Chapter 51

"Music."

Li Jingyu answered the moment the question was out. Painting sounded dull. Art or not was immaterial; anything that meant less studying, and never mind art — he'd have taken up acrobatics.

Chen Ying nodded. "Right. Your father and I will look for a class near the school once term starts, and get the groundwork in." Having decided, the sooner the better; there was no harm in it.

Li Cheng, home for the holiday, was equally in favour. "There's nothing wrong with going in as an arts student. I know several people doing perfectly well at school who are going that route."

With everyone agreed about him, Chen Ying felt as though a stone had come off her chest, and being told the same thing by both daughters settled it. She was in sufficiently good spirits to joke at dinner. "Do you suppose he might turn into a bit of a star, once he's learned to sing? That talent show on television was popular enough. Go on, son — enter it when you've finished learning."

Li Cheng joined the fantasy. "Why not? And Mum, stars earn a fortune — you and Dad can use your son to advertise the shop and save the advertising money."

Li Quan couldn't resist either. "We might see him on television."

Li Lan watched the three of them work themselves up as though he were debuting tomorrow, and found it funny — though if he did learn to sing properly, his university years would coincide almost exactly with the explosion of talent shows, and among that many programmes there'd be some chance of it.

And small as he was now, Li Lan knew he'd be one hundred and eighty-three centimetres by the end of high school and not bad-looking, presentable enough with a little packaging. Failing a debut, there'd be blogging or streaming before live streaming properly arrived.

---

While Li Lan's family were laughing over what would happen if he became famous, Wang Jing was getting out of a car with her bag.

Her father followed with her small case, and once inside took off his heavy coat, then reached up to the top of his head and did something in front of the mirror — and as his hands came away, an empty patch appeared in the middle of what had been thick hair. Bald on top, in the vernacular.

His clothes were still immaculate and his back straight; it was only the hairline that took an otherwise elegant man down by a fracture or two.

Wang Jing, on the sofa, watched her handsome father transform. Ever since she was old enough to notice, that transformation had stung her eyes. It was better now; in the self-important phase of middle school, when she'd first learned what ugly meant, she had genuinely been ashamed of it, and had presumably hurt him, because he now wore a wig as a matter of course when going out.

Though — she touched her own hair gloomily — she'd shortly have no standing to disdain anyone's baldness, being about to go the same way. Depressing.

No. She refused to sit and wait for it. "Old Wang, where's our black sesame?"

The our carried a shared private sorrow.

He put the wig away and, with practised efficiency, made two bowls of black sesame paste. Wang Jing drank some. That was the taste; nobody made it better than her father. And having drunk it she felt gloomy again. "Old Wang, do you think this does anything for us?"

He wiped his mouth. "I've been drinking it ten years. You tell me."

She looked at the faintly reflective top of his head and felt gloomier still.

After a sigh she started unpacking the things from her dormitory. Toiletries to the bathroom, toothbrush, toothpaste — and the hair serum from Li Lan. She'd used it twice, and whether or not she was imagining it, no more hair seemed to be coming out afterwards. For luck she'd put it in the bathroom and use it over the holiday.

So the little bottle that symbolised friendship went onto the dressing table.

That evening, having washed, her father took the hairdryer on a low setting to what hair he had. Years of experience had taught him the airflow must not be strong; too strong and you lose hair.

Having examined himself in the mirror for a while, he was about to leave when he noticed the small dark bottle on the dressing table. He'd spotted it earlier. Picking it up, he found a strip of tape on the back with a few handwritten words — a hair-growth serum, with directions beneath, in the round handwriting he recognised as his daughter's.

Those words touched a sensitive nerve. He was barely past forty, didn't smoke or drink to excess, hadn't run to fat like others his age, and turned himself out neatly every time he went out — and the neater he was, the more people looked at him with regret, because of this cursed bald patch.

Looking at the mysterious black bottle, he put a dropperful into his palm, as instructed, worked it between his hands and massaged it into his scalp.

Whether or not he imagined it, his scalp seemed faintly warm while he did it — though he was inclined to attribute that to friction. Never mind faintly warm; with previous serums he'd felt every sensation there was, hot and cold, and had thought at first they were working, and later learned the cold was simply the menthol in them.

---

A week later, getting up half asleep to go to the lavatory, Wang Jing's mother was startled by somebody standing in front of the bathroom mirror, and came awake enough to identify her husband.

He was standing there silently feeling the top of his head, and she complained, still recovering. "What are you doing at this hour?"

