Chapter 72

Wang Xiao'ai yawned, and was seen doing it by the roommate she'd come to the library with, who looked at her open mouth and said quietly, "Xiao'ai, it's nine in the morning and we've been here half an hour. How many is that? Is there an end to it?" They say yawning is catching, and they're right; now she wanted to.

Wang Xiao'ai wiped away the tear the yawn had squeezed out of the corner of her eye and looked at her innocently. "I can't help it. Books make me sleepy." She had tried; a physical reflex isn't something you control by wanting to. And she yawned again, helplessly.

Her roommate put her head down and kept her eyes off her. "I give up on you. You've got a ten-thousand-character essay due tomorrow and you'll fail the module if it isn't done."

Wang Xiao'ai knew, which is why she'd got up early and come to the library. She'd thought she'd be sharper in the morning, and she'd been perfectly alert walking over in the wind, and then she'd laid the books out and the yawns had come one after another.

She forced herself upright. The ten thousand characters had barely started; she must not fall asleep. Failing that, she'd wash her face in the toilets — never mind the dryness, the essay mattered.

Resolved, she pulled herself together and put her attention back on the book in front of her, and slowly the characters on the page began to overlap.

Mm. No. The library was too warm and the sun was falling directly on her, and it was early yet, so a short sleep couldn't hurt; the essay wasn't due until the lecture tomorrow morning, and she could always stay up tonight. Her head sank, and the writing in her notebook twisted into scrawl.

Deep in her own essay, her roommate happened to look up and found her, unsurprisingly, fast asleep on the desk. And remembered the instruction issued on the way over: if you see me asleep, don't be polite about it, just hit me — as hard as you like. So she rolled up the book in her hand and brought it down on Wang Xiao'ai's head with a smack.

Woken, Wang Xiao'ai was silent for a moment, drank some water as though nothing had happened, and resumed reading and writing as though she hadn't been asleep. Two pages in, the phone on the desk lit up.

Being in a library, she answered it hunched over, and afterwards said to her still-industrious roommate, "Yiyi, I'm going to collect a parcel."

Outside the doors she breathed in deeply, and the cold going round her body cleared her head slightly. Remembering how much she'd fought for online on Singles' Day, she wondered which of it had arrived, and walked with some anticipation. It was getting cold. If it were clothes, that would be ideal.

At the gate she took the parcel from the courier and found, disappointed, that it was a small cardboard box. Not being anything large, it didn't warrant a trip back to the room, so she opened it standing next to a bin.

Inside were two conspicuous spray bottles, which reminded her that she had bought some sort of reviving spray from a shop. She'd seen it on the site's front page, seen it described as an all-nighter miracle, seen that half price made it twenty-five yuan a bottle, thought about her upcoming mid-terms, and bought it to see.

Unlike the two lonely bottles she'd pictured, the box was full of other things. She picked one up and found rose serum, and calendula toner and lotion — samples, and counting them, a dozen or so.

Fifty yuan suddenly felt extremely well spent: two sprays and all these samples. Her feeling towards the shop improved considerably. She stuffed the samples in her pocket, threw the box away, and examined the product as she walked. It was small, fifty millilitres; plastic, and yet the all-silver bottle didn't look remotely cheap. Printed on it: Clearhead Spray.

Remembering the description on the website, she regarded it dubiously. One little thing, one spray, and you don't sleep for four hours? Surely that was false advertising. In high school she'd rubbed medicated oil on her temples and still gone under.

She'd bought it, though, so she sprayed it into the air and sniffed. Better than expected. First the cool of mint, and underneath, smelt properly, a faint flower scent; with the coolness it did produce a jolt of alertness. How long it lasted was another matter.

The smell being inoffensive, she followed the instructions downstairs from the library, extended her arm, shut her eyes and sprayed her face, and then, afraid it wouldn't work, sprayed again. Whether it was suggestion or the walk outside, she did feel a good deal clearer. Now to see whether she fell asleep over a book. She sat back down in a haze of cool mint.

