Chapter 107

Spring Festival, 2023. A month after the Nobel ceremony, the fuss about Li Lan still hadn't died down. People kept posting things online about her school days, claiming to have been at school with her, some of it true and some of it invented, and the internet was happy to listen to all of it. Anything with her name on it stayed hot. Even the supermarket Chen Ying and Li Quan ran in the town drew people coming to film it, and the crowds only thinned just before the festival, which Chen Ying and Li Quan thought was rather a shame. Takings in those few days had doubled.

Li Cheng and Li Jingyu got plenty of invitations of their own, and every large outlet and television station was desperate for an interview. Then, apart from the state broadcaster's interview, the first place Li Lan turned up was Li Cheng's livestream, which nobody had seen coming.

On the fifteenth of the first lunar month, 2023, Li Cheng posted a trailer on Weibo for her birthday livestream two days later, and it went straight up the trending list. Not because she was famous enough that a post of hers trended by itself. Because the trailer said Li Lan would be on camera.

Every other internet celebrity went sour, and so did every television station. The only person smiling was the head of the streaming platform, who immediately announced that they would take no cut of the gifts sent during that stream, at which Li Cheng announced that she'd be donating them.

At seven on the evening of the seventeenth, the stream opened on time, in the front room of the old house. Li Cheng had known a lot of people would come, and it still shocked her when it started. A million of them poured in within ten minutes, and the gifts filled the screen and didn't stop.

She talked to her own followers for forty minutes, and with twenty minutes left she pulled Li Lan over. The gifts, which had finally slowed, started again the moment Li Lan appeared, and this time it was worse than the opening.

Thank you, Professor Li, for saving my life! That was from a patient cured by one of her drugs.

Saint Li, bless my postgraduate exam! Somebody had dug up a post about her from a forum in her high school days, and students had settled on that one as a group.

Professor Li, do you need another brother or sister? No? A brother-in-law, then? That was somebody enjoying themselves.

I've already written to a supervisor. I'm applying to your lab for a doctorate this year, wish me luck! That was somebody who wanted in.

The point being that the second Li Lan appeared, every comment in the place swung off course. She narrowed her eyes at them for a while, and the comments were flying past too fast to read anything, so she gave up.

Li Cheng didn't mind. She put questions and Li Lan answered them, working through a lot of what people were curious about. The serious ones were her next research direction and what the new drug would cost. The unserious ones were gossip. A perfectly good birthday livestream turned into half an interview.

Ten minutes in, with the end of the stream coming up, Li Lan checked the time, produced a bag and handed it over. "Birthday present."

Li Cheng's face lit up. "I've been waiting for this." She took the bag and explained to the stream, "I don't know what she's got me either. I made her hand it over now so I could open it with all of you."

She got the wrapping off. "Ooh, nice packaging." That raised her hopes further. Inside the box was a beautiful little bottle. She opened it, looked up at her sister and frowned. "Is this… medicine?"

Li Lan took the bottle and tipped two pills into her palm. "Strictly speaking it's a supplement."

"You keep saying you want to lose weight. These are the little slimming pills I rolled for you. With some exercise, those few extra jin should come off fast enough."

Li Cheng didn't even get as far as objecting to being called fat. Her eyes went wide. "Really? You made them yourself?"

Li Lan nodded. "Two before you exercise. They work well."

Li Cheng took the bottle back out of her hand, cradling it, and sniffed it twice. "They smell nice, too."

She was about to hold the pills up to the camera, and only when she leaned in did she see that at some point the comments had all turned into the same three words. Sell them please.

In fact the stream had gone up in flames the moment Li Lan said she'd rolled them for her sister, and within seconds it was nothing but people begging for the same pills. Both of them had been looking at the bottle instead of the screen. When Li Cheng finally turned to the phone, everyone waiting let out a breath.

The comments were flying. Li Cheng watched for a moment and turned to her sister. "Li Lan, everyone's asking whether these are for sale."

Li Lan shook her head. "No. I rolled them myself. You can't get them anywhere."

That only made it worse. Nobody knew whether they worked, but Li Lan had made them with her own hands. Could they possibly be ordinary pills?

Slimming drugs and slimming supplements usually cause a lot of argument, and most people are fairly level-headed about them. But Li Lan had made these, so even if it was an idiot tax, everyone would pay it gladly. And when you counted up the things she'd developed, could it really be an idiot tax? People were already cheering online that salvation had arrived for the overweight.

Ladies, get your wallets out. Professor Li Lan has a new product. Slimming pills. For losing weight!!!

Somebody in one of the loyal Cerulean user groups posted a screen recording of Li Lan handing over the pills, with a great many exclamation marks.

