Chapter 2

At the neighboring village office.

Grid Worker Xie Xiaoqing saw Xie Anqing come in and hurried over. “Secretary, all four piglets died in a single day. Doesn’t that seem suspicious?”

“Have you gone to look?”

“I have. No external injuries, no foam around their mouths, and their complexions looked normal…”

“Pigs don’t have complexions,” Xie Beibei put in.

“Oh.” Xie Xiaoqing continued, “I couldn’t tell what happened.”

“Then we’ll wait for the insurance adjuster. I already called. They’ll be here in half an hour. Meet them and take them to inspect the site.”

“What about compensation? I won’t be able to negotiate much.”

“Call me when it gets to that point. I’ll handle it.”

“Okay!”

Xie Xiaoqing grabbed her sun hat and hurried out.

“Guoqing’s tied up outside,” Xie Anqing said. “Take the dog back to the village while you’re at it.”

“Okay.”

After Xie Xiaoqing left, only Xie Anqing and Xie Beibei remained in the office.

Beibei stared at Xie Anqing in disbelief. “Auntie, what on earth happened during those three hours you were inspecting the reservoir?”

Her clothes were damp in patches, her pant legs caked with mud.

There was mud on her face, too!

And her tie was gone!

“Auntie, you—”

“Hello.”

Beibei’s voice was cut off. She instinctively looked toward the entrance.

And nearly fell over.

A tall woman stood there, smiling. Her clothes were damp and wrinkled, just like her aunt’s.

But most importantly!

Her aunt’s missing tie was now wrapped around the woman’s leg!

Scandalous!

Way too scandalous!

There was definitely something going on!

Beibei tamped down the gossip bubbling up inside her and put on a professional face. “Hello. This is the Dongxie Village Party-Masses Service Center. How can we help you?”

“I’m looking for your secretary.”

“Our secretary?” Beibei’s eyes widened. She glanced at Xie Anqing, then back at Chen Li, struck by how absurd it sounded. “You’ve got our secretary’s tie, but you don’t even know who she is?”

Chen Li’s gaze shifted. The corner of her mouth, already slightly curved, lifted a little more as she looked at Xie Anqing, who had gone still for a moment. “Xie Anqing?”

Xie Anqing said nothing. She already knew the woman’s name: Chen Li, the photographer she’d arranged to meet on Weibo—the person she’d been waiting a week to see at the level crossing.

Dongxie Village was an agricultural village. Its income depended entirely on growing grain, fruit, vegetables, and other cash crops. Development had been slow, and the roads still weren’t fully paved. The village was close to the mountains, too, so monsoons and the terrain brought frequent droughts, floods, hailstorms, and days of unrelenting rain.

Crops were most vulnerable just as they ripened.

Sometimes, if the harvest survived the weather, the village still had to face a flood season that lasted as long as three months.

With heavy rain and poor roads, outside buyers wouldn’t come, no matter how cheaply the villagers sold their produce.

If they couldn’t sell it, a year’s hard work would go to waste.

After trying and failing to solve the problem in a dozen different ways, Xie Anqing had found Chen Li online. Chen was one of the most sought-after photographers in recent years. Xie Anqing hoped Chen’s visual influence could draw attention to the local scenery, then help them build an account for livestreaming and promoting local produce.

If they could create a sales channel of their own, Xie Anqing would carry the villagers’ produce out through the muddy roads herself, one basket at a time.

Chen Li hadn’t been her first choice. She’d also contacted actors, celebrities, fashion influencers, bloggers, and other well-known people with dedicated followings like Chen’s.

Only a handful had replied, and they’d taken so long to do so that Xie Anqing had wondered if they thought she was a scammer.

Chen Li was the only one who replied right away—and agreed.

She’d said she’d come soon, but hadn’t given a date. So Xie Anqing had gone to the level crossing every day to see if anyone new showed up.

Their village was remote and the roads were awful. Anyone who could make it there dressed fashionably was probably the person she was waiting for.

As for why she hadn’t recognized Chen Li today, Xie Anqing had an explanation: Chen Li was nothing like she’d imagined.

Chen Li had grown up privileged and was exceptionally talented. At sixteen, she’d photographed a rare red aurora in Antarctica, with an emperor penguin gazing up beneath it.

The photograph had made Chen Li an overnight sensation. After that, awards from home and abroad had come one after another. But she never attended public events or accepted awards in person, and she kept her whereabouts secret. There wasn’t a single personal photo of her online.

There were plenty of rumors about her love life.

When Xie Anqing had researched Chen Li, she’d made a rough estimate: if Chen’s on-again, off-again relationships with her thirteen exes were put into a PowerPoint, the file would be at least a hundred megabytes.

All her exes were striking, fashionable women.