Yiyi gave her a look — now you'll work, presumably. Wang Xiao'ai returned a confident OK sign. She was wide awake, not a trace of sleepiness. No chance of dropping off.

Her roommate pulled a face and mouthed, "That's what you said walking in."

Wang Xiao'ai raised an eyebrow and set the spray on the desk between them. "What's that?"

She turned it so the name faced her. "A reviving spray I bought online. No falling asleep now."

Remembering the heroic history of her struggle against sleep, her roommate was unconvinced. "Medicated oil didn't work. This will?"

"Medicated oil just smells sharp. It isn't a stimulant." Wang Xiao'ai stuck to it.

Her roommate disagreed, but didn't pour cold water on it. "You've bought it. Try it." And went back to her book.

Wang Xiao'ai read too, and whether it was sheer stubbornness or the spray genuinely working, the further she read the sharper she felt, with none of the earlier fog.

Not only that: she sprayed twice again before the afternoon's lecture and felt no sleepiness at all through it. Somebody who normally went under ten minutes in didn't nod off once — and in Marxist philosophy, the dullest hour available.

Her friend beside her marvelled. "The sun's come up in the west. You didn't sleep through Marxist philosophy? Has your sleeping condition cleared up?"

Wang Xiao'ai touched the spray in her pocket, delighted. She'd done nothing differently. Could it really be this?

---

Elsewhere, Li Lan, who'd assumed she was free once the eleventh was over, had one large obstacle still in front of her: dispatch. Nearly a hundred thousand items, and Cerulean's two people plus a pregnant woman were plainly not going to manage. Zhang Lin saw the figures and hired ten strong people off the labour market on the spot, and that got the fifty thousand bottles in the office and the store, and the second fifty thousand that came in from the plant, out of the door in stages.

Fortunately couriers weren't yet as fast as they'd become; a month's wait after the eleventh was normal. Wang Xiao'ai had been lucky enough to fall near the front of the queue, and was in Beijing, which is why hers came so quickly.

Looking at the emptied office, both of them breathed out. The whole of the eleventh's orders were gone. They hadn't had to lift anything themselves, but directing it throughout had taken a great deal out of them.

An'an, at the computer talking to a customer, looked up. "Sister Zhang, Xiao Lan — the customers are all leaving good reviews, and they're all coming back, and a lot of them say a classmate sent them. The reviving effect must be genuinely good."

Zhang Lin went over, pleased. "Is it? Let me see."

An'an pulled a chair round for her and opened a window. "Look — this customer came through a classmate. She says somebody in her class sleeps through everything and hasn't slept through a single hour since she started using it. She's just bought two bottles.

"And our reviews." She opened them. "All positive."

Faking reviews wasn't yet the epidemic it would become, though it was beginning, and looking at the reviews — a hundred characters at a stretch, a dozen at least — Zhang Lin was thoroughly satisfied. "Lanlan, come and look. These are all real, not the bought sort."

Li Lan hadn't expected customers to be this generous; not one bad review. Possibly because few people had received theirs yet. Zhang Lin looked a while longer, gave the seat back and drew Li Lan into the small partitioned area. "End-of-term exams are coming up, so Clearhead should keep selling until the winter holiday's over. We ought to think about other products."

Li Lan knew its appeal was intermittent. "Yes. The samples we sent should bring some customers in. Have you any thoughts, Sister Zhang?"

Zhang Lin shook her head. She'd been on the experimental side and was moving towards management, but she'd had no training in it; even the samples had been Li Lan's idea.

She turned it over. "I'm not in a state to get about, and you're a student, and you'll be concentrating on research from now on. Neither of us knows anything about management or sales. We need a professional — though good people aren't easy to find, and I don't know whether we'll manage it." It bothered her. Li Lan had raised it before and dispatch had got in the way. Senior researchers are hard to find; senior managers no easier.

Li Lan knew. "Then raise the salary. Some money's come back in — it should be all right for a while."

Zhang Lin nodded, thinking the same. "Right. I'll put the advertisement out tomorrow."