Aaaah, I wasn't watching. Is it real?

It's real. The stream's gone mad, everyone's begging her to sell them. No idea whether Professor Li will agree.

I'm going to the stream. She has to see us asking.

So the viewer count climbed all over again, and every one of them wanted slimming pills. The platform's head of engineering wiped a cold sweat off his forehead. They'd prepared as thoroughly as they knew how for this stream, and the first part had gone as forecast and stayed manageable. The surge after those pills came out was not in anybody's forecast. He had his people bring the backup servers up at once, because the stream could not be allowed to drop.

The servers just about held through the spike. There were over fifty million people watching by then, and he prayed there wouldn't be another wave, because another one really would finish them.

Seeing the whole stream begging for pills, Li Lan hadn't expected this much enthusiasm either. She'd assumed most people were cautious about that kind of drug.

She thought about it and put it gently. "The pills are mixed for Chengcheng's constitution. They won't necessarily suit everyone."

The stream said at once: Doesn't matter. You just make them. Buying them is our problem.

Li Cheng read some of that out, and Li Lan paused. "There's no problem with Chengcheng taking them herself. If they were going to be sold, I'd have to talk it over with the team at Cerulean."

Before the stream ended, Li Cheng said she'd make a whole video testing the pills, and would chase up the production question for everyone while she was at it. So, watched with envy and resentment, she ended her stream very pleased with herself and her bottle of pills.

Once it was over, the present went up the trending list, as anyone could have predicted. Overnight the little slimming pills became one of the most anticipated products in the country, and Cerulean's official account filled with people demanding a launch date. Li Cheng, as the recipient, became an object of general envy, and her followers were nagging her to try them the moment she was off air.

---

Meanwhile, Shang Shang, now head of JJ's editorial department, saw the slimming pill story on her first day back after the festival. Thinking of the Nobel news the year before, she couldn't help saying to a colleague, "Professor Li Lan's only thirty-one this year, isn't she? The youngest Nobel winner ever. How is anyone that impressive?"

The colleague nodded along. "Honestly. I'd settle for half her brains."

While they were talking, Shang Shang's face went odd. Her colleague noticed. "What's the matter?"

Shang Shang said, strangely, "Somebody wants to buy the screen rights to In Dreams and Out of Them."

That made no sense. What was odd about selling screen rights? These were the years of the big adaptations and they'd sold plenty of them. It wasn't like Shang Shang to make a fuss about it.

Except that the title did ring a bell. Before the colleague could place it, Shang Shang went on. "That's Yijiu's first novel. I never thought the rights to that would sell."

Then she remembered. Yijiu was one of JJ's ancient gods, a writer made by a single book, who had only ever written three, and whose third had finished in 2012, so there'd been nothing new for over ten years. Web fiction turns over fast, and a good many people wouldn't have heard of her at all any more.

That happens. Usually it means the author has left the business. Shang Shang pulled Yijiu's details out of the system for the contract, and after all these years she'd forgotten the author's real name, so she stopped short at the identity verification. What a coincidence. The same name as the Li Lan who'd just won the Nobel, and the same age.

Then she looked at the scan of the identity card and was less sure it was a coincidence. The scan on JJ had been uploaded when Li Lan was seventeen, from a print shop, because phones weren't up to much then. It was old, but it was clear enough.

Shang Shang got out her phone and typed Li Lan's name into a search box, and looked at the photo on the phone, and then at the identity card on her screen, and wondered whether she was dreaming.

She looked again, carefully. The photo on the computer wasn't as sharp as the one on her phone, but it was plainly the same person. She took a deep breath and called her colleague over. "Xiao Jin. Tell me whether these two are the same person."

Wang Jinjin took the phone. "That's Professor Li Lan." She followed Shang Shang's finger to the identity card on the screen. "Hang on. Sister Shangshang, why do you have Professor Li Lan's identity card?"

Shang Shang's voice was thin. "So that really is Professor Li Lan?"

Wang Jinjin nodded. "It is. I've watched that interview she gave in high school a dozen times. I wouldn't get it wrong."

Shang Shang had been an editor for over ten years and had handled more star authors than she could count, and thought of herself as hard to surprise, and still heard herself say, "Yijiu is Li Lan?"

Wang Jinjin blinked, worked out what she was looking at, turned back to the screen and saw that it was the site's contract record. She drew a breath. "Sister Shangshang. Are you saying Yijiu is Professor Li Lan?"

It came out loud enough to snap Shang Shang out of it. She nodded slowly. "It looks that way."

Wang Jinjin got excited and leaned over the screen, and the more she read the surer she was. "That's right. The age matches, the birthday matches. They said on that programme that Professor Li's birthday is Qixi, and look, the identity card says 07/07. One's the lunar date and one isn't, but registration mistakes happen all the time. Yijiu is Li Lan. It can't be anything else."

