Chapter 13

By the time Li Lan got back to the flat, the adults had most of it packed up. The exam was over and the lease was nearly up, and everything had to come out.

They'd be back at the school in a week for the results, though, so it wasn't finished — just the everyday things boxed, with the bigger items left for the next trip, when they'd bring the car.

"Oh — Xinxin, are you off already?" Coming back, Li Lan found Zhao Xinxin's family downstairs on their way to the bus stop, with her own parents seeing them off.

She'd known they weren't going back to Beiguan; it had been agreed early on that they'd set off as soon as the exam finished. She just hadn't expected it to be quite this quick.

"That's right. We've got a change to make, so it'll be dark by the time we're home," said Zhao Xinxin, her bag on her back.

While the girls talked, Chen Ying and Li Quan said their goodbyes to Zhao Xinxin's parents. Goodbyes of a sort — they'd see each other in a week, and with a bus to catch it came to a few words and then off.

Li Cheng got back from her exam not long after they'd gone, and once everyone was accounted for the family locked up without ceremony and went to catch their own bus.

---

The fourth day after the exam.

"Ha!"

Li Jingyu, spotting Li Lan writing at her desk, crept up behind her and shouted it.

She didn't even look up. "I heard the door. Who do you think you're frightening?"

"Tsk. No fun. What are you writing anyway? The exams are over." He sidled up beside her, insufferable.

"Not for children." Since he showed no sign of leaving, Li Lan shut the notebook. "Have you done your homework? Wandering about in here."

"You're as bad as Mum now, always asking about my homework. I can't do it." Li Jingyu sat down on the stool beside her, thoroughly put out.

"Thought so. Here — I hear you've been to the internet café." She dropped her voice for the second half.

"No. No I haven't. Who told you that?" He denied it outright, though his eyes gave him away.

"Haven't you. Mum told me. She said you're allowed once a week from now on, as long as you don't go sneaking off without telling them." Li Lan nudged him with her shoulder.

Faced with his sister's eyebrow-waggling, Li Jingyu admitted it quietly. "Mm."

Then, remembering that internet cafés were not considered a good habit at present, he added quickly, "I haven't been for weeks, though."

Li Lan didn't much care whether he had. Going by how it turned out last time, his marks were bad whether he went or not, and even if he wasn't going now, he'd go plenty over the next few years at middle school — otherwise he wouldn't have missed the undergraduate line in the university exam. He did make it up later through a top-up degree, so he ended a proper graduate in the end.

Anyway, she had other plans for today. "Let's go to the internet café. Just us. Don't tell Mum and Dad. My treat."

Li Jingyu stared at her, disbelieving. "You're going to an internet café?"

His voice went up without his meaning it to, and then, remembering this wasn't something to broadcast, he looked around like a thief — though there were only the two of them in the room.

"What are you going for?" Even so, he kept it low.

"Watch some cartoons and sign up for a QQ. The exams are done, I've got nothing on, and I've never been to one. I want a look." Li Lan produced the first excuse to hand.

"All right. What time tomorrow?"

He hadn't been in a while and had been itching to go; now he wanted to rather badly.

"Not tomorrow. Now. There's nobody home anyway, come on." She started to get up.

"N— now?" He hadn't caught up.

"Mm. It's only ten. Two hours and we're back for lunch, then over to the east yard this afternoon to help." Li Lan picked her notebook up off the desk, entirely matter-of-fact.

"All right then."

At the café Li Jingyu was still slightly dazed. How had he come to be here with Li Lan, of all people?

Li Lan looked the place over. Newly opened, she guessed — not good, but not bad either. Mostly under-eighteens, dim and rather loud, but no smell of smoke.

She followed her brother in, and from the ease of him it was obvious he'd been often. They took two machines side by side, and he had his on and his headphones over his ears and a game running before he'd properly sat down.

Li Lan took the seat against the wall, found the power button, and instead of opening any video, opened a browser and started looking things up.

