Chapter 52

[L1 calendula hydrating toner. Completion: 20%] [Value: 20 L1 points. Sell back?] [Yes] [No]

Li Lan looked at the shop's verdict and sighed. Nearly a month of experiments, following the shop's own method, and she had at last got the most basic L1 calendula toner up to twenty per cent.

Twenty per cent doesn't sound much. It was the best result of an enormous number of attempts that month. With her professor's permission she had once, when nobody was about, tried making the L2 extract — and the verdict on that had been cannot be sold back.

Which is when she learned that theory is theory and practice is practice. Having a detailed method in her head means nothing without the experience to execute it. There had been practical work in the competitions, but that experience, accumulated for an exam, was nothing beside what the shop wanted; the smallest tremor of the hand and the result was worlds away.

The same at Peking. She was, after all, an undergraduate who hadn't formally enrolled, and although she'd got onto a research project by putting herself forward, everything in the professor's laboratory was on an inventory and she could hardly experiment as she pleased. Her one experiment had been a reward for spotting an error for one of the postgraduates, and only because the materials involved weren't valuable.

After two and a half months of helping in the lab, though, she had a little confidence — and coming home for the exams, she ordered a set of basic equipment online, meaning to practise with calendula over the holiday.

The choice of calendula was simple: calendula was all she had.

The L2 extract being a complicated procedure, she'd start with the L1 toner and build experience. Fortunately L1 didn't need large apparatus and she could buy something approximate online. Once it arrived she set up in the storeroom on the third floor, where her father had built her a partitioned corner.

Less complicated than L2 is not the same as succeeding first time, particularly in the rudimentary conditions she'd assembled. When Wang Jing rang she had just finished her first attempt, and the verdict, unsurprisingly, was cannot be sold back.

Li Lan doesn't give up easily. Fail once and you go again. Slowly the completion went from unsellable to five per cent, ten, and today's twenty.

Any further failure and she would have had to stop whether she liked it or not, because the calendula in that last run was the end of her stock. She could buy material online, but she'd established by experiment that with identical technique, bought material produced completion five to ten per cent lower than plants raised from the shop.

At high completion that wouldn't matter much — ninety down to eighty. The trouble was that her results were running at about ten per cent. In fact, until today, nine attempts in ten with bought material had come back unsellable.

She tapped No, tidied up, and left with the most successful product of her labour. Twenty per cent it might be, and no competitor for a luxury brand — but against the mass-market products in the supermarket downstairs, it worked rather well.

---

Li Cheng and Li Jingyu, watching television, were surprised to see her emerge. "Why are you out so early? Have you finished?"

They knew she'd been in the storeroom since she got home, and since nobody but her was allowed into that partition, neither had any idea what she was doing; peering through the gap, all they saw was somebody stirring things like a cartoon villain.

She sat down on the small sofa and put the bottle on the coffee table. "I've run out of material."

Li Cheng looked at it. "All that, and you've produced this one small bottle?" She remembered four large bags of dried calendula, and Li Lan had bought a great deal more online. All gone?

Li Lan nodded. Only the petals were usable, which removed a quarter of the volume before she started; then several failures, several sell-backs, and what remained was the twenty per cent in her hand.

"That's a very wasteful hobby. What is it, anyway — perfume?" Li Cheng picked the bottle up and sniffed. The L1 toner being colourless, she had no idea what it was beyond the raw material.

Li Lan became a salesman. "Calendula hydrating toner. Handmade, healthy ingredients, no additives, guaranteed effective. Would you like to try it?"

Li Cheng declined without ceremony. "You use it. I don't trust anything you've made."

Sale unsuccessful. You're too innocent, child. When you become the sort of person who reads ingredient lists, you'll understand what you've turned down.

Li Cheng being at present a short-sighted high-schooler, Li Lan was about to put the half-finished bottle away when her brother spoke, awkwardly. "Li Lan, does that actually work?"