"I'd never have guessed she had another life."

Wang Jinjin marvelled. Shang Shang just felt as though the world had tipped. Who could have imagined that an author she'd once handled would turn into a Nobel laureate?

"Sister Shangshang, you must still have Yijiu's contact details. Get in touch, she might still be on there. You've got to reach her about the rights anyway." Wang Jinjin came back to herself, delighted.

"I've got a QQ, but after all these years I don't know whether she still uses it." Shang Shang was nervous. With any ordinary author it wouldn't matter, and knowing who this one was made her stiff and formal.

Then she calmed down enough to look at Wang Jinjin oddly. "Hold on. Why are you this excited?"

Wang Jinjin was unembarrassed. "I'm a fan of hers."

Shang Shang gave up, opened QQ, found the contact saved under Yijiu and sent something tentative. Yijiu? This is Shangshang, your editor at JJ. The screen rights to In Dreams and Out of Them have sold. Could you get in touch when you have time?

The two of them stared at the screen together. Nothing came back for several minutes, and Wang Jinjin drooped. "She's probably busy."

Shang Shang was steadier about it. "She's probably not on QQ at all any more. She stopped writing ten years ago."

She'd given up hope by then, and a reply arrived before the end of the day.

Sorry, I've been busy until now. The site can handle the rights. Contact me directly if there's anything you need from me, and ring if it's urgent.

Below it was a mobile number.

Shang Shang replied at once, and was lucky enough to find her online. They talked the rights through, and only at the end did Shang Shang work up to asking about Yijiu.

There was a short pause, and then a line came back. Yes. I had no income at that age and it was the only way I could think of. With a smiley after it.

Shang Shang hadn't expected her to be this easy to talk to. She was nothing like the person in the interviews.

Shang Shang got carried away. Professor Li, I'm a fan!

Li Lan read that and didn't know whether to laugh. What's there to be a fan of? I'm a researcher.

Contrary to Shang Shang's assumption, Li Lan was on QQ often, because of her teaching. What she hadn't expected was that after all this time a company would want the rights to one of her novels. She had no energy to deal with any of it, so she let the site handle everything. Screen rights money wasn't worth much to her now.

Once the conversation ended Shang Shang told Wang Jinjin she'd reached her, and spent the whole of the next day with Wang Jinjin at her elbow fishing for news.

The rights deal went smoothly, and because it was Li Lan's novel Shang Shang asked about the production plans once it was done. The company was happy to say. In Dreams and Out of Them is a light romance, and they were adapting it as a film, on a modest budget, with Li Jingyu as the male lead and a rising young actress opposite him.

Shang Shang's first thought was that the industry really is small. There was hardly anyone left who didn't know how Li Jingyu and Li Lan were related. And what's the phrase? Keep the water in your own field. The sister writes it and the brother acts in it, and it never leaves the family.

Li Lan was startled when she heard it from Shang Shang. She asked Li Jingyu, and found that the agency really was about to put him in a film as the lead, and that almost nobody knew yet. He couldn't work out where she'd got it from, and settled on somebody near him passing information along.

When the adaptation was announced, a few diehard readers were pleased and everybody else was baffled, since hardly anyone remembered a novel from ten years ago.

Inside JJ's own forums, though, the thread ran long.

Reply 1: Yijiu was one of JJ's first big names, wasn't she? In Dreams and Out of Them must be more than ten years old. They've actually sold the rights?

Reply 2: In Dreams and Out of Them is my favourite novel. The premise still holds up, I reread it last month. Wonder who's playing them.

Reply 3: Who's Yijiu?

Reply 4: Now I feel old. There was nobody on JJ who didn't know her books back then, and now hardly anyone remembers.

Reply 5: Aaah, I know her, though I came in through The Last Days. Shame she never wrote anything after that one finished. She must have stopped for good.

Reply 6: My youth is back. I didn't think this many people still remembered Yijiu.

Reply 7, to Reply 2: Yijiu was one of JJ's first big names, the top author on the site at the time, miles clear of second place on points. Shame she only wrote three books before she seems to have stopped and left.

Reply 8: I came across In Dreams and Out of Them a couple of days ago and it's genuinely good. Ten-odd years on and it still reads well, so I went through all three of her books in one go. She writes that well, why did she leave?

Reply 9: My youth is back. Yijiu is where I started reading web fiction, and I've been at it ten years now. Shame she isn't around any more.

…

Reply 320: News just in. Li Jingyu as the male lead, Zhao Xiaotong as the female lead.

Reply 321: Just finished the novel. They're both decent fits, and Li Jingyu's acting isn't bad.

