Chapter 60

Coming out of the bathroom, Wang Juan noticed the parcel in the corner. She'd brought it home from the office days ago and still hadn't really opened it. She hadn't meant to use it at all — but Chen Xinyu's skin had gone on improving these last few days, so she changed direction and went to the corner.

Opening it, she found the packaging exactly as basic as expected: clear bottles of a colourless, transparent liquid, indistinguishable from water. Had she paid seventy yuan for two bottles of water?

Without much hope she unscrewed one and sniffed. Unexpectedly, what reached her wasn't the cheap smell of synthetic fragrance but something very complicated, dense, and unmistakably rose. She couldn't describe it. She rather liked it.

Liking it or not, she wasn't putting it on her own face. Her eyes moved, and she called sweetly through the door. "Darling, come here a moment."

…

If not her own face, somebody else's. She stood back to look. "There. Take the mask off in ten minutes or so. And don't forget to tell me how it feels."

The man under the sheet mask spoke with difficulty. "Where did you get this? Using me as a guinea pig again." That was the trouble with his wife: timid and free with money, and forever making an experiment of him.

"A colleague sold it to me." Not certain she wouldn't react to it, Wang Juan tipped a little into her palm and rubbed it behind her ear.

A fortnight later she'd barely got in from work when her husband sidled up. "Love, where's that toner you've been putting on me?"

She put her things down. "The bathroom. Why?"

He touched his own face. "I think it works, actually. Don't you think my colour's a bit better?"

She pulled a face. "I've no interest in touching your face. Where's our daughter?"

"Asleep. No, really — I was out for dinner with old Liu and that lot today and they all said I was looking well." He trailed after her, going on about it.

What they'd actually meant was that he stayed at home, kept house and had no ambition — but he couldn't be bothered arguing with them. He was happy to cook for his two princesses. Still, on the way home he'd run a hand over his face, and honestly, it did feel better than before.

Wang Juan knew what his friends were like and hadn't thought much of it; then she remembered the change in Chen Xinyu, stopped on her way to look in on their daughter, and turned to inspect him instead. He submitted meekly. Having looked, she put a hand to his face. It really did feel less rough than it had.

"Two weeks isn't much, love, so it's not very obvious yet — but I've a big face and I've nearly finished that little bottle. Have you got another?" He wasn't embarrassed about it. A grown man with a large face gets through it quickly, naturally.

"Yes." Looking at him, she was tempted. She'd tested it herself and hadn't reacted; his skin and Chen Xinyu's had both improved. Did that mean the hydrosol really worked?

No sooner thought than done. She'd try it tonight.

---

"It's not that dramatic, surely. Rose hydrosol is basic hydration and nothing more."

The tenth of August. Li Lan had just finished packing when Chen Xinyu rang, and every other sentence was praise for the hydrosol.

"How can it not be? Two people in our office have used it for a month and both say their skin has improved." She was excited. Sister Wang, who'd made her buy it, and one other colleague had both said it worked and wanted more — and their advertising had brought a great many people to her asking to buy some.

Li Lan was helpless. "It won't only be the hydrosol. Your colleagues will have been taking care of themselves in other ways too. You can't put it all down to one bottle of water." Real hydrosol does have an antioxidant, skin-conditioning effect, but that is all it has; nothing like what Chen Xinyu was describing. To do what she said, you'd need the hundred millilitres of rose oil.

Chen Xinyu didn't believe her. As the immediate beneficiary, who knew better than she did what it did? Lanlan was simply being modest. She didn't say so, and went along with it. "I wouldn't know. Both of them think it's the hydrosol, so they've asked me to find out whether you have any more. And several other colleagues want to buy some as well."

Li Lan thought about it. "I don't think I can sell it." Two people had hardly mattered; from the sound of it there were now a good many, and that invites trouble.

In fact, having sold to Chen Xinyu's colleagues she'd looked it up, and the regulations issued this year state that an enterprise without a cosmetics production licence has no right to manufacture cosmetics, that doing so is unlawful, and that it attracts a fine. The penalty applies to enterprises and says nothing about individuals — but strictly speaking, what she'd done was in breach.

So she'd decided to use the rest herself, water the plants with what she couldn't use, and if it came to it sell it back to the shop. Not worth breaking rules over small money.

Chen Xinyu was disappointed. "I see. Better not to break the rules, then." A pity, but there it was — particularly as she worked for a state enterprise, where a slip was worse.

"Though there's no harm in us using it ourselves?" She was afraid Li Lan would cut her off too. She used it every day now. What would she do without it?

"None at all. When you run out, collect some next time you're home. There's plenty in the fridge." Personal use was no problem.

"Good. I'll tell them, then. They'll be disappointed." Chen Xinyu's head ached at the thought of facing them.

Hearing the resignation in her voice, Li Lan couldn't help her. She hadn't expected her product to be this popular — but if she couldn't sell it, there was always the internet. "The effect is much the same across hydrosols. Have a look online. Tell them to try these." And she named several well-known brands.

"Right, I'll try." Chen Xinyu knew the chances were poor. They wanted to buy because they'd seen a real result, and it was Li Lan's they believed in. Persuading them to buy anything else would be difficult.

---

Off the phone, Li Lan sat thinking. She'd been careless. She'd meant to set up a company in her third or fourth year, when both the technique and the various methods bought from the shop would be enough to support one.

The other reason was money. She had nearly five hundred thousand saved, from the rights fees and subscriptions on two novels, which for a student about to start university is probably a large number — and nowhere near what registering a company costs.

Before going to sit in at Peking last year she'd told her parents about the novels, meaning to give them some of it so they'd stop working flat out and settle for making enough to live on. Before they could get as far as accusing her of neglecting her studies to write fiction, the size of the balance stopped them.

They wouldn't take it. She'd already given the family tens of thousands when she won the championship, they said; a business is never not short of money; keep it, buy a flat with it. Li Lan wasn't much interested in buying a flat — somewhere to live was enough — so the account had barely been touched.

It was that large balance, too, that made them too embarrassed to tell her to stop writing. They only said she should keep the weight on her studies and not let the novels take over. Perhaps because they could see there was nothing left to worry about, her parents genuinely had eased off and now rested when they should. Half her aim achieved.

She'd intended to finish another book or two during university, and if it went well she might have the money for a company soon enough. Plans don't survive circumstances. Register now, and where does the money come from? Whatever her parents had went straight back into the supermarket, and a small supermarket cannot produce a million yuan; and even if it could, she couldn't ask them for it.

She thought longingly of eight years hence. Buy a little bitcoin early and the registered capital would take care of itself.

Her hand wandered aimlessly on the mouse while she looked for a way through. In the middle of drifting she clicked something and an advertisement opened, and she was about to close it when a line on it caught her eye. This.

One-person limited company. Minimum registered capital one hundred thousand yuan, paid in full in a single payment. Can subsequently be converted to a limited liability company…

She looked it up. A one-person limited company does leave you carrying the whole of any debt — but against that drawback, at this stage it suited her better than anything. As long as she didn't go bankrupt there was nothing much to worry about.

Pleased with her solution, she went to look up the registration process, and gave up at the first item. 1. Name check — company names (five or more recommended).

The string of steps after it about licences, seals and bank accounts got a glance and made her head ache, and remembering the efficiency of the relevant departments — no. Leave it to a professional.