Chapter 47

She didn't need the whole morning. Half an hour later Li Cheng looked in the mirror and found the large red spots on her chin visibly smaller, which she found remarkable. That yellow toner of Li Lan's clearly worked.

Three hours later she looked again and found them gone. She turned her chin this way and that, examining it the way one does when shaving, and found no trace — nothing to indicate there had been anything there three hours earlier.

She ran to Li Lan and presented her face. "Look, they've actually gone. Where did you get that toner?" Seeing results like that, she was shamelessly interested.

It was Li Lan's first use of anything from the shop, and she inspected her sister's chin carefully. The skin where the spots had been was as smooth as it had ever been. She was startled by the extract's effect; she'd watched a great many beauty videos before being reborn and couldn't recall a product working that immediately.

If the shop's goods were that effective, then something at L5— And at the thought her pulse picked up.

"Li Lan? Li Lan?" Her sister's rising volume brought her back.

"What? Sorry, what did you say?"

Wanting something, Li Cheng repeated it without irritation. "Well — you don't get spots, do you? Sell me the rest of that bottle. I'll give you all my new year money." And she looked at her hopefully. With that bottle she'd never fear spots again.

Li Lan had meant to keep the remainder as a sample to study, but considering that she had neither equipment nor materials, and it would only be wasted in her hands, she nodded.

Li Cheng was ready to hand over the entire contents of her red envelopes at once. Li Lan pushed them aside. "Wait. You don't need to pay me. Do as I tell you for the next week and you can have it."

Something in her sister's smile gave Li Cheng a bad feeling. "Is that — is that right?"

Li Lan checked the calendar. "A week until term. You haven't started on next term's material, have you?" She'd been away sitting exams and hadn't been able to supervise either of them, and then studying on the day of Spring Festival had seemed inhuman. Now the timing was right — a single week, but a week used properly is worth having.

Li Cheng, who had spent the holiday eating, sleeping or lying down watching television, said nothing. How was there only a week left? Where had it gone?

---

Why are the ominous feelings never wrong?

Li Cheng sat chewing her pen in front of the second-term maths textbook with an air of deep suffering. Although—

She stole a glance at Li Jingyu beside her, whose face was a study in pain, and derived a certain peculiar comfort from it.

Li Lan was coaching him through maths. "If A and B together take six days and A alone takes ten, how long does B take alone? It's the same as that earlier problem with hours. I'm not explaining this one. Do it yourself."

He hesitated over the paper. The same, more or less, so like this?

Having finished, he looked uncertainly at his sister.

She looked at a solution that was a shambles, without annoyance. "Wrong. Again."

Gentle, and admitting of no argument. In two days Li Cheng had heard that sentence dozens of times, and having thought nothing of it at first, found herself shivering slightly at it now.

She looked back at the maths book and found her attention wandering. Right. How did that question go again?

---

In all their years of schooling, neither Li Cheng nor Li Jingyu had ever looked forward to term starting like this.

Li Jingyu above all. Watching Li Lan pack, he would gladly have packed for her. As long as it kept him away from those accursed maths problems he would do anything. The tissue exercise he'd let slide in favour of games he now practised daily until his eyes crossed, purely to be excused a set of questions, and he had promised her half an hour a day from now on.

He shuddered at the sight of the words A and B. But it was ending. Li Lan went back tomorrow.

He could have laughed at the sky.

"Li Lan, here's your washing from the line." He arrived at a run with an armful, ingratiating, and made no attempt to hide his delight as she put it away.

She took it, thanked him cheerfully, and produced a small bottle from a bag for her sister. "Your toner. Use it sparingly — when it's gone, it's gone."

Li Cheng took the fruit of a week's labour, and the little bottle felt immensely heavy. She could have finished the holiday properly; instead, under her sister's oppression, she had experienced term a week early, and worse, not one other person in the house had taken her side.

Set against Li Jingyu, though, she felt she hadn't done too badly. Her problem was simply lack of supervision and not being used to studying at home; supervised, she got into it quickly.

He was another matter. He was a genuine, certified dud, and with the middle school transition coming and specific instructions from their mother, Li Lan had spent the week force-feeding him.

How much his marks had improved in a week nobody could say. Watching him fetch and carry, the one thing Li Cheng was sure of was that the shadow Li Lan now cast over him was larger than the one from being thumped over the remote control — at least then, thumped or not, he hadn't wanted to run at the sight of her.