Reply 322: Films aren't dramas, though. No idea whether it'll work on the big screen.

Reply 323: Speaking as a Little Fish fan, I'm thrilled he's in a film, but I do worry about how he'll look on a cinema screen.

None of the noise reached Li Lan or Li Jingyu. Just after Spring Festival he joined the production and started work, and she took on the slimming pills as a consultant on the development side.

It was a light comedy, so the producers avoided the National Day slot and went for Qixi in the summer holidays. At least students would be off, and with Li Jingyu's following they might make the money back.

The premiere fell on Li Lan's birthday. Li Jingyu declared shamelessly that his film debut was her present, and after dinner he walked the whole family into the cinema.

Being a premiere, and his first film, the audience was mostly students, and it was obvious they were there for him.

Once it started, Li Lan found to her surprise that he was rather good. He played the lead's sly side to the hilt, his scenes with the actress were fun, and they'd worked in some nice touches. The cinema laughed the whole way through. A light comedy comfortably above the pass mark.

Sure enough, most of the audience came out of the first day happy, and the reviewers liked it too, calling it one of the few good romances in years. Word spread, takings climbed over the following weeks, and it turned into the surprise of the summer season. Li Jingyu had proved his acting to the public again, and somebody said, half joking, He's living up to the title of Li Lan's brother.

Because since the Nobel, the number of people wanting to be Li Lan's little brother or sister was considerably larger than the number of Li Jingyu's fans. To most casual observers his own name carried nowhere near the weight of Li Lan's brother.

As the film neared the end of its run, a rumour came from somewhere that the novel behind it had been written by Li Lan, that she'd been about seventeen when she wrote it, and that the money from her novels was the first capital she'd had, the money she'd founded Cerulean with, after which she'd stopped writing.

Some people didn't believe it. Others saw the whole thing at once. People had wondered for years where the money to start Cerulean had come from, because by the neighbours' accounts her family hadn't been destitute but hadn't been well off either, and there was no way they could have found the capital for her. So she'd saved it writing novels.

Li Lan never addressed it, and sometimes no answer is an answer of sorts, and most people took it as settled that Yijiu was Li Lan.

The rumour also pushed the takings up again at the end of the run, when there was hardly anything left in them, and the film held on another fortnight and made a good deal more money.

Shang Shang went to Li Lan the moment it started spreading, and explained that contract files at the company weren't restricted, that most editors could see them, and that somebody internal had probably worked it out and let it slip.

Li Lan didn't mind. She wasn't writing any more, and an old name coming off made very little difference.

Relieved that she wasn't angry, Shang Shang turned round and proposed to the company that editors should only be able to see contracts for their own authors, so nothing else leaked. The company knew exactly what she meant. Li Lan didn't mind, but people online were already asking questions about the site's handling of personal data, so they agreed and looked sensible doing it.

---

Since the Nobel there had been no shortage of threads about her on Zhihu, one of which ran very long indeed. What do you make of a certain traffic idol's relative winning this year's Nobel Prize in medicine?

There were countless answers under it. The top one read:

Updating this. This was a post from 2022, and I never expected this many likes. Writing from 2030, eight years on, and she's just won a second Nobel. I am flat on the floor in admiration.

I came to Little Fish through Trainee Producer and jumped fandoms from there, and now I'm a diehard fan of Saint Li, and having thought about it, I've concluded that he is a kid who got famous through connections!

Why?

Back then I was so pleased that In Dreams and Out of Them doing well meant Little Fish's acting was finally being taken seriously, and then it came out that the novel was written by Saint Li. She's never confirmed it outright, but we all know.

Then the global Cerulean endorsement. A connection hire in broad daylight.

Honestly, all I hate now is that I'm worse at picking my parents than Little Fish. Why wasn't I born Saint Li's brother or sister!

Anybody can tell who's being asked about, and there's nothing to say beyond that she's a national treasure and the prize is deserved. Also Little Fish isn't a traffic idol any more, he can act.

Those slimming pills alone would be worth a prize! She's first in my heart, no question. I've been stubbornly overweight all my life and never once lost the weight, and with exercise I'm fifty jin down. The only problem is they're always out of stock. My wallet is ready and there's nothing to buy. Saint Li, when's the restock?

Funniest news story of 2024: a certain well-known traffic idol spent the night at a woman's flat and didn't come out until morning.

Little Fish replied on Weibo: Thanks, that's my sister. My actual sister.

Turned out the flat was Saint Li's.

Grave-digging from 2037. Saint Li's third Nobel nomination plus the Medal of the Republic. I've run out of things to say. National treasure, no argument.

This thread has gradually gone off the rails.