Chapter 91

Li Lan and Li Cheng pushed their cases out of the terminal, glanced round and found a very tall figure waving in the crowd.

"Over here!"

He'd spotted them coming out among the arrivals at the same moment.

The two of them walked over and circled him twice, and Li Cheng laughed and slapped his shoulder and turned to her sister. "Li Lan, don't you think he's got better-looking?"

Li Lan nodded, smiling. "A bit." In either life, her impression of Li Jingyu had been a boy with a crew cut who dressed for convenience; seeing this one in a black down jacket that still contrived to look slim, she realised his life had genuinely changed.

Seeing only the two of them, he asked, "Where are Mum and Dad?"

Satisfied, Li Cheng got her phone out and arranged herself for a photograph. "Behind us. Come on, photos first."

He obligingly bent down and made a peace sign at the lens.

She held the phone at several angles, pulled Li Lan in and took a dozen before putting it away, and turned to find their parents arriving.

"You're taking photographs? Take one of me and my son." Chen Ying joined in enthusiastically, towing him into place.

Li Cheng took it and Chen Ying examined the result, unsatisfied. "Come along, all of us together at the airport."

Half an hour later — "All right, Mum, the car's waiting" — Li Jingyu cut off further photography, and she stopped with visible regret. "Let's go, then, we mustn't keep them."

Behind them, Li Cheng gave a sheepish smile under Li Lan's stare. She'd forgotten their mother was a photograph fiend.

"Why is Korea all little squat houses? Where are the tall buildings?" In the taxi, her parents discussed the passing streets.

Li Jingyu turned round from the front to explain, and Li Cheng in the back looked out with great interest and then said excitedly, "Li Lan, do you think we'll see a celebrity?"

Li Lan had her eyes shut. "No."

Li Cheng sat back. "Hmph. You've never been here either."

She quietened down after a while, and Li Lan opened her eyes to find her editing a photograph in complete absorption. "What are you doing? Aren't you tired?" They'd flown at eight, been at the airport before dawn and barely slept.

"No," Li Cheng said, perfunctorily, then clicked her tongue in dissatisfaction and changed the filter.

Li Lan watched her go through several and settle on the first one. "You've — a great deal of time on your hands."

"You wouldn't understand." She saved it, ready to post to Weibo.

Knowing she'd been on Weibo for a while, Li Lan asked idly, "How many followers have you got?"

Photograph finished, Li Cheng was willing to talk, and waved the phone at her, pleased with herself. "Five hundred thousand."

Li Lan was surprised. "That many? I thought you'd only just started."

"I registered before term started." She'd set it up on reaching university, about eighteen months ago.

Li Lan reached for the phone, curious. "Let me see what gets five hundred thousand followers."

Li Cheng gave her a sideways look and pulled her hand back. "No. Look on your own phone." When she'd started, she'd asked Li Lan to install Weibo and follow her, and Li Lan hadn't even downloaded it. She wasn't showing her now.

Li Lan was silent a moment, then threw herself across and took it. "Passcode."

Li Cheng gave her a wounded look and recited four digits.

Li Lan opened Weibo, found the profile, and there were indeed over five hundred thousand.

The first post was a video shot on a phone on her first day of term — the sort of thing that would acquire a name of its own in a few years. Plainly a first attempt: the picture was very unsteady, and later ones improved and were edited. The content was mixed: videos, carefully retouched photographs, and a good many make-up tutorials.

Li Cheng leaned in to narrate. "My first video that did well was this one." She scrolled down to a make-up video recorded in a dormitory a year ago.

Li Lan played it. She'd evidently recorded it on her phone while her roommates were out, and the quality was ordinary, arguably poor — an iPhone camera being what it was — and even so you could see how well made-up the girl in it looked. Most of the comments were positive.

"And then the followers kept climbing, and now it's five hundred thousand." She retrieved the phone. "Right, you've seen it, give it back."

