Chapter 73

"Hello, is that Li Cheng? There's a parcel for you. I've left it at the gatehouse — come and collect it when you can."

At midday, walking back to class after lunch, Li Cheng took the call. Her phone was Li Lan's cast-off; it did QQ and calls and nothing else, and was a great deal more convenient than no phone.

There were fifteen or twenty minutes before the rest period. "Xinxin, Li Lan's sent me something. Come with me and fetch it? There's a bit of time." Li Lan had mentioned sending something and then let it drag on, and had evidently remembered at last.

Zhao Xinxin nodded, indifferent; she had nothing on after lunch and a walk counted as exercise. "What's she sent you?"

"No idea. She said two weeks ago and it's only just come." Li Cheng complained out of habit.

At the gatehouse they found two boxes the size of shoeboxes. Li Cheng took them and bent involuntarily — heavier than expected. Zhao Xinxin got a hand underneath and was startled too. "What has she sent you? It weighs a ton."

Li Cheng grimaced. "No idea. That girl. She couldn't say what it was." Fortunately the final-year classrooms had been moved to the ground floor, and the two of them lugged it back to her desk.

They sat and got their breath back, looked at the box on the floor and said, curious, "Shall we open it?"

Li Cheng was not a woman who could leave a box shut. "Let me find something to cut it with."

A ruler out of her pencil case, and between them they slit it open, and Zhao Xinxin understood. "That's why." It was packed solid with bottles.

There was a note from Li Lan on top, in her familiar hand. This is a reviving spray. If you get sleepy in class, spray it. Split them between you, Xinxin and Wang Jing.

Li Cheng looked at it, exasperated. There were thirty or forty of them. "Another of her unlabelled concoctions? How long is this supposed to last? And not even instructions."

Said and not meant. Unlabelled they might be, but everything Li Lan produced worked, and heaven knew how she made them at university. Muttering, she counted: thirty exactly. She put ten into Zhao Xinxin's arms. "There. Li Lan's homemade unlabelled product, and it's good. Reviving. Take these."

The same Clearhead spray, and the bottles in front of Li Cheng plainly held a great deal more than the thirty-millilitre ones in Cerulean's shop — and worked better, because these weren't factory output but samples Li Lan had made herself in the laboratory, keeping a little and posting the rest.

Zhao Xinxin hadn't seen the note and was caught off guard; close as they were, she couldn't accept that many at once, and was starting to refuse when Li Cheng got in first. "Don't be silly. Li Lan makes them, they're not worth much, and I can't use this many. Besides, half of it's Wang Jing's. Come on, we'll take hers over."

She demurred twice and, finding Li Cheng immovable, gave in. "All right, then." Wang Jing was in her class next door, and Li Cheng counted out ten and took them straight over.

---

After the rest period, Li Cheng rubbed her eyes and looked listlessly at the biology teacher on the platform. He knew most of them weren't awake for the first period — biology wouldn't be scheduled there otherwise — but sleepy or not, they had to learn something, so he raised his voice a notch.

Li Cheng listened blearily to him being animated at the front. The stretch after the rest period is the worst. Catching herself nearly under, she remembered the parcel. That was it — Li Lan had said it was reviving. Her head was so thick she'd forgotten. Try it now.

She took it out, shut her eyes and sprayed her face. The fine cool droplets on her skin made her start, and cleared her a good deal, and then came the cool of the mint; she breathed in deeply and felt cool all through.

Well. She genuinely wasn't sleepy. She listened a while longer and found the sleepiness gone, and nodded, satisfied. Whatever Li Lan had cooked up this time worked as usual.

Her deskmate was looking at the platform through narrowed eyes when she caught a familiar smell beside her. Some years of mint toothpaste had her identifying it instantly — nicer than the toothpaste, but she wasn't going to mistake mint.

Oddly, having smelt it, her muddled head cleared considerably.

At the bell she put her nose up and sniffed about, and traced it to Li Cheng. "Chengcheng, what have you sprayed? Perfume?"

Li Cheng knew what she meant, having sprayed only the one thing, and waggled the bottle. "Oh, this? It isn't perfume. It's a reviving spray."

She sprayed the air, and her deskmate leaned in and sniffed and nodded. "That's it. A reviving spray, you say. Does it work?"

Li Cheng passed it over. "Well enough. I didn't sleep at all last period. Want to try?"

She didn't stand on ceremony, and sprayed with her eyes shut as instructed. And then discovered something remarkable: she who normally stayed fogged until the second period was, unprecedentedly, not sleepy.

"It does work. Li Cheng, where did you buy it? I'll get my mother to buy me some." She was delighted. Whether it was the spray or not, even a chance wasn't to be missed; final year was tight enough without losing two periods every afternoon to fog.

