Chapter 86

It was past one when the meeting ended and the room emptied. Meng Wei came over as Li Lan was packing her bag, smiling. "Li Lan, I've a question about your paper. Do you mind sparing a moment?"

"Not at all. What is it, Brother Meng?"

He arranged his words first. "You know our directions overlap. Listening to you, I think some of your methods might be useful to me. Would you mind telling me the principles involved?"

She'd expected something worse; the request was reasonable, and she agreed without much hesitation. "Of course. Which part?"

He relaxed. "It's getting late — shall I write it up and email you?"

She nodded, and he thanked her and left the room looking considerably lighter.

---

It wasn't yet two when she got downstairs, and August had produced no coolness whatever. With nothing on for the afternoon she decided to take a taxi to Cerulean. It was nearly six months since the sunscreen and she'd been in once. Not that it made much difference; the research there was running properly now, and while sun protection was still the flagship, new products were entering observation or trials in sequence.

Feng Jiang and Zhang Lin sent her development documents from time to time, so she kept up with it without going in. Zhang Lin's side hadn't changed greatly in six months. Feng Jiang's had been transformed.

As head of sales and management, he'd recently overhauled the product lines: three tiers of skincare, the entry tier named Botanic, consisting entirely of Li Lan's early natural plant products built on calendula and rose. Cost and technique being what they were, Botanic was positioned as affordable, and while it hadn't exploded like the sunscreen, its sales grew steadily and its repeat custom was exceptional.

The middle tier was Bright Jade — whitening, brightening, correcting sallowness — and the tier the company would push. Three of its products had finished trials and entered observation: the toner, lotion and serum of the Red Jade range.

Red Jade's raw material was still rose. Other companies' patents meant niacinamide, the strongest whitening agent, couldn't be used freely, and Cerulean had Li Lan's work on rose's whitening properties; on the strength of it Zhang Lin had chosen to build the new products around the unsaturated fatty acids and omega-3 linolenic acid in rosehip oil.

To find the best rose for it they went through every variety at home and abroad, and found the Bulgarian damask best, and to guarantee quality Zhang Lin had gone to Bulgaria herself and signed with the best rose farm there.

The top tier was named with brutal directness — Rejuvenate — and had one principle, that the goods should live up to the name and genuinely turn back the clock. Some exaggeration involved, obviously. Feng Jiang's standards for it being what they were, Bright Jade had products in observation while Rejuvenate, being technically complex and difficult, was still at the starting line. Or put differently: it had a name and nothing else.

As for Clearhead and the sunscreen, the two products that got Cerulean off the ground: Clearhead went under the household brand Ease, and the sunscreen became a brand of its own under the cosmetics label Rouge. Separate camps, and at present each a general with no army.

So Cerulean was a company of fewer than fifty people with the skeleton of a large one — and Feng Jiang believed that in time these lines would prove too few rather than too many.

---

She arrived as the rest period ended. There were twice as many people in the laboratory as before, in sharp contrast to the emptiness of a few months ago, and with numbers came structure: Zhang Lin had divided the researchers into groups by product, rather than everybody doing a bit of everything.

Forewarned, Zhang Lin wasn't surprised to see her, and couldn't resist. "Our busy woman has deigned to visit."

Li Lan didn't mind. "Shall I go?"

Zhang Lin got up and took her arm. "I know you're at university and haven't time. It was a joke.

"And since you're here, don't rush off. Come and see something."

She towed her downstairs, filling her in as they went. Red Jade, in observation, had just come back with feedback: the testers reported a marked effect, particularly on whitening and repair after sun exposure. She and Feng Jiang had agreed a first trial production in September, and she was taking Li Lan to see the packaged product.

Li Lan assumed the laboratory. Zhang Lin's destination was the store, where she took a box out of a cabinet and said, mysteriously, "Lanlan, what's this?"

Li Lan looked at her, unimpressed. Sister. Do you remember that you have a child?

Zhang Lin read the look and returned it silently. What of it? I'm young at heart. There were no outsiders here and she wasn't Director Zhang. It was fine.