He touched it twice more and turned round, uncertain. "Feel my head. Is there hair coming?"

She rolled her eyes. "How many times have you been had? Every time you think hair's coming, and every time it isn't."

"No — really." He took her hand and put it on his head. "I think I can actually feel it this time. I'm not making it up. Feel."

Unconvinced, she meant to pat it twice and be done, but after two pats her expression turned doubtful. There did seem to be something like fine down brushing under her hand.

He'd been watching her face and said, excited, "You feel it, don't you? That fine-down feeling."

She felt again carefully. It was genuinely different from the smoothness of before. She withdrew her hand, surprised. "It is different. Have you been using something new?"

Which sobered him into thinking. "No, nothing new. Same shampoo. Same black sesame. Ah — Jingjing."

He'd added one step, and his eyes went to the small black bottle on the dressing table. Apart from using that serum after washing, nothing had changed.

He picked it up. "Is it this? No wonder it smelt of Chinese herbs when I opened it. It must be." He grew more certain as he said it.

His wife took it, opened it and smelt it — herbs indeed — and looked for a label and found none, which made her doubtful. "That's Jingjing's, isn't it? Where did she get it?" She was a schoolgirl; what hair product could she possibly find?

Her doubt was reasonable. Since his hair began to go he had tried every product going, new ones from home and abroad costing tens of thousands, folk remedies from all over — none of which worked. And now some little black bottle a schoolgirl had acquired?

"We'll ask her." He held the bottle with hope in his eyes.

Seeing him like that, his wife sighed. "She's asleep. Ask her when she's up."

So when Wang Jing came out yawning, she found both parents on the sofa looking at her with identical expectancy, and the rest of the yawn refused to come out. "Er. Why are you looking at me like that?"

Her father held something carefully. "Darling, this is yours, isn't it? Where did you buy it?"

She looked. A familiar small dark bottle. "Oh, that. Li Lan brought it from Beijing. A hair serum, to use after washing — I keep forgetting, so I've only used it a few times."

His eyes lit. "The deskmate who's been accepted by Peking? Did she say where in Beijing she bought it?"

Wang Jing sat down. "She didn't buy it. She developed it with her professor. She said it's experimental. I've used it three or four times."

At which he glanced at his wife, more certain than ever that his hair was down to the bottle in his hand. Hadn't Jingjing said so? Developed by a professor at Peking University. How could that be false?

Seeing his satisfaction, her mother sat down beside her. "Darling, it may genuinely work. Your father's used it a week and he seems to have grown some hair."

Wang Jing's mouth opened. "Mum, are you saying Old Wang has been using it?"

"And grown hair?"

At two nods she rather went to pieces, got up and looked at the bottle in her father's fist, weighing whether snatching it might break the glass.

"Old Wang, that's—"

"Jingjing."

She had decided to try persuasion first, and faced with that pitiful look, sighed. "Never mind. I'll ring Lanlan and see if she's got any more." If it genuinely worked, she'd buy it if she had to — and she intended to charge her father heavily for it.

---

Li Lan took the call in the middle of a calendula extraction experiment, using the rudimentary equipment she'd bought online.

Hearing the complaint, she found it funny. "There isn't a second bottle."

A disappointed sigh came down the line.

She paused before continuing. "Though if you only use one dropperful at a time, one bottle should just about do two people for a month. Once it's finished the new hair grows more slowly, but the effect holds."

A few seconds of silence, and then Wang Jing, exasperated. "Lanlan, could you not pause like that? I was seriously considering being an unfilial daughter and fighting Old Wang for it."

Having asked carefully about the method she hung up satisfied. This time she would follow the instructions exactly. Not a drop wasted.

Three weeks later her father could not keep his hands off his own head, and her mother looked at him with disdain. "That's enough. You've felt it how many times? Doesn't your arm get tired?"

He was cheerful. "Tired? I could do it a hundred times."

Unlike the faint suggestion of down before, what he felt now was hard and bristly, rather like a shaved chin.

And in the mirror, where the top of his head had been bare, there were now small black points coming through — which anyone with a horror of small repeating patterns would have found unbearable, and which he regarded as a treasure beyond price, examining three times a day.

Wang Jing looked at it enviously. Her own hair was long and she couldn't see as clearly as he could — but if her father's baldness of all those years was growing back, presumably hers would be fine. And very little had come out in the shower lately. She waited, hopeful and slightly nervous.