Li Cheng scratched her head, embarrassed. "Li Lan sent it to me. It might not be for sale."

"Oh. I see." She looked down, disappointed — and saw the open box by Li Cheng's feet, full of the same thing.

She looked at it and ventured, awkwardly, "Chengcheng — is what's in that box the same as what you lent me?"

Li Cheng nodded, and she set her jaw. "Could you sell me one?"

Li Cheng had been waiting for something considerably worse, and laughed. "I thought you were going to say something dreadful. Sell? Have one. I can't get through this many by myself."

What Li Lan had sent was her own extra-large version, and at one or two sprays a day she genuinely couldn't.

Her deskmate hadn't expected that. "Really? Thank you. I'll bring you something nice from home." Her family ran a restaurant and she always brought food back.

"Then I want your father's crisp fried pork." Remembering the man's gift for getting it crackling outside and tender inside, Li Cheng swallowed several times.

Pleased that somebody liked her father's cooking, her deskmate thumped her chest. "Done. I'll have him make plenty this time. You'll eat your fill."

Li Cheng nodded, anticipating it. "Mm."

What she hadn't anticipated was where the giving led.

"Sorry — I've hardly any left."

Looking at the disappointment outside the door, Li Cheng had lost count of how many people she'd turned down. The first, her deskmate, had been nothing; the next day another classmate wanted to buy one, and having taken no money from the first she hadn't liked to from the second; and one told ten and ten told a hundred, and a great many people had since expressed an interest in buying.

Wang Jing and Zhao Xinxin said they were nearly out too. Seeing which way it was going, Li Cheng put the last few carefully away. Not meanness — she didn't know whether Li Lan had any more, and she had to keep some for herself. A few days had taught her that Li Lan's thing worked as reliably as ever: a spray at morning reading, a spray on waking from the rest period, and you were clear all day.

Watching her turn somebody else away, a girl from her dormitory laughed. "How many times have you said that? Seriously, though, Chengcheng, ask your sister where she buys it. We'd like several more."

Sharing a room, they at least had some — though Li Cheng had meanly given the two of them one bottle. Fine for now; with months to the entrance exam it wasn't going to be enough.

"I was about to ring her." People had come one after another since evening study and kept interrupting.

The girl beside her brightened. "You should have said. Ring her — we'll deal with anyone who turns up."

Li Cheng got out her phone.

---

Peking University, ten in the evening.

Li Lan was walking back from the library. "Hello?"

"Li Lan, you've really sent me something this time."

She could tell the parcel had landed. "Well? Isn't it good?"

"That's exactly the trouble. It's too good."

The sigh at the other end baffled her. "What's wrong? Used so much you can't sleep? I said not to use it at night."

"Not that." And Li Cheng told her the whole thing.

Which explained it, and left Li Lan not knowing whether to laugh. "That's hardly trouble. You could have rung me. You can buy it on Taobao."

"Eh?" Li Cheng was stumped. "You didn't make it?"

"I did make it. It's also on sale on Taobao." She didn't mention the company. The girl was in high school; there was no point.

"…"

"You could have said. I've been telling people there weren't any and feeling awful about refusing." Li Cheng was indignant. So the whole business had been of her own making?

Li Lan declined the blame. "Don't blame me. You didn't ring, did you?"

Li Cheng knew she was in the wrong, which didn't stop her being cross. "How was I supposed to know it was for sale? There's no label on it. It looks exactly like one of your unlabelled things. Never mind — as long as it's online I'll tell everyone to buy it there. What's it called? Is it the same as the ones you sent?"

"Could you slow down? Search Cerulean Clearhead — it's the first result. It isn't as good as yours, but it's close." Hers were a small batch Li Lan had made herself, which was always going to beat the factory.

"Fine, I'll tell them. Bye." And she hung up, evidently in a hurry to spread the word.

Li Lan put her phone away as she reached the dormitory, and pushed the door open into a familiar smell — and the familiar silver object in Luo Yu's hand, in the middle of the room.

---

"My best friend gave me this. Loads of people at her university use it, and I've seen plenty in our library and study rooms. Have you seen it?"

Luo Yu was briefing the other two.

Xia Yanyan blinked and played along. "I have seen a lot of people using it lately. What is it?"

Being one of the country's best universities, life at Peking is not relaxed — tighter, if anything, and worse in exam weeks, when the twenty-four-hour seats in the canteen and the library regularly hold students working through the night. So Clearhead had arrived faster there, and by early December it was already common in Peking students' hands.