Li Lan gave up and guessed a couple of times.

Which satisfied her; she hadn't actually wanted a guessing game, only to tease. "You're not even trying. All right, look."

She opened the box on three red bottles, a red that took the eye immediately. Li Lan understood at once. "The packaging?"

"Yes. It came a few days ago and everybody thinks it's lovely. What do you think?" She set the box down and picked one up. "That's the toner. Look at the design, look at the colour. Money well spent." Li Lan took all three out and examined them: the toner conventional, the serum in a dropper bottle because there's so little of it, the lotion with a pump.

The packaging had been developed alongside the product, and to get the quality of it Feng Jiang had reportedly gone back to the supplier no fewer than ten times over the red alone, thereby securing a place in their private top ten most difficult clients.

His difficulty had produced results. The finished thing felt expensive: the red of the glass was not a vulgar red but carried something upmarket about it, entirely in keeping with the name, and Cerulean's monogram was stamped on the bottle in a way that suggested considerable value.

"Doesn't it look expensive?" Zhang Lin looked at them too. Never assume packaging doesn't matter; it's part of a product's added value, and in a world that judges by appearance — not only in people, but in everything — it is sometimes better at attracting people than the product. Plain packaging of the old kind gets mocked and forgotten.

Then she showed her the other lines. With the tiers overhauled, Botanic's calendula and rose ranges had been redesigned too, and while they looked a good deal better than before, after Red Jade the impact was rather less.

Then she took her to see what was in development. Skincare cycles being long, Red Jade aside there were no finished products, so she took her mainly to the cosmetics group and the foundation they were working on. A foundation sounds simple — oils, water, pigment — and making a good one takes some doing, and the group's target was making it last through dry autumn and winter weather without drying the skin.

Li Lan knew that in a few years foundation would be the fastest-growing category in cosmetics, with potential no worse than skincare, and when the three of them had discussed what to develop next she'd suggested it.

Zhang Lin's phone buzzed continuously throughout. As head of the laboratory her workload was no lighter than Feng Jiang's, and with Red Jade going to market everything downstream had to be dealt with. Cerulean now ran on Feng Jiang facing outward and Zhang Lin facing in; founding it, Li Lan had never expected to find two partners this good.

Feng Jiang was a partner now too — though with what she had planned Li Lan had to keep control of the company, so there was no more equity to give, and like Zhang Lin he held twenty per cent.

---

It was about eight when she started back, and on the way Wang Jing rang.

"Lanlan, ten o'clock tomorrow morning, and don't you dare be late." Full-throated from the first syllable.

"Naturally. How was today?"

Talking four or five days ago, Wang Jing had said she'd come to Beijing with her family a week early, which made today the first day of enrolment; she'd been here some days.

"Where did I go? I spent the whole morning doing paperwork — enrolling, finding the dormitory, collecting my training uniform, and in this heat. I nearly fainted." She rattled through the day.

Li Lan consoled her, amused. "Normal. I spent a day in the sun too."

Which encouraged her. "Beijing is far too hot, though. And you'll never guess — my parents wanted to climb the Great Wall. In this weather. Climb the Great Wall."

From the resentment Li Lan could picture her clutching the phone and fuming. Thanks to the saying that you're nobody until you've climbed it, everybody visiting Beijing for the first time wants to — her own parents had insisted last year over all three children's objections and had nearly gone down with heatstroke, and even so her grandparents, unable to manage it, had looked regretful.

Complaint delivered, Wang Jing re-emphasised tomorrow. Li Lan sighed. "Peking is west, Communication is east, and they're miles apart. You insist on meeting? In this heat?"

"What heat?" Wang Jing, having just complained about the Great Wall in this weather, objected loudly. "Li! Lan! Lan! You're heartless. A whole summer and you didn't see me once, and now I'm in Beijing and you say that."

Li Lan held the phone further away, and when she'd finished, soothed her. "I only meant you must be tired, after all those days out."

