The Breath Merchant

Qinghe Wet Market, outskirts of Hangzhou, 4:07 a.m. While Gu Muyao tossed her first bucket of ice onto the concrete at 4:07 a.m., the moon had yet to become a perfect coin hanging above Huangshan. The unfortunate-souls of the day—forty-seven grass carp, twelve silvery eels, and one proud turtle, which craned its neck as if looking toward tomorrow and having none of it—skated shards that looked like broken glass. Before the order arrived from her brain, Muyao's hands had busied themselves. A carp was tossed onto its back with the thumb through the gill plate, while the index finger hooked onto the lip and scraped once, twice, scores flying off like miniature mirrors. Each scale bore witness: his father's sunken eyes that morning when the hospital unplugged him and left for mother without a word about the funeral bills, red stamp on her own withdrawal letter from Zhejiang Medical University--"Insufficient Tuition." Scrape harder. Shed armor, she murmured as well. "You were early today, girl," croaked Old Lin from the stall next door, arranging crabs in some kind of military formation. "Fish don't wait," Muyao answered, her voice gravelly from last night's cold. "Neither would rent," Lin mumbled. An answer to Auntie Hong's breakfast cart racket, where the cleaver fell wet against fish, pyrotechnics of oil, and then the droning of trading. Every piece of sound was coin; each coin ticked off toward the 80,000-yuan abyss printed on the credit-card statements that she slid under her mattress. Fluorescent tubes hiccuped into wakefulness at 4:12 a.m., anointing the alley with bruised light. Muyao's reflection appeared in the stainless-steel basin: hoodie swallowed by an apron three sizes too big, hair coiled under a knit cap because she had sold her real one to a classmate for fifteen yuan. She looked a lot like a child playing butcher, except this was real blood, and the numbers weren't anything but—sell 200 jin of fish today → clear 400 yuan profit → 200 days left to freedom. She could manage 200 mornings of numb fingers. A dream that came knocking at the time she shut her eyes: white coat, stethoscope, a pulse in a patient moving underneath her thumb. Pulling at it became less weighty each time. A sudden wind howled through the market, blasting diesel and river rot. Muyao shivered. The visitors would not show until about an hour later while the dawn VIP was present here: Chen Dawei, debt collector, looking as fashionable as ever in a faux-leather jacket that made sounds like a squeaky toy as he walked. He put one boot on her overturned crate as if claiming a new continent. "Morning, Dr. Gu," he sneered, with much exaggeration now put into the title that she deserved no longer. "Interest day, huh? Eight thousand. Cash only. I take fish if you're short, but I subtract smell-tax." His smile appeared at the display of gold canine. Behind him stood two men who resemble wardrobes, arms crossed, tattoos peeking from under their sleeves like bruises. Muyao resumed scaling. "Friday," he said, "and I will have it." "Friday was last week." He kicked the bucket, ice water splashing onto her calves. "Clock's ticking, girl. Maybe I should talk to your mother again." That same phrase detonated memories underneath Muyao's mind: Mama's wrist fractured against the doorframe, hospital asking for a deposit she couldn't afford. Muya tightened her grip over the scraper. A careless taint of foot could be used to saw off his neck by dull edging of her foot. Instead, she puffed mist into the chilled air and said, "You'll get your money." Chen Dawei spat as though a comet of red betel juice landed on her chopping block. "You pretty much like you could faster earn it on your back," he suggested. And that was when the turtle peed in a thin stream that missed Dawei's shoe by inches. Muyao almost smiled. Almost. The caravan of debts moved on. Her knees were banter enough to sit on the crate. The fish gaped at her with mouths forming perfect O's of pity. They heard her saying, "Not break. Not break." But basin water already aux crimson; she scrapped her own without noticing. Blood dripped onto the fish's silver cheek like war paint. It was wrapped in paper from a cigarette carton, washed out and laid with some ice. There are no band-aids-no time, no tears; tears are a luxury item taxed at 100 percent. The very first reliable customer had shown up at 4:46 a.m. and, eighty-three years of her age, Grandma Wu bought just one little crucian every day for her poor husband's ghost demanded fish soup or else since, as her doctor had said, it would reduce cholesterol levels. Muyao chose the most lively one, wrapped it in newspaper printed with ginger sprigs she could not afford inside. "Pay tomorrow," she said. Grandma Wu pinched her cheek. Buy some for yourself. You are too lean. Eat an eye of a fish. Good for memory." If only memories could eat and forget. The corridor now had a cloggy atmosphere, though by 5:30, like a clogged artery: bicycles, scooters, and a fidgety stray Labrador sniffing around for entrails. Muyao's pile dwindled smaller with every sale, each a mere tiny exhalation. She allowed herself a single sip of hot water from a thermos reading Property of Zhejiang Med-last relic of her past life. The steam encrusted her gaze and for a moment she was back in anatomy class, bending over a cadaver whose lungs looked like pink clouds. She was the best; everybody predicted she would go for respiratory surgery. Then Papa's cancer, Mama's loans, the blunt letter from the university. The cadaver's name tag read LU JINGXING; she had forgotten that coincidence until this very moment. She blinked, and the memory vaporized, yielding to Chen Dawei's gold tooth. At 5:47, an unnatural hush fell across the market. The Labrador even paused for a moment with one paw lifted. Domiciled there and purring with engines like large