Which is why the thing wasn't unfamiliar to Xia Yanyan; she'd been seeing a canister of it on people's desks in the library and hadn't known what it was. Perfume, she'd assumed — except that surely that many people wouldn't buy the same one.

"It's the Clearhead spray everybody's using. For staying alert. It's nearly exams — one of the older girls in the student union recommended it." Luo Yu waggled it.

Which explained it. Xia Yanyan was slow to warm up, was the only computing student in the room, and had spent the term with her new computer writing code and going about largely alone; she had no interest in the student union, so her information was nothing like as current as Luo Yu's.

She was interested, and with permission picked it up. "Does it really work? Where do you buy it?"

Luo Yu nodded. "It works."

And warmed to her subject. "Two days and I genuinely don't get sleepy. Look it up if you're interested — oh, and it isn't in shops, only online; the first result with all the good reviews is the one. And Yanyan, don't spray it late at night or you may not sleep."

Smartphones not yet existing, and Xia Yanyan being a woman of action, she opened her computer, went to Taobao and searched, and the first result was what Luo Yu was holding. To be safe she opened the product page, and found the sales figures substantial and the reviews overwhelming.

She'd registered a Taobao account in high school and had bought a few things without using it much, and had never seen sales or reviews like it. Reading them, she couldn't help being curious about what the spray actually did.

Seeing her order it, Luo Yu grinned. "Xingxing and I bought two each this morning. Now exam week holds no fear. Lanlan, do you want a couple?

"No — you're alert all day anyway, you don't need it." And answered her own question before Li Lan could.

Li Lan smiled and said nothing. She'd noticed more and more Clearhead around the university over the past few days and had been rather surprised. The eleventh had shifted about a hundred thousand, but that was across the whole of Taobao; a hundred thousand is nothing. That it should catch on right around her was unexpected.

---

What neither she nor Zhang Lin had expected was that Clearhead would do far better than forecast. From the start of December it grew explosively, sales doubling daily — which by the arithmetic was about when the eleventh's buyers received theirs.

Perhaps because nothing comparable existed on the market, and December being exam week, it spread through the student population fast. And then to their parents, who don't grudge money for anything that helps their children study — some of whom learned to shop online specifically for it and bought a dozen bottles at a time, pushing the figures up sharply.

Their reviews were the most heartfelt of all. Some tried it themselves first; some put their child on it immediately; and having seen the effect, left hundred-character reviews, which by pure accident drew Cerulean a good many more potential customers.

For now the customers were students and their parents. The notion of a hundred-hour week hadn't taken hold yet, so working people bought relatively little; in a few years, Clearhead's customers would presumably be everybody.

Growth brings advantages, and one critical problem: stock.

Less a shortage of stock than none at all. After the eleventh's hundred thousand went out, neither of them had expected the momentum to hold, and the result was orders the factory couldn't keep up with.

Li Lan opened her computer, where the icon in the corner was flashing; in Cerulean's group of three, Zhang Lin and one other were talking.

Linlang: Xiao Feng, have you found a factory?

crazyJiang: Don't worry, I lined one up a couple of days ago.

Linlang: Really? Wonderful. Does it meet everything on production?

crazyJiang: It does. And while I was at it I looked at a site — I think it would suit us as a plant.

Linlang: A plant?

crazyJiang: Yes. Let's go through it properly when Lanlan's on. I think it may be time we had our own line.

crazyJiang: So — Lanlan, reply when you see this ~

crazyJiang was somebody Zhang Lin had recruited a fortnight earlier: Feng Jiang, barely thirty, back from America last year, previously at a Fortune 500 company and gone by his own choice — because, he said, he couldn't stand the hamburgers any longer.

His one flaw was that his capacity for talking matched his capacity for work. Zhang Lin had hired him for the latter, having interviewed a man who turned up in shorts and flip-flops. Talkative he was; dependable he also was, and it was Feng Jiang joining in December that kept Cerulean from going badly wrong mid-course.

crazyJiang: Also, Lanlan, I'd suggest developing some new products. Cerulean's only proper skincare line is calendula, which doesn't suit summer, and we ought to have sun protection. Develop now and the advertising lands nicely in April or May.

Seeing him get to business, Li Lan typed. You're right. A lighter summer toner and lotion needs looking at, and sun protection too. I'll produce some candidates once exams are over, and we can validate the new products over the holiday.

She hadn't been idle in the meantime either. Her L1 products now scanned above ninety per cent completion, which meant she could try L2. L2 is slightly harder than L1 and still nothing medicinal — it simply moves from basic hydration to the rather more complicated business of whitening and sun protection.

Whitening and sun protection. She went through the plant information stored in her head. There were suitable candidates; finding one that wasn't heavy while still giving a good protection factor would take some work.