropped her phone. Eventually, Zhang Yue stumbled back, panting heavily, and the two spent a long time scrolling through their photo albums, only to realize that their hands had been shaking so much from the excitement that all the photos were completely blurred.
But the most spectacular and eagerly anticipated event was the Northern Lights night.
The location was an observation point in northern Finland, free from light pollution. The bus ride took nearly two hours to get there. When they stepped off the bus, the temperature was minus twenty-five degrees Celsius, and Jiang Lai felt as though her face had ceased to be a face.
The observation point was by a lake, surrounded by snowy ground and dark coniferous forests. The tour leader said the probability of seeing the Northern Lights that night was very high. Everyone huddled under blankets, standing in the snow and waiting.
After about forty minutes, a green hue began to spread across the horizon.
At first, it was a faint layer, as if someone had turned on a green light behind the clouds. Then the light began to flow, moving from left to right, shifting from pale green to emerald, with hints of purple shimmering at the edges. The entire band of light stretched across more than half the sky, like a massive, glowing water sleeve fluttering in the wind. The lake reflected the Northern Lights, creating two symmetrical bands of light between the sky and the earth, slowly twisting and turning.
Zhang Yue stood beside her, head tilted upward, mouth agape, speechless for a long while.
“Jiang Lai.”
“Hmm.”
“If I ever say anything discouraging to you in the future, remind me of today. Then I’ll know my life hasn’t been in vain.”
Jiang Lai didn’t reply. Instead, she pointed her phone at the sky and took a photo. The picture failed to capture the effect entirely, showing only a blurry mess of green particles on the screen. She then pulled out her phone tripod, adjusted the settings for a long exposure as she had learned online, and this time, the shot turned out beautifully. The two of them excitedly admired it for a long time.
Wrapped in a blanket, she stood in the snow for a long time until the aurora gradually faded and the tour leader called everyone back to the bus. On the return trip, Zhang Yue leaned on Jiang Lai’s shoulder and fell asleep, her nose still red.
On the last day of the winter camp, Stockholm was open for free exploration. Jiang Lai went alone to a small shop in the Old Town, where she picked out a pair of leather gloves with wool lining—warm but not bulky. She lifted them close to her nose and took a sniff: the faint scent of new leather mixed with the cozy warmth of wool. She also chose a box of handmade chocolates, its tin printed with a photo of the aurora.
On her way back to the hotel, she crossed a bridge. Frost had formed on the railings, and the river below was a deep gray. She paused on the bridge to take a photo and sent it to Jiang Shan: “Mom, I’m coming home the day after tomorrow. I brought you a gift.”
Jiang Shan replied instantly: “What gift?”
“Gloves. It’s so cold up here in Northern Europe, and these gloves are really warm.”
“Don’t waste your money! But I could actually use a pair of gloves.” She added an expectant emoji.
Jiang Lai smiled at her screen. Ever since she started finding ways to treat her mother to nice things, Jiang Shan had gradually become more relaxed and lively.
In Stockholm, the sky darkened by three in the afternoon. Streetlights reflected on the water, shattered into shimmering gold by the wind. With her hands tucked into her down jacket pockets and a new scarf wrapped snugly around her neck, she walked back, the wind unable to sneak in through her collar.
The plane landed early in the morning on the day of their return. Jiang Lai wheeled her suitcase out of the arrivals hall to find Jiang Shan, who had been waiting at the pickup area for over an hour, waving from a distance with a cup of steaming soy milk in hand. Jiang Lai quickened her pace, and as soon as she reached her, Jiang Shan took the suitcase and pressed the soy milk into her hands. “You’ve lost weight! Your face looks sharper!”
“Really? That’s an unexpected bonus. The food in Northern Europe was awful.”
Back home, she set her suitcase down on the living room floor, unzipped it, and began pulling things out one by one: reindeer leather gloves, scented candles, handmade chocolates—all spread across the coffee table. When she handed the wool-lined leather gloves to Jiang Shan, her mother tried them on, admiring them in the mirror several times. Then she picked up a candle, brought it close to her nose, and said, “This smells wonderful. It’ll be perfect in the living room.”
That evening, after a shower, she curled up in her room and checked her phone to review her balance. Before the winter camp, she had withdrawn tens of thousands in cash and exchanged it for euros as backup. Combined with her daily WeChat expenses, after deducting flight tickets and all other costs, her savings had not decreased but instead increased. The System had triggered intermittently over the past two weeks—during group discussions, casual chats on the bus, conversations with local vendors at the Christmas market, even when the hotel front desk asked whose home address to register… every instance had been a trigger scenario.
Now, after calculating, she found she had gained over a hundred thousand more, pushing her savings even higher than before the winter camp.
Her phone buzzed with a new message from Zhang Yue: “Bestie, when I got home and opened my suitcase, all six boxes of chocolate I bought had melted.”
Attached was a photo: one box of chocolate had turned into half a box, the foil wrapping now cradling a puddle of brown liquid.
Jiang Lai lay sprawled on her bed and lazily replied: “Is the heating in your new mansion too strong?”
“I shouldn’t have taken a nap as soon as I got back!!”
Jiang Lai laughed out loud, rolling onto her back and holding up her phone. Outside the window were the quiet streetlights of the residential area on a winter night and the long, stretched shadows of trees. She flipped through a few pages of her phone’s photo album—a blurry photo of the Northern Lights, Zhang Yue’s silly pose holding snow in a snowy field, the colorful lights of the Helsinki Christmas market, and the night view from a bridge in Stockholm’s Old Town. She zoomed in on that blurry Northern Lights photo and took a look—fuzzy green particles filled the screen, like a half-finished watercolor painting.
Zhang Yue sent another message: “But that night with the Northern Lights was really worth it.”
Jiang Lai replied with an affirmative sticker: “Life well lived.”