In other words, Chen Li was a lesbian.

Still, Xie Anqing hadn’t thought about it before. Chen Li’s Weibo profile and Baidu Baike page both listed her as male, and her love life sounded like that of a male player. Xie Anqing had simply assumed Chen Li was a man.

To separate Chen Li’s character from her work, Xie Anqing had read and memorized nearly everything she’d published since her debut. And to avoid getting involved with this so-called player during their collaboration, she’d spent every day around the village dressed like an old-school cadre.

She’d thought she’d covered every angle. Now, though…

Maybe it hadn’t been a waste of effort.

Someone whose tastes ran to sexy, fashionable women wasn’t going to fall for a stiff, boring cadre out of nowhere.

Xie Anqing walked up to Chen Li and held out her hand. “I’m Xie Anqing, the party secretary of Dongxie Village.”

Chen Li shook her hand. “Chen Li. Photographer.” Then she leaned against the service counter and tilted her head at Xie Anqing. “Secretary Xie, didn’t you say you’d meet me at the level crossing? I left you a message, but you didn’t reply. And then you let your dog bite me.”

Xie Anqing caught the most important part of that. She quickly opened Weibo and checked.

Chen Li had messaged her two hours ago.

She’d been inspecting the reservoir beneath the mountain then. There had been no signal.

“I’m sorry,” Xie Anqing said. “I’ve been busy today.”

“I can see that.”

As Chen Li spoke, she glanced toward the entrance. A young woman walked in, looking nervous. She glanced at Chen Li, then went over to Xie Anqing. “Secretary Xie, I’ve finished cleaning up the house. The power company says you need to give them a letter of approval before they can install the meter.”

“All right.”

Xie Anqing took the woman’s paperwork and headed inside.

She caught sight of Chen Li out of the corner of her eye and stopped. “Miss Chen, the air conditioner in the village office is broken, so today isn’t a good time to discuss business. You’ve had a long journey, too. Please wait in your car for a while. I’ll finish what I’m doing as quickly as I can, then take you somewhere to rest.”

“Okay.”

Chen Li straightened lazily and headed out.

Her car was parked beneath a tree. Against the wall stood a bulletin board: water-safety posters on one side, a list of the current members of the Village Two Committees on the other.

Xie Anqing was listed first.

Xie Anqing

Female

Han Chinese

May 23, 1995

Member of the Communist Party of China

First Secretary of Dongxie Village

The sun had heated Chen Li’s skirt until it gave off waves of warmth. She lifted the hem idly and drawled, “Only twenty-six.”

Three years, one month, and seven days younger than her.

The approval letter for the electric meter was simple. Xie Anqing copied the paperwork, filled out a standard form, and finished in less than five minutes.

Xie Beibei sat across from her, watching the whole time.

Xie Anqing noticed but pretended not to. As soon as the printer finished, she shut down the computer and got up to leave.

Beibei wasn’t about to let her curiosity go unsatisfied. She kept staring, hoping to wear her aunt down.

And her aunt actually stopped!

“Did you find out who she is?” Xie Anqing asked.

“Of course!” Beibei said, gazing with shining eyes at a photo of Chen Li receiving one of her recent awards. “She’s incredible! So young, and she’s won so many awards. Her annual income’s even on some kind of rich list! I’m announcing that I’m in love with someone new as of today. Her!”

Beibei reached out and nearly poked the monitor on Xie Anqing’s desk.

Xie Anqing steadied the screen with one hand.

Beibei shook her head and sighed. “Auntie, you’re straight. You have no idea how attractive she is to a lesbian.”

“I don’t want to know.” Xie Anqing pulled the manga from beneath Beibei’s Party-building materials and pointed to the open page. “But I should remind you that she isn’t one of us. You could rack your brains all you want, and she still wouldn’t turn into one of those devoted heroines in your comics—crying for you, laughing for you, giving up everything for you. If you don’t want to get dumped out of nowhere like last time, you’d better let go of this idea now.”

Beibei’s old heartbreak had come up out of nowhere. Her eyes reddened at once. “Don’t make things up! I know my place. I’m only admiring her! Admiring her! Out of everyone in the village office—no, in all of Dongxie Village—you’re the only one pretty enough to be her type. You’re the one who should be careful!”

Beibei had a loud voice. With her temper already flaring, she’d shouted herself red-eyed.

Xie Anqing put the manga back and pressed a tissue over Beibei’s eyes. Her voice was cool but certain. “Don’t worry. She wouldn’t like someone like me.”

At the time, Xie Anqing thought she’d reached that conclusion by careful reasoning. Later, when Chen Li’s life was hanging by a thread, the thing she clung to wasn’t a rope. It was a plain, handmade necklace that Xie Anqing had tossed aside and Chen Li had secretly picked up again.