Chapter 17

"Brother says the last day to apply to Yu No. 1 is in a couple of days, and Tiancheng says if we're applying we should get on with it. Li Quan, shall we go up to the capital tomorrow?" Chen Ying raised it on the way home, thinking about what had been said over lunch.

"Let's go. It's two hours to Yu city — we'll take an early train." Li Quan had to shout over the engine.

"Right. And I'd better ring Huifang and see whether they're coming." Chen Ying dialled Zheng Huifang, whose family had the same problem.

Between the noise of the three-wheeler Li Lan couldn't hear the other end, but from her mother's half of it Zheng Huifang sounded hesitant.

"What did they say? Is Auntie Zheng coming?" Li Cheng leant over the handle rail at the front.

"She says they'd rather have a Shang city school. But they've decided to go up and look tomorrow anyway." Chen Ying hung up.

"I wish Xinxin could come to Yu city too. It'd be so much better, the three of us at school together." The thought of being separated from her was a real disappointment. They'd been in the same class since Year 3 of primary, plus three years of middle school, and playing together was simply what she did.

Chen Ying understood their reasoning and didn't press. Finding the Zhaos in the first place had been about sharing costs, and high school meant boarding, so numbers no longer mattered. Company would have been nice, and she was mildly sorry — but the Shang city schools weren't bad, and for children from the county they were the best available.

"We'll see. Maybe once Xinxin's mother has been up and looked, she'll change her mind." She thought it privately and said it aloud to comfort her daughter.

---

At five the next morning, before light, her parents were on the first bus to the railway station.

Over breakfast Li Lan and Li Jingyu caught each other's eye and each saw the same private scheme there, and neither said anything.

"Ahem. Li Cheng. Mum and Dad are out today — why don't you go and watch television over there?" Li Lan wanted her gone so she could get to the internet café.

Li Cheng looked sideways at the pair of them. "Why don't you two go?"

She felt distinctly excluded. She had not failed to notice the signalling going on behind her, and had worked out some time ago that the two of them were keeping something from her. Today she was sticking to them until she found out what — Zhao Xinxin was away and she had no other friends to play with anyway.

Li Lan and her brother exchanged a look, recognised that Li Cheng was not going to be shaken off, and Li Lan simply admitted it. "I'm going to the internet café with Li Jingyu."

Li Cheng's eyes went wide. "The internet café?"

Li Jingyu nodded too, which she found deeply painful. "What do you two go there for? Games?"

She couldn't think of another reason. She'd never been, but every adult and classmate who mentioned internet cafés disapproved of them, and over time she had come to regard them as worse than an arcade — somewhere only delinquents went.

Her first instinct was to talk them out of it.

"Don't go. Why don't we buy some snacks and watch television at the east yard? Nobody's there to stop us, it'll be great." She dangled the television. Nobody paid the slightest attention.

Li Jingyu was certainly not passing up an opportunity like both parents being away, and Li Lan had her own business to attend to.

Since neither moved, Li Cheng escalated. "If you two go, I'm telling Mum and Dad when they get back."

"Mum and Dad know Li Jingyu goes. And they're not that bad — come and see for yourself, you'll see when you get there." Li Lan wasn't remotely worried by the threat, and turned it around into an invitation.

"Hmph. I'm not going." Li Cheng was absolutely firm about it.

---

"Li Lan, where's the switch on this thing?"

"Li Lan, how do I sign up for QQ?"

"Li Lan, what's your QQ, let's add each other."

"Li Lan, I want to watch Meteor Garden, how do I do that?"

"Li Lan, how do I—"

"Be quiet and watch your programme." Half an hour and interrupted more times than she could count, Li Lan had had enough. How had she never noticed how much her sister talked? And she was the one who'd said you could watch dramas at an internet café. She regretted bringing her.

"Last question. How do I skip forward?" Li Cheng leant over. She'd seen this part before.

Having explained it, Li Lan issued a warning. "That's the last one. I've got things to do. Watch your programme or ask Li Jingyu."

"I did. He's playing his game and ignoring me. Oh — Li Lan, your QQ's flashing, someone's messaging you." Li Cheng had spotted the icon blinking in the corner of her screen.

"Someone from my class. Go on, watch your programme."

"Mm." She would have liked to know what they were talking about, but the video reached a part she hadn't seen and her interest in Li Lan's messages evaporated.

Li Lan put her headphones on and opened the frantically blinking window.

Her editor: Yijiu, are you there?

Are there more chapters of In Dreams and Out of Them?

Do you have a buffer? How many characters?

Your story's got the front-page recommendation this week and it's about to go paid. If you've got a buffer, post more when it does — and if you haven't, get writing.

Li Lan typed back that she had a buffer, but not much of one — around twenty thousand characters.

That's on the light side. Nobody's written this premise before. You're at fifty thousand and the follows are about to break ten thousand, and they'll keep climbing, so it'll go paid soon. You want more in hand. How long are you planning to make it?

Li Lan thought about her outline. Two hundred thousand characters if she moved briskly; four hundred thousand if she took her time.

Four hundred thousand is too long for a romance. Two hundred thousand is about right. And a publisher got in touch a couple of days ago about a print edition — we're discussing it now, and there should be an answer in a while. I'm telling you in advance so you can be ready for it.

Really? Li Lan typed that she'd already posted the copies of her ID and bank card.

They haven't arrived yet. Once they do I'll put your details in, and after that royalties and any publishing money go straight to your account.

Have you thought about what you're writing next? This one will be finished before long.

She had. She said she'd email the opening.

Having sent the outline and talked over the next book for a while, she logged off and went back to writing.

It was nearly ten days since the first time she'd come here to type, and she'd been slipping off alone the whole time to build a buffer. Fortunately the plot was already worked out in her head and only needed getting down, so in ten days she'd banked close to seventy thousand characters.

Somewhere in there she'd also registered an author account on JJ, and In Dreams and Out of Them had gone up properly.

Ten years on, JJ would be the biggest romance site there was. At this point it was newly built, fairly bare, and short of authors — so two days after she posted, an editor contacted her through the back end offering a contract.

That was exactly what she'd been waiting for. She added the editor on QQ at once.

With an editor behind it, and with a premise nobody had used before plus the recommendation slots the editor gave it, the follow count on In Dreams and Out of Them climbed steadily and was nearly at the threshold for going paid. What she hadn't expected was a publisher enquiring about a print edition when it was only a few tens of thousands of characters in. A pleasant surprise.

If it needed two hundred thousand characters, and fifty thousand were posted with twenty thousand in the buffer, and going paid meant she'd need to update heavily for the rankings — Li Lan felt a distinct sense of crisis. Twenty thousand was two or three days' worth. She needed to bank more, quickly.

At the thought that what she typed was about to turn into actual money, she flexed her hands and set to it.