Chapter 76

This year's Spring Festival wasn't much different from any other, except that at gatherings Li Lan and Li Jingyu were inevitably the topic. Li Lan came off lightly; everyone had long known she was good at school, so the worst of it was being marvelled at and held up to other children as an example. The one thing that left her without an answer was—

"Lanlan, your mother says you're studying medicine-making at Peking. My knees have been aching. What should I take for it?" Chen Zhi asked it cheerfully across the table.

Li Lan's heart sank. Since her mother started telling people her subject, she'd lost count. She produced a smile. "Third Aunt, I'm not studying medicine, and I'm in my first year. What would I know? Take whatever the doctor tells you."

Chen Zhi nodded. "True. Though by the time you graduate you'll about be there. We'll have a doctor in the family."

Li Lan had no strength to argue. "I'm not a doctor—"

Chen Zhi patted her shoulder. "It's much the same, isn't it? You're studying medicine-making, you're bound to know more than us."

Li Lan gave up. Everybody who learned her subject reacted the same way, which was normal enough; last time round she'd read computing and her mother had wanted her to fix the family computer.

Then, from across the table: "Didn't Li Jingyu go to Korea to learn singing? How's it going? Sing us something."

At which Li Lan's heart lifted and she allowed herself a private smile. Next to him she had it easy. Her subject was merely misunderstood, and fudging it once meant nobody minded. He was the only person in the family to have gone abroad, and at every holiday he was the star item — and while Chen Ying had sent him to Korea with great reluctance, she certainly didn't put it that way in public, and instead stressed the advantages, so by now every relative knew he'd taken leave from school to learn singing in Korea.

Then came his nightmare. Questions about Korea were bearable; what was unbearable was that whenever the room filled somebody would egg him on to sing a couple of lines, or dance a couple of steps, or failing that say something in Korean — with the result that for the next few days he greeted arrivals and then slipped out, refusing absolutely to be anywhere near a crowd.

Li Lan looked over and found him producing a textbook beaming smile. "Second Aunt, I've only just started, I haven't learned anything yet. Next time."

Chen Guixiang was disappointed. "Are you sure? Your mother says you'll be a singer. You must sing better than us."

He didn't flinch. "Second Aunt, I don't speak the language, how much can I have learned? Next time. I'll sing when I've learned properly." He'd said it enough times to be fluent, and it was true — he genuinely didn't speak the language, so not understanding was to be expected.

She didn't press, having mostly been teasing, and moved to reflection. "Of the three of you, you were the poor student. Your mother used to worry about it on the phone to me, and now it isn't so bad — you might even be a singer. You should still work, though. Go to university if you can. Look at your eldest sister at Peking, and Chengcheng in the top few. You need to try."

He nodded obediently. Experience had taught him that nodding at this point was all that was required; it ends the topic fastest.

Sure enough, seeing him earnestly agreeing, she said a few more things and then turned to Chen Zhi and something else, and only when her attention had moved did he quietly breathe out and decide that tomorrow he'd hide in a bedroom and do the homework Li Lan had set him.

Having come home late, Li Lan had two weeks before term. Two weeks, and at least term started after the tenth; Li Cheng, in her final year, had less, Yu city's final years going back a week early as usual, so she left on the sixth having barely had New Year at home. Li Jingyu, in Korea on a tourist visa, had to return every three months to renew it, and left at much the same time as Li Lan.

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She reached Beijing at midday, and it being early, dropped her case at the dormitory and took a taxi to Cerulean. A fortnight at home with nothing but theory had left her hands itching. Cerulean had gone back on the seventh — oddly, though, the office held only two researchers talking quietly, and the conversation stopped dead when she appeared.

She said hello and put the presents she'd brought on their desks, and assuming the rest were in the laboratory, asked, "Brother Wang, why only the two of you? Is Brother Liu in the laboratory?"

Wang Ning, the researcher who'd handled Clearhead II, gave an awkward laugh. "Er. No."

Seeing her look at him, he glanced towards Zhang Lin's office and lowered his voice. "Something's happened. Go and see Sister Lin, you'll find out."

The atmosphere being distinctly strange, she took Zhang Lin's present and knocked. Feng Jiang was in there too, the two of them sitting opposite each other with nothing to say, and her arrival broke the silence. Zhang Lin produced a smile. "Lanlan. You're here."