"I don't care. I thought we'd meet over the summer and either you were busy or I was travelling." She was genuinely aggrieved. She'd offered to visit and Li Lan had been at the university; when Li Lan was home, she was travelling; and when she got back, Li Lan had gone. Two months and they hadn't met once, when she'd been planning things to do together before the exams had even finished.

Circumstance was partly to blame — and there had been a few days when both of them were at home, and she'd offered to come over, and Li Lan had said that since they'd both be in Beijing they could meet at the start of term and needn't bother separately. Wang Jing had huffed at that. Look at that. And why does one eat lunch and dinner after breakfast, then? All that time and Lanlan hadn't missed her at all? Her feelings had taken a serious blow.

She finished sourly. "Hmph. Have you found other friends at university and put me aside?"

Li Lan had a strange sense of the conversation becoming familiar. Wasn't this Meng Wei on the phone to his girlfriend all last term?

She shook the thought off. "One remark and look where you've got to."

"I don't care. Tomorrow's arranged and you're coming." Only with the promise did Wang Jing hang up, satisfied.

Li Lan looked at the call log and smiled. Wang Jing had the same energy as ever, and after six months she'd missed her — which was odd, given a single year as deskmates, and they'd been unexpectedly well matched.

Today being the first day of enrolment, she rang Li Cheng, who'd be enrolling about now; she'd gone to Shanghai with their parents a week before term, and Li Lan, at the critical last stage of the experiments, hadn't gone.

She hadn't gone, and plenty of others had. Zhao Xinxin's university being in Shanghai too, the two families had travelled together. Li Cheng sounded cheerful on the phone and didn't mind Li Lan's absence — possibly connected to the Apple phone Li Lan had given her, receipt of which had made her side of their calls purely flattering for some time.

---

At twenty to ten the next morning Li Lan reached the meeting point early. Being so far apart, they'd compromised on somewhere in the middle.

"Lan—lan—"

She turned to find Wang Jing, dressed in every colour available, trotting towards her.

Eyes stinging, Li Lan looked at her. "Stop. What is that combination?" Wang Jing was young and pale enough to carry it; on anybody else it would have been a road accident.

"Well? Isn't it nice?" She turned round. "I saw it and knew at once."

Li Lan hedged. "It is nice. Just rather bright."

Wang Jing gave her a look. "Bright, nothing. You've no eye at all." Friends this long, she knew exactly what Li Lan's eye was worth: a sensitivity to fashion of approximately zero.

Fine. As long as you're happy.

Wang Jing took her arm and looked up. "Come on, shopping first. I was making my bed yesterday and found I'm short of all sorts of things. My mother gave me money to buy them." The larger items she'd bought near the university; today was small things.

She chattered the entire way, and by the end even Li Lan's mouth was dry — because Wang Jing asked what she should watch out for at university, and Li Lan picked out the important things, and once the tap is open it doesn't shut. It was certainly the most she'd talked in six months.

"Lanlan, when shall we meet next?" Wang Jing looked at her plaintively as they separated. A new place and new roommates had unsettled her, and being with Li Lan today had let her relax, and the prospect of going back to face them was unwelcome. Alone in the room after her parents left yesterday she'd been anxious; it was the furthest she'd been from home, and the roommate who'd arrived hadn't looked good-tempered.

Li Lan thought. "I don't know. You won't get out during military training — and if you did you'd have no energy for shopping." Wang Jing's stamina had always been poor; a week of it at school had half killed her, and university training would take a good deal more.

That deflated her. She hated military training and knew perfectly well she wouldn't be up to a day out. "True. After it's over, then. Oh — and National Day isn't long after term starts. We could go home together."

Li Lan made a noise, and didn't mention that she didn't go home except in the holidays. It could wait.

Back at the dormitory she got a message from Wang Jing — genuine insecurity, presumably — and they talked most of the evening before she stopped, saying a new roommate wanted to chat and she'd message later. Which meant Luo Yu, just back, found Li Lan smiling at her phone and typing continuously, assumed something romantic had happened over the summer, and interrogated her about it at length.