Half an hour later, waiting for a game to load, Li Jingyu remembered his sister beside him and turned to see what she was doing — and found her fingers flying across the keyboard. "How are you typing that fast?" He only ever came here to play games, and while he wasn't slow, he was barely better than two-finger.

"Practice in the computing lessons at school," Li Lan said, without looking up.

That sounded reasonable enough, and he was about to look at what was on her screen when his game finished loading and took his attention back.

On her side of it, Li Lan had finished reading her way through the web fiction currently popular and had a feel for the market. She opened Word and started putting down the novel in her head. That was it: the moment she'd seen that old paperback in chapter three, she'd known what the right way to make money was. Writing.

Compared with twelve years hence, the range of what was being written now was nowhere near as developed, and after twelve years of information glut and a great deal of "wide reading", Li Lan knew the machinery of web fiction inside out.

The writing and sketching she'd been doing at home for days was the outline. She looked at it, handwritten in the notebook, put her fingers on the keys, and started.

In Dreams and Out of Them.

The title suggested one of those wistful coming-of-age things; in fact it was a thoroughly melodramatic story about a secretary and her scheming chief executive. It opens with the heroine, Mu Anqi, complaining about her boss to a friend, after which she starts dreaming about him — and, on the grounds that it's only a dream, sets about making his life difficult.

What the heroine doesn't know is that inside her dreams the man is conscious. It being her dream, he can't act freely; he can only watch her get up to whatever she likes.

And then write it all down.

So by day he watches this rigorous, highly capable secretary of his with a perfectly calm expression while privately taking note — and in time comes to like her, while she, noticing the change in him, softens by degrees, and eventually they fall in love.

Half an hour to type up the outline, and then she went straight on into the body of it. The opening had Mu Anqi finishing her complaints about a boss who never smiled, took no interest in women and had a black hand for business, doing her skincare in high satisfaction and going to bed — and then, perhaps because of all that complaining, dreaming about the man himself for the first time.

Fifty minutes later, seeing the five-minute warning in the corner of the screen, Li Lan realised she'd been writing for an hour and a half.

She was fast. In that hour and a half, outline included, she'd done close to four thousand characters. She shook out a hand that was beginning to ache, saved the file to a USB stick, and found her brother still on his shooting game.

"Right, time's up. We're going."

"Mm. This round's nearly done." No sooner said than the game ended.

"Oh. It's finished." He took the headphones off at the end screen and walked out with her.

---

On the way home, listening to him humming as he went, Li Lan remembered something. She produced a tissue. "Li Jingyu. Come here, I want to test you on something.

"See how long you can blow this in one breath."

He took it. "What sort of game is that? It sounds pointless."

"Try it. I'll tell you afterwards. The longer the better."

So he blew at the tissue while Li Lan watched the digital watch in her hand and timed him.

He ran out inside a minute. "How long was that?"

"Forty-five seconds."

"Is forty-five good or bad?" he asked, interested.

"Bad, obviously. Tell you what — the day you get to a minute, I'll give you twenty yuan."

He could hardly believe it. "Seriously? Just a minute?"

Twenty yuan was a very considerable sum to a boy of twelve. The café cost two an hour.

"Of course seriously. Why would I lie about it?" said Li Lan, with total conviction.

"Right, that's agreed. Whoever goes back on it is a dog." He got that in quickly, in case she changed her mind.

"What's the test for, though?" He leant in.

"Never mind that. Just practise it when you've nothing else on." Blowing at tissue paper is for your breath control, she thought.

She'd worked out long ago that this particular brother was no hope academically, so she had been thinking about other roads for him — and since the only things he liked besides games were singing, this was where she'd landed. Start with the breath.

Blowing at a tissue was a trick she'd picked up from a singer on a variety show, someone known for silent breaths and impossibly long notes. Compared with the more complicated ways of training breath and lung capacity, it was the one that suited Li Jingyu best.