Li Lan could feel it. Even Feng Jiang, always cheerful, wore a rare and serious expression, and sighed. "Lanlan. Happy New Year."

"Happy New Year, Brother Feng, Sister Lin. What's happened?"

Zhang Lin sighed too. "Good timing. Feng Jiang and I were about to ring you. Liu Qiang gave notice a couple of days ago. He finished the handover yesterday and left."

Li Lan was surprised. "Resigned? Why?"

"The sunscreen, still." Zhang Lin explained. He hadn't given up; he'd gone on trying to persuade them to produce his sunscreen, and neither of them would agree, and after a fortnight of pulling back and forth he'd resigned the moment the holiday ended — taking his two assistants — and found somewhere else immediately.

"I'd say he'd lined it up long before. He couldn't have gone straight into it otherwise," Feng Jiang said, certain of it.

Zhang Lin's head ached. "It was foreseeable, in fairness. He was already unhappy when we said the sunscreen wouldn't do. There's no use talking about it now — finding an experienced cosmetics researcher isn't easy, and with Liu Qiang gone the sunscreen and the other new products still can't stop."

Feng Jiang's head ached too. He handled part of the recruitment and knew how hard experienced researchers were to find. Liu Qiang's sunscreen didn't suit Cerulean and the man had genuine experience; given time he'd have produced something. Somebody else would take several times as long.

So that was what was bothering them. Staffing Li Lan couldn't help with. The sunscreen she could. She thought, and took her computer out of her bag. "I was going to tell you in a few days, but I've got a preliminary result on the sunscreen. Do you want to hear it?"

Both of them, still smarting from the resignation, doubted their ears. Zhang Lin got there first. "What? What result?" Had she misheard?

Li Lan already had the machine open, and it having come up suddenly she had no slides, so she opened an experimental report and turned the screen. "The sunscreen. Here — this is the report."

They leaned in together. Feng Jiang got as far as establishing that it was based on sea buckthorn; the rest was specialist and, assembled, meant nothing to him, so he gave the computer to Zhang Lin. "This is far too technical. Lanlan, just tell me what the sunscreen does. Its characteristics."

She stripped the terminology out and summarised, and when she said it would reach SPF 50+, PA++++, he sat up with his eyes shining. "You're serious?"

The best on the market was SPF 30+, PA+++; as he understood it, a good many companies would launch new sunscreens this year and the ratings would rise a level — to roughly the SPF 40+, PA++++ of Liu Qiang's — but that was the standard the major brands would reach. Ordinary brands and the mainstream products would still be at SPF 30+, PA+++. Which was why Liu Qiang had been so confident, and why he'd found a job so quickly.

So when she said SPF 50+, PA++++, he was going to question it. Had he not known what she was like, he'd have assumed he was being had.

She nodded. "Of course I'm serious. Why would I make it up? It's only a preliminary estimate — but there's an eighty per cent chance of that standard, and the final result will take about a month." She was being modest.

He mostly believed her. How she'd done it in that time he didn't know, but the girl in front of him might genuinely be a prodigy; she'd produced Clearhead, hadn't she. Looking at her confidence, he felt abruptly a great deal lighter. "If it's true, that's wonderful. Oh — and your sunscreen doesn't have Liu Qiang's problems? Unsuitable ingredients, bringing spots on, and so on."

She looked at him oddly. "Of course not. I'm not stupid. Why would I bother researching it if it had those in it?"

He laughed. "I've got sensitive about it." If hers had carried the same faults, having a rating that high and being unable to produce it would have been unbearable. As it was, it was perfect.

While they talked, Zhang Lin had finished the report. Unlike Feng Jiang she could read it, and she'd heard the conversation. Eighty per cent chance? This was a complete report. It didn't set out the procedure, and like the Clearhead, calendula and rose reports Li Lan had shown her last year, the sea buckthorn sunscreen had plainly been made by an entirely new method.

Watching the girl talking away to Feng Jiang, Zhang Lin felt something rise in her. Cerulean was a small company with three products to its name — and she believed, without being able to say why, that in Li Lan's hands it would one day be enormous.