Li Lan was curious to see her put it away without posting. "You're not posting?" What was all that editing for?

"You don't understand. You can't post nine photographs at once. There's no hurry." Her posting was irregular, and her followers knew she was a student and didn't demand a schedule, so she didn't update often.

---

With family visiting, Li Jingyu had asked his training manager for leave in advance. The manager knew his circumstances; there weren't many foreigners in the company and he was the youngest, and while the man was strict he didn't make difficulties, and gave him several days readily.

"Mum, this is our dormitory." Luggage dropped at the hotel, he took them to see it. He hadn't wanted to, but his parents kept wanting to see how he lived, and he couldn't hold out. Fortunately his roommates were all at the company training.

Knowing he shared, and not wanting to intrude on the others, Li Lan and Li Cheng didn't go up and so didn't see it — though from the change in their parents' faces going in and coming out, Li Lan guessed the conditions were unremarkable.

Li Cheng missed the forced smile on their mother's face and was about to go and ask about it tactlessly; Li Lan caught her sleeve from behind. You talk too much.

Then she saw it too. They'd gone up cheerful and faintly expectant and come down silent, with false smiles. Plainly it wasn't up to much.

"Son, why don't you come home?" Chen Ying couldn't help it. She'd known it wouldn't be good and hadn't expected this. What was it up there? Not even a bed — bedding on the floor and that was that, and two people in a room the size of their kitchen, in which she and Li Quan had had difficulty turning round.

"Come home for what? It's small. It won't hurt a boy to rough it a bit." Li Quan felt it too, and as a father held that a little hardship when you're young does no harm.

Li Jingyu nodded and helped. "Mum, I'm hardly ever in it, I only sleep there. And no bed is normal — you've seen the Korean dramas, it's the same in those."

Li Lan hadn't gone up and could see perfectly well what the matter was. "Exactly. Chengcheng's dormitory and mine are nothing special either. Think of it as university accommodation." Li Cheng nodded, rather curious about what it looked like.

Chen Ying sighed. It was a passing thing; he was young and alone abroad and she couldn't help worrying.

"Jingyu, you've been here two years. How much longer? Living in that little room the whole time?" Since he couldn't abandon it halfway, she changed tack.

He had no idea; the company decides. Seeing the worry on both faces, and thinking of what circulated among the trainees, he lied, and said it confidently. "Soon. I showed you the video last month, didn't I — the company says this year or next year I can debut. Then you'll see me on television."

Neither of them understood any of it and believed him. Chen Ying looked relieved. "Good, good. And if you can't manage the — debut — then we do as we agreed and you come straight home. You're in your first year of high school, you've two years to the exam, there's still time to prepare."

Li Quan nodded. "Yes. You can't put all your time into this. We'll give it another year or two."

He nodded on the surface and felt hollow. He knew his own marks. And he had no idea whether the rumour about a new boy group was accurate.

Li Lan watched him and thought. Evidently there was something he hadn't said — and she didn't know whether he'd debut either, there being no precedent to go on. Better to prepare for both. She might be looking at entrance exam papers again in a couple of years.

Her parents came round quickly; you can't stay low the whole of a holiday, and a day of sightseeing restored them. Li Lan and Li Cheng suspected that having seen several other people's homes, they'd compared and concluded his was in fact all right, and steadied.

The after-effect was that, feeling he lived badly and tracing it ultimately to the country's inadequacy, they turned their fire on Korea, and spent several days running it down comprehensively, everything coming back to how it compared unfavourably with home. The three of them felt the patriotism blazing and expected it to burn brighter still on their return.

Li Cheng, by contrast, took to the place — food and accommodation excepted. What pleased her most was cosmetics on sale everywhere; being half a beauty creator she was conscientious about it, bought a great deal, and had Li Jingyu book her into the same salon the Korean idols reportedly use, to see whether their make-up artists were as good as claimed. Having tried it she found them ordinary, which added one more voice to the trip's chorus of complaint.