In places with high foot traffic like markets and shopping malls, it’s common to see people holding thick stacks of flyers, handing them out to every passerby.
Some ignore them, walking past coldly without a glance; others take them only to toss them aside immediately. Only a small number actually pause to look at the content.
Practice makes perfect. Today, Qiao Sheng was much more adept at handing out flyers, offering a sweet smile to everyone who passed by.
Perhaps it’s true that you can’t hit a smiling face, or maybe her still somewhat youthful face stirred a protective instinct in adults. Or perhaps it was simply because she was pretty and evoked sympathy—whatever the reason, the flyers she handed out were rarely ignored.
“Little girl, how old are you this year?”
“Oh my, are you out here experiencing life?”
“Such a delicate girl standing here in the cold wind—how could your parents bear it!”
“It really makes you realize how unfair life is. My lazy son at home won’t even eat unless I practically feed him. If he were half as sensible as you, I’d have so much less to worry about day after day.”
“Auntie, sorry, I need to take this call.”
Amid the bustling crowd outside the lively shopping mall, Qiao Sheng politely interrupted the auntie chatting with her and pulled her buzzing phone from her bag. Seeing the caller ID, she was quite surprised.
It was a call from Gu Huo.
That in itself wasn’t unusual. What was unusual was that he was calling via video!
Maybe he was running low on phone credit, and the shop’s WiFi was free.
Qiao Sheng pressed the answer button and soon saw half of Gu Huo’s handsome face appear on the screen. Their eyes met briefly through the screen before Gu Huo’s voice came through the speaker: “I’m off this afternoon. I’ll stop by the market on my way back. What do you want for dinner tonight?”
The original host was difficult to please. Sometimes, even after Gu Huo cooked a meal, she would pick and choose, refusing to eat, and end up spending dozens of yuan on greasy takeout.
Over time, Gu Huo developed the habit of consulting her before buying groceries.
The first time he asked after Qiao Sheng crossed over, she had clearly told him she was fine with anything. Yet, just a few days later, he had resumed the habit of checking with her before shopping.
She didn’t think much of it. “Anything is fine.”
She was a girl who loved to let her imagination run wild and had once dreamed of becoming an author, writing down all the ideas in her head.
But even with her vivid imagination, she would never have guessed the real reason behind Gu Huo’s call at that moment.
In their brief exchange, Gu Huo quickly deduced her location from the background behind her.
She was downstairs at a shopping mall in the bustling city center, next to a trendy milk tea shop where she had once made him queue under the scorching sun to buy her a drink.
Then, he saw Qiao Sheng turn her head and say something with a smile to someone off-camera beside her. All his doubts vanished in an instant—it seemed she really had made plans with a friend and gone out to have fun.
While it was rare for her to leave early and return late for several days in a row, it wasn’t entirely unheard of.
After hanging up, Qiao Sheng threw herself back into her flyer-distributing duties with full dedication. Meanwhile, Gu Huo, at the convenience store, stole a moment of quiet contemplation amid his busy schedule.
He realized that lately, he seemed to be paying too much attention to Qiao Sheng.
Unconsciously, he had begun orbiting her in a different way.
This shift seemed to have started around the time she dreamed of her grandmother.
He pondered in confusion for a while, finally concluding that her changes were too drastic, making her feel unfamiliar to him. His attention toward her was simply to quickly understand who she had become, so they could coexist more peacefully.
Yes, that was it.
In the afternoon, Gu Huo returned home carrying the Spring Festival benefits prepared by the store for its employees. The interior was clean and tidy, spotless in every corner.
After entering, he instinctively glanced toward a certain room.
The door to that room was half-open as usual, allowing a direct view of the bed inside from the doorway.
What was different was that in the past, he would always see a lump under the messy covers, with the bed’s owner sprawled like a pile of mud beneath the blanket—either sleeping with her head buried or glued to her phone watching short dramas or playing games, the volume turned up loud enough to nearly lift the ceiling. She would even ask him to bring her water, and constantly sent him downstairs to buy snacks like sunflower seeds, spicy strips, or instant noodles.
Her room, with its perpetually closed windows, was like a miniature landfill. No matter how clean he kept the rest of the house, the stagnant, murky air from her room would continuously seep out, polluting the entire space.
At this moment, there was no lump on the bed. The quilt was neatly folded, the sheets stretched taut without a single wrinkle. The curtains, noticeably brighter in color, were drawn to the side. Under the daylight streaming through the window, the floor seemed to gleam…
This place that sheltered them from wind and rain was finally clean, inside and out.
The entire space was so quiet that only his breathing remained audible. Gu Huo felt an emptiness in his heart.
This was truly unusual. In the past, he dreaded Qiao Sheng going out because whenever she did, his already meager wallet would inevitably suffer. If she couldn’t buy what she wanted, she would berate him for being useless. Yet, when she was gone, it gave him a brief respite, both physically and mentally.
Now, with Qiao Sheng absent and no mountain of chores waiting for him to clean, he felt lonely and desolate.
Though he couldn’t comprehend Qiao Sheng’s terrible habits or her complacent, aimless existence, he couldn’t deny that they had lived together for ten years. They weren’t family but were closer than family—the most important presence in each other’s lives.
Even though he and Qiao Sheng slept every night in this modest, fifty-square-meter rented apartment, it felt as if they had been separated for days, living worlds apart.
He had been busy these past few days. The convenience store usually operated on two half-day shifts, but with year-end staff shortages, the boss had asked him to work full days—from 9 a.m. to 9:30 p.m.—with double pay.
Gu Huo had no reason to refuse.
Hard work was the least of his concerns.
By the time he returned home at 10 p.m., she was already asleep.
And in the mornings, she always left in such a hurry.
Even with both of them busy, they shouldn’t have been unable to exchange a single word.
Every day, when he returned home under the stars, she would hear the noise and open her door, poking out her fluffy head. The moment her dark, deep eyes met his, they would curve slightly, brimming with a smile as she greeted him, “You’re back from work?”
Only after he responded would she say, “Get some rest early, I’m going to sleep now,” before retreating back into her room.
Yesterday, besides greeting him, she had left him peeled and sliced apples, claiming the apple was too big for her to finish alone. If Gu Huo didn’t know her so well, he might have foolishly assumed she had saved them especially for him.
However, when it came to understanding her, Gu Huo only understood the old Qiao Sheng. As for the current Qiao Sheng, he was still in a state of bewildered observation.
But back to the point.
At night, the two would at most exchange greetings before going their separate ways.
In the morning, they would both sit punctually at the same table for breakfast, but they strictly adhered to the rule of “no talking while eating or sleeping,” resulting in almost no conversation throughout the meal. After finishing, she would hurriedly leave, giving Gu Huo the illusion that they had been apart for days.