Under both their looks, he rubbed his own cheek, embarrassed. "It's winter, isn't it. My face feels dry. If neither of you wants it, I'll have it."

Watching him take it, thoroughly satisfied, the sisters looked at each other and each saw something complicated in the other's face.

Li Lan: so his later fussiness was already showing at this age.

Li Cheng: so that's why my skincare goes so fast. He's been using it.

---

The month gave Li Lan a small staged result before term, after which she could wait undistracted for school and for the entrance exam in June of the following year.

Being an ordinary high-schooler, Li Cheng went back first, then Li Jingyu, and Li Lan last.

With him starting music that term, her mother had asked around among suppliers on her stock runs in Shang city for somewhere teaching it. One supplier's daughter was going the arts-student route herself and recommended a place, which Chen Ying inspected and thought acceptable, and the distance suited, so she meant to enrol him — which is why this trip was for enrolment as well as delivering him to school.

The arts examinations having only just finished, the place held few people besides a handful of middle-schoolers like him. That was normal; a school like that fills up months later, towards the end of the second year of high school.

It was near his school and occupied several rooms, and looking round, Li Lan thought institute rather than class was the better word: besides exam tutoring the neighbouring rooms taught various specialisms, and it was reasonably professional.

Having rung ahead, they were met by the voice teacher, who tested his range on an electronic keyboard and looked at him with some surprise afterwards. "Your breath control is good. Steadier than most beginners." The range was ordinary, and his voice hadn't broken, so it was only indicative.

Knowing nothing whatever about music, he looked blank. What did that mean? It didn't sound bad.

His parents hadn't followed either. Li Quan wasn't much concerned — he was there to pay — and Chen Ying always asked. "What does steady breath control mean?"

The teacher rephrased. "It means he can sing a long phrase in one breath without breaking to inhale. Beyond natural aptitude it comes from later practice — swimming and sport help with breath."

Which made it clear enough, and since he'd never swum or trained deliberately, the two of them concluded his breath was good from running about the town all his life and being generally healthy.

The only person who knew otherwise was standing at the next room watching a set of primary-school children practise guitar. Small as they were, they made a very passable job of it.

The test done, there was nothing else but payment. While his father was paying, Li Jingyu, walking behind his mother and sister, found himself unable to move past the guitar class. He'd only ever seen a guitar on television, and this was his first sight of an instrument in real life; the longer he watched, the more he wanted to put his hands on one.

Chen Ying, talking to Li Lan, sensed something wrong, looked back to find him not following, and didn't miss the envy in his face.

All she could do was go over and coax him. "Come on, son. Studying's what matters now. There'll be time for this at university."

There was nothing else for it. She wasn't hard-hearted; his marks were poor to begin with, and freeing up a weekly voice lesson was already the largest concession she could make. Add guitar and she was fairly sure bottom of the class would be his permanently, so she hardened herself and pretended not to have seen.

She felt a thread of guilt about it. Rural schooling was limited; unlike these city children who could be given a hobby or two from infancy, not one of her three had a specialism.

He knew she'd never let him learn guitar, and although he'd known it, hearing it was still a disappointment, and he pulled himself together and affected indifference. "It's fine. I was only looking."

Li Lan knew how fixed her mother was on university, that she still held some hope for his marks, and treated the arts route as a fallback, which is why she wouldn't have him spending much time on music.

Li Lan's view was different. She knew exactly what his marks were; she'd tutored him, and found that although he appeared to work, he was forcing himself, and his mind wasn't on it at all — which is precisely why her mother couldn't understand how someone who worked that hard did so badly.

All roads lead somewhere. If school won't do, do something else; nobody starves for want of a qualification. Li Lan was relaxed about it.

Seeing his face, she slowed and bumped his shoulder, and passed him a look of support: never mind. Once term starts she can't stop you. Come and learn on the quiet.

He understood perfectly, and returned one: and the fee?

Li Lan patted her chest and nodded.

Which he also understood: I'll pay.