cats in slumber was a convoy made of two black Range Rovers and one Rolls-Royce Cullinan. Out of a charcoal-black suit emerged a man with a face like that carved out of winter. Bodyguards wearing identical earphones made an encirclement of hands clasped at their belt buckles where guns lay inside. In seconds, the fresh squid vendors turned into listless pipe gazers. Muyao's first instinct: go for the kill. Were they tax officers? Food safety inspectors? Then she stared at the man's lapel pin that read-Aurora Group, the multinational that owned half of Hangzhou's skyline. Indeed, that man would have been about thirty years old. He would have been younger than one would guess from his pin. Much more might come; illness had begun to chisel sharply the lineaments of his countenance: cheekbones too sharp, lips too bluish, eyes holding the metallic calm of one who has read his own autopsy report. He walked straight toward her stall. Muyao became acutely conscious of the bouquet of blood on her apron, the odor of brine in her hair, the hole now leaking fresh air from her left boot with each shift of weight. Bowing or curtsying or saluting was all off for fishmongers. So she just wiped her hands on her thighs and said, "Sir, what is your need?" Her voice cracked like old ice. The man studied the stall. His gaze fixed on the turtle, which had withdrawn all its limbs and pretended to be a stone. "I need," he said, each word measured as if breathing cost extra, "something that can outlive me." Strange sound. Muyao pointed out the turtle. "Thirty years easy. Feed lettuce not cigarettes." A joke. He didn't laugh. Instead, he raised a finger and bodyguards sprang out from all corners, credit-card terminals materialized. "Wrap it," he commanded. Bending down, hands shivering not from the cold but from being so near to much power, she tied up the plastic bag; and that was when she noticed his wrist: a hospital tag peeking from the cuff-Pulmonary Unit, Aurora Hospital, DOB: 02.02,**********：Trial Drug Expired. Medical reflexes flickered to life. "Sir, do you have a minute?" The bodyguards stiffened. The man raised an eyebrow, invitation or warning. Muyao swallowed. "Your cyanosis is advanced. Are you on pirfenidone or just oxygen? ". Some beat of silence. Somewhere a fish flopped, ruining the tableau. The man's eyes narrowed, not in anger but in reassessment. "You studied medicine?" "Three years," she admitted. "Why did you stop?" "Also lungs need money to breathe." A flicker of something-recognition?-crossed his face. He reached into his jacket. What emerged was not a gun nor a warrant but a card so black that one thought it would absorb even the dawn. No numbers, no chip; just a name in blind-emboss relief: LU JINGXING. He placed the card atop the bleeding chopping board. The blood seeped into the edges, but the black drank it in and stayed immaculate. "This," he said, "buys anything in any store on earth. It also buys time. I don't have much time left. If you ever want to complete those three years, call the number on the back." There was no number on the back. Only a turtle form stamped in matte ink. He turned before she could refuse. Bodyguards descended upon him like black water over a stone. The convoy rolled off, leaving behind a faint scent of disinfectant in the air. The market breathed out. Vendors began to speculate-Lai Hu? Billionaire on a whim? Hidden camera show? Muyao stood frozen, the card between her fingers. Heavier than a fish, lighter than a textbook-and it buzzed, or so it seemed to her, with the vibration of his lungs. She slipped it into the pocket of her apron, where it beat inside, just below her thigh, like a second heartbeat. At 6:00 a.m. the loudspeaker crackled: "Attention, Qinghe Market will be demolished in thirty days for urban renewal. All tenants must vacate by month-end." A chorus of groans. Muyao's throat closed. Thirty days. Eighty thousand for Chen Dawei. Her mother's medicine. And now this impossible card. She glanced at the turtle in its plastic prison, suddenly getting the CEO's metaphor. They were both specimens in someone else's experiment, both running out of habitat. She unknotted the bag and carried the turtle to Huangshan canal where she put it on the bank. It hesitated to move, its shell gleaming like black glass. "Go on," she whispered. "Outlive us all." Only when she retreated did it trudge off into the murky water and vanish. She felt lighter and infinitely heavier. Dawn bled into day. Muyao went back to her stall, scrubbed the board, and hosed down the concrete. She worked feverishly, so much so that when Chen Dawei passed for the second time, she did not notice him. He did notice her though; she had no fear in her eyes. Tomorrow, he'd come back, sharper than before. She knew. She also knew that the card in her pocket could buy her a thousand knives or one scalpel. By 8:00 a.m. her last fish sold. Muyao counted her earnings: 412 yuan and 30 fen, less the turtle she'd written off as "marketing loss." Just enough for today's interest, not enough for tomorrow's rent. She locked up her stall, pocketed the black card, and walked toward the bus stop, where the latest billboard had sprung up overnight—AURORA GROUP: BUILDING THE FUTURE ONE BREATH AT A TIME. Beneath the caption was a face: Lu Jingxing, winter for eyes, marble for lips. Muyao felt the card through the fabric. For the first time in two years, she felt something dangerously close to hope-or maybe it was the phantom pain of a dream trying to reattach itself. Either way, the next move was hers. She took the bus, dropped in four coins, and chose a seat at the back where no one would see her thumb tracing the invisible number on what may be her salvation, seduction, or both. As the bus coughed away, the Huangshan canal rippled once, as though something ancient had surfaced for one breath and gone under again.