Chapter 2

She looked even worse today than yesterday.

Her wool coat was covered in snow, her shoes looked soaked through, and she was frozen like a leaf in the autumn wind, swaying on the verge of collapse.

She walked up to the stall, stretched out a hand red with cold, and tried to fish some coins out of her pocket.

But her hands were so frozen that her fingers wouldn't obey her at all.

A few coins slipped through her fingers and fell onto the snowy ground, scattered with icy shards.

She hurriedly crouched down and dug through the snow with those frozen hands, trying to pick the coins up.

Watching her kneeling in the snow, looking so wretched, something in my heart suddenly snapped.

I just couldn't stand to watch it anymore.

I threw down the dough in my hands, strode around from behind the stall, and walked up to her.

"Stop picking them up!"

I shouted, my voice drowning out the howling wind and snow.

The girl jumped, startled. She looked up, those blue eyes full of fear and helplessness, tears brimming at the edges.

She thought I was annoyed she was in the way, or afraid she'd dirty my stall.

She quickly pinched a coin out of the snow, staggered to her feet, and tried to hand it to me.

I didn't take her coin.

I turned and walked straight to the steamer, then lifted off the big bamboo lid on top.

A rich meaty aroma, along with white steam, instantly spread through the freezing, snowy air.

I grabbed the biggest brown paper bag and quickly used the tongs to pull six of the largest, most generously filled pork-and-scallion buns out of the steamer.

Each of these buns was as big as a grown man's fist, the dough plump and white, the meat juices soaked right through it.

I twisted the bag shut, turned, walked up to the girl, and pressed the heavy, piping-hot bag of meat buns into her arms.

The girl froze. Holding the bag of buns giving off that tempting smell, she looked completely dumbstruck.

She looked at me, then down at the buns in her arms, and shook her head again and again.

"No... it's not enough... I only have enough for plain steamed buns..."

She refused in broken Chinese, trying to hand the buns back to me.

"Take them!"

I pushed her hand back and gave her a simple, honest smile.

"Miss, these six meat buns are yours. Eat them while they're hot. No charge today."

I gestured with my hand, pointing up at the heavy snow.

"This awful weather is too cold. You've got to eat something with meat in it, get some grease in your belly, or you can't stand the cold."

The girl seemed to understand what I meant.

Her lips trembled violently, and large tears suddenly welled up in those sapphire eyes.

She didn't refuse again. Instead she hugged the bag of steaming buns tightly to her chest, as if it were the only warmth in this frozen, snowy world.

"Thank you... thank you, good man."

She said it in clear Chinese, then bowed deeply to me.

Watching her turn and leave, I felt strangely at peace.

I'm a down-on-his-luck man on the run from his debts; I'm not actually well off.

Six big meat buns are no small cost for a little business like mine.

But in this place so cold it drives you to despair, if a few buns could give a foreign girl I'd never met a little warmth to keep going, I figured it was worth it.

Ronald, who sold grilled cold noodles at the next stall, looked at me and shook his head helplessly.

"Louis, oh Louis, you're just too soft-hearted. You're still buried in debt yourself, and here you are playing the great philanthropist."

I smiled, said nothing, and turned back to kneading dough.

I thought this was just a trivial little episode in my life as a street vendor.

Hand out six buns, and that would be the end of it.

But I never imagined that it was exactly these six buns that planted the seeds of an incredible bond.