---

Term started on the fifteenth of the first lunar month. By then most of the town's workers had gone back, the supermarket was in its quiet season with hardly a customer all day, and her parents decided to drive the girls to school.

After breakfast the sisters went round to the old courtyard to say goodbye, and Li Lan stood in the vegetable patch checking on the calendula. The patch was small, a metre wide and three or four long, originally planted with a few seasonal vegetables — but as her grandparents aged more than half of it had gone to waste, which had suited the calendula.

Cold as it was, calendula tolerates cold and it was doing well, with small buds already formed. It was the second lunar month; by the middle of the third it should flower.

Song Qiulan came over. "What is this you're growing, that has you out here waiting on it every day?" Waiting on it was exactly the word, to her mind — turning the soil, weeding, thinning, watering, all of it done to a rule. She and Li Tieshi had never treated a crop so precisely.

She didn't know the species, but a lifetime of farming let her see it was thriving: this cold and still that vigorous. Lanlan really was clever. Even her planting was better than other people's.

Li Lan took her arm. "Somebody gave me the seed. Grandma, don't pull my flowers up when I've gone."

Song Qiulan patted her. "What would we pull your flowers up for? Only your grandfather and I can't tend them as finely as you." They both knew how much she valued those plants and wouldn't touch them.

Li Lan walked her in; it was cold and standing about wasn't good for her. "You needn't take any trouble, Grandma. They're nearly grown — a little water is enough."

She talked as she went. "That's all right, then. Not that trouble frightens us. Your grandfather and I have farmed all our lives — we'll have them better than they are now. Wait and see when you're home."

They sat with the old people a while longer, and when the time came her parents arrived. "Father, Mother, they need to go. Li Quan and I are taking them."

"Yes, off you go. Careful on the road." Her grandparents watched the girls into the car before going back inside.

---

Term, after all that, was leisurely by comparison. There was the first round of national squad training in Beijing at the end of March, but the month in between was the most relaxed stretch of Li Lan's high school life: lessons to sit through and weekends free enough to go out and write.

Having resumed over the Spring Festival holiday, she reckoned she could finish the long-abandoned book before the training began, which would at least discharge her debt to the readers who'd fallen into it. Coming towards the end, though, she couldn't resist starting something new — this time in a genre that wasn't yet popular.

She'd been shipping characters since primary school in her last life, without understanding what she was doing, and once in, the water proved deep; later she read both kinds happily enough.

So she put up a new pre-release listing. Nothing yet forbade spirits in fiction, so the softer lead could be a tree spirit at a panda reserve and the other lead a panda — the tree being naturally irresistible to pandas, with all the consequences that implies, in every sense.

And since JJ wasn't yet the site it would later become, a certain amount of colour was permissible. Thinking about it with entirely improper enthusiasm, she rode the momentum and produced three chapters at a stroke.

Shang Shang, going through the back end as usual to look for new authors worth signing, noticed that Yijiu had acquired a pre-release listing at some point.

Recalling this particular author's record for abandoning things, she messaged her at once.

Yijiu, have you started something new?

Luckily Yijiu was online, and the reply came quickly — an actual conversation for once, rather than notes left in a void.

Yijiu: I have. The old one's nearly finished and I had an idea.

The synopsis reads like danmei?

Yijiu: It is.

Never mind the rest for now — can you post daily?

Li Lan: There's a question. Once the training started in March there would presumably be no time for a phone, let alone an internet café.

Don't go quiet on me. Don't do what you did last time and vanish for months.

Yijiu: Daily is difficult. I can manage monthly.

The gaps during training ought to allow some writing. Probably.

Oh, marvellous. Annually would be better still.

Let me read it.

Yijiu attached the outline and the first three chapters.

Having read them, Shang Shang's head ached. Yijiu's writing was getting steadily better — pacing and control both maturing — and the one great problem was the erratic posting. Thinking of the age on the author's ID, and not knowing where she was at school, Shang Shang guessed high school, which made the pressure understandable. The girl was already writing in secret behind her parents' backs; what more could an editor say?

I know you high-schoolers are kept on a tight rein. The writing matters, but don't let it get in the way of your studies. Keep it up as best you can.

Typing that, Shang Shang had never felt so upstanding in her life. Look at her. What an editor.

Li Lan, who had been spotted at an internet café by her teachers more than once.

Yijiu: I know, thank you. I'll post whenever I have time.

Good.

Only three chapters? Is there more? Send it over and I'll have a look.