Chapter 19

Late August.

Li Lan had barely logged into QQ before the icon in the corner started flashing.

It was all from one person. The window with her editor showed a dozen unread messages, and she opened it to find a nudge, then: Yijiu, message me the second you see this.

Buy a phone when your earnings come through. Please.

Another nudge. Message me as soon as you see this.

Li Lan said hello and asked what she needed.

You're finally on. The reply came back instantly.

Li Lan explained she'd been busy — with term about to start there were things to get ready, and she hadn't been to the café for two days.

Of course. I keep forgetting your ID says sixteen. You'll be at school, and it's the end of August, so that's term.

Yijiu: Yes, so I'll be off the internet for a while after today. I was about to message you when I saw you'd been trying to reach me.

!!!

Right, that's what I wanted to tell you. The rights for In Dreams and Out of Them are agreed. Terms as discussed — ten thousand for the publication, and after tax you should have around eight. If you've no objections I'll courier the contract for signature.

Yijiu: Fine, though a courier will take a while, and I'll be at school by then. I'll give you the school address.

Couriers at that point were nothing like they'd later become; ten days to a fortnight was ordinary.

All right. Keep an eye out for it — if it goes missing that's another long wait, and the publication money only goes out once the contract is registered. The sooner it's done, the sooner you're paid.

Yijiu: Understood, send the address here. I'll check the post room often. She sent the address of Yu No. 1.

You really are a school student, the editor sent back.

Oh — nearly forgot. What about the new one? It's only just gone paid, are you going to break the run? This cultivation premise is good. It'd be such a shame. Even through a screen, the urgency came off it.

Yijiu: Don't worry, I've a buffer on the second one, it's all queued. It should hold until I can get online again. Since the café had stopped being a secret, she'd been writing openly, alongside going through the high school textbooks with Li Cheng each day.

In a month and a half she had finished the remaining hundred thousand characters of the first book and posted eighty thousand of the second, which had gone paid a couple of days ago, with close to a hundred thousand more banked.

Which worked out at something like ten thousand characters a day. Possibly it was the Focus: she'd noticed that with either studying or writing, once she settled, her output doubled.

Good, as long as there's a buffer.

They talked a while longer before Li Lan opened Word and started writing. Knowing it was her last day online — after term she'd only manage weekends — she didn't stop when she meant to, and when she came out of it, it was five in the afternoon.

She was still turning over the outline for the next book on the way home, and walked in to find Li Cheng puffed up with indignation. "Li Lan. One hour a day, that's what was agreed. Look how long you've been."

"Er. Something came up today."

"Rubbish. Something comes up every day. You did one hour for the first two days and since then you've gone morning and afternoon. I reckon you study one hour a day, if that." She'd been at home working through high school maths while her sister read for an hour in the morning, an hour in the afternoon, and spent the rest at the café.

"That's not fair, and we're at the same point anyway, aren't we? I look up the ones you can't do — I found half those maths problems online." Li Lan got steadily more righteous about it, having entirely forgotten that she spent her time there typing and had never looked up a single question.

"Anyway, term starts in three days, so today was my last one. That's why I was late."

Li Cheng opened her mouth and found she couldn't argue with it. Li Lan was right: she went to the café daily and yet she was exactly level on the material.

Every time Li Cheng got stuck, her sister could do it. She said she found things online, but you couldn't look up every question — and a good deal of it Li Cheng only understood after Li Lan explained it. Nothing seemed to defeat her. It was around now that Li Cheng first properly felt what first-in-the-city meant.

Two hours a day and she knew more than her sister did studying all day. The more she thought about it the more annoying it was, and she went out to watch television instead.

Li Lan would have laughed out loud if she'd known. She was living on having studied it before, plus first-year material not being hard, which was all that let her understand it and explain it.

That would be nowhere near enough at Yu No. 1, which was full of hidden dragons. Writing had begun as an experiment in whether she could improve the family's circumstances that way, plus a genuine love of novels — but she had no intention of giving up on the university exam.

And doing well would not be easy. Henan was a brutal province for that exam, and Yu No. 1 was among the best schools in the city and arguably the province, packed with students who were exceptionally clever. To stand out there, her present attributes were not going to do it.

Which was why she'd decided to visit the botanical garden in Yu city before registering. Her parents raised no objection whatever — her reward for coming first hadn't been given yet, and a trip to a garden was nothing; she could go as often as she liked.

She'd looked it up. The garden had only been completed the year before but the collection was reasonably complete — fifteen hundred species, reportedly. Even collecting a fraction would make her rich overnight. Every attribute filled was suddenly in sight.

"Li Lan. Li Lan."

She was in the middle of working out how to spend several thousand points when she heard her name.

"What?"

Li Jingyu, who had appeared beside her at some point, was holding a tissue and waving his other hand in front of her face. "You're off to school soon. Come and see how I'm getting on — I've hit a minute."

"Here, you time it." He pushed the watch into her hand. "Starting."

He took a breath and blew.

On the last of it he grabbed her wrist. "Look — sixty-two seconds. Over a minute. Pay up."

Li Lan produced twenty yuan. "Not bad at all. Right — get to a minute and a half by the time I'm next home and I'll give you a hundred. Deal?"

She handed over the twenty and waved the red note at him.

"Deal." He agreed without a moment's thought. It was only blowing at things. Dull to practise, but it took nothing but his mouth and no real effort — money for nothing, and you'd be mad to refuse.

"Agreed, then." Watching him take the bait, Li Lan smiled to herself, satisfied.