Chapter 92

Spring Festival being close, her parents stayed a week and went home. Li Jingyu would have come too, but he had training to continue, and was left alone to see them off.

Chen Ying looked back at him waving on his own beyond the security gate, and wiped her eyes where he couldn't see. He hadn't said outright what the training was like, and after all these years in business her powers of observation were well developed and she'd seen straight through the easy manner. Having made his decision, though, there was nothing for her to do but bear it.

Watching her mother's face, Li Lan wondered for the first time whether her own decision had been wrong. Then again, whose life is easy? She had a cheat behind her and still worked every day to learn more and turn the shop's contents into real things. Li Cheng too; five hundred thousand followers hadn't come easily, and Li Lan had seen her up past midnight over photographs and edits more than once that week.

Which hardened her again. Hard work and tiredness now beat having nothing to show later. Neither she nor Li Cheng intended to scrape along, or to have their parents still worrying about them in old age — so Li Jingyu would have to be tired for a while. She went and put her arms round her mother and patted her shoulder. "Mum. Two more years."

Chen Ying rubbed her eyes, embarrassed at being held and finding it not unpleasant. Her daughter had never hugged her before. No wonder people on television hug each other whether they're happy or sad.

Li Cheng saw the expression too, and was thrown by the sudden embrace. Why had it turned sentimental? And with all these people watching. She was not joining in. Far too embarrassing.

Her eyes moved, and she folded her arms and affected indignation to lighten it. "Honestly, Mum. I was far more tired than him during my exams. Don't you go favouring the boy and feeling sorry only for Li Jingyu."

That made Chen Ying laugh. She disengaged and swatted her lightly. "Wretched girl. When have I ever favoured the boy? I felt for you at your exams too."

And then, in case Li Lan minded, added, "And for your sister." Catching the satisfaction on Li Lan's face, she gave up feeling sorry for Li Jingyu altogether. Three bowls to hold level. Exhausting.

Li Quan, seeing his wife recover, relaxed and moved over. With the three of them together he hadn't liked to intrude, and in a busy airport a sudden group embrace would have been mortifying, so he'd hung back.

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It was eight in the evening when they got home, and after a day of travelling Chen Ying had no energy for talking and went straight up to bed. Seeing her daughters starting up the stairs with their cases, she yawned. "What are you doing? Fetch them tomorrow. Aren't you tired at this hour?"

Li Cheng heaved hers up. "No." Her mother didn't know about the Weibo account, and she'd quietly bought a great deal of clothing and cosmetics that week; unless she hid it tonight there'd be a lecture when it came out.

Deep winter, and by the time she reached the bedroom she'd sweated through. She dropped the case and didn't want to move. "God, I'm dead." That case was twenty-odd kilos at least, and Li Lan hadn't helped with any of it.

Li Lan set hers down beside it — hers wasn't heavy, so she had some energy left, and no mercy. "Serves you right. Buying that much." Not only Li Cheng's case; Li Lan's held a good deal of Li Cheng's cosmetics too, which is why she'd brought hers up tonight at all, and only at her sister's insistence.

Seeing her collapsed on the bed, Li Lan kicked her. Li Cheng rolled over with it and lay there like a turtle, and lifted her head. "You don't understand. This is professionalism. This is the basic standard of a serious creator."

Having shouted it she felt recovered, got up and laid the contents of both cases out on the floor by category, and was humming halfway through when she found a square black box.

"What's this? I didn't buy that."

She turned it over and found a camera on the packaging. She had no memory of buying one, so it must be Li Lan's; assuming their things had got mixed, she put it on the desk, and then realised she probably ought to replace her own camera — except that she had no money.

She had savings, in fact; with followers came advertising, and having started earning she'd stopped asking her parents for an allowance. Shanghai isn't cheap and there wasn't much she needed money for beyond things to film with, so she'd put a little aside. Then Li Lan had proposed Korea, and having kept a month's living costs she'd spent the rest on clothes and cosmetics, and a camera had never once crossed her mind.

Holding it, she wondered where Li Lan got that kind of money. She'd stopped taking an allowance because Li Lan had stopped asking for one at university — this trip included; she'd overheard her parents offering to reimburse her and Li Lan had refused, and the flights and hotel were entirely hers.

She'd meant to ask at some point, but had been too happy shopping in Korea to remember. She went over to where Li Lan was unpacking. "Li Lan, can I ask you something?"

Li Lan took clothes out and glanced up. "What?"

Li Cheng picked the camera up. "This is yours, isn't it? When did you buy a camera?"

Li Lan glanced at the box. "A while ago. Why?"

Li Cheng hedged. "It's just — well — I film things, don't I. Could I borrow it for a few days while I'm home?"

She'd considered borrowing money for a new one, and Li Lan had paid for the whole trip; she didn't know how much money Li Lan had, and she was still a student, and the flights and hotel had come to over ten thousand, so she assumed there wasn't much left and didn't ask.

Li Lan refused flatly. "No."

Li Cheng hadn't expected that, and was raising a trembling finger to denounce her for having no sisterly feeling whatever when Li Lan went on, unhurried. "It's for you. Why would you borrow it?"

"What?"

Li Cheng gaped, and Li Lan repeated it. "It's yours. It's nearly your birthday — an early present." Li Cheng's birthday is the seventeenth of the first lunar month, under a month away.

She lit up, hugged the camera and blew Li Lan a kiss. "Mwah. Dear sister, thank you."

It was a mirrorless — fewer functions than an SLR and small with it, about the size of a compact, which suited filming, particularly with her still at university.

Watching her fall on it, and looking at the things spread across the floor, Li Lan thought about the unboxing and shopping-haul videos that would come later. "You could try a haul or an unboxing video with all this."

Li Cheng looked blank. "What's an unboxing video?"

Short video was barely starting and there wasn't much of it, and in a few years it would be another matter; having watched an enormous quantity of it, Li Lan could talk about it fluently without ever having made any, and explained what an unboxing was and how you shoot one. Being a minor internet personality, Li Cheng grew more alert the longer she listened, because this was exactly what had been bothering her. Most people on Weibo took photographs, retouched them and posted them, or shot a pretty advertisement-like clip of a few dozen seconds; with luck it brought traffic, and there were far too many people doing it and standing out was hard.

Li Cheng's videos already had something of the later form about them, or a make-up video wouldn't have won her that many followers. She'd started meaning to record her life, found several videos had unexpectedly attracted people, and then, with followers, drifted into photographs like everybody else and stopped filming. Which had looked fine; the followers kept growing steadily.

Except that she'd noticed those posts drew few comments and all the same ones, while the handful of videos — ordinary-looking, not remotely pretty — drew livelier comments and more people, and a good many of her followers had come through them.

So she'd been at something of a loss, and Li Lan's remarks opened another window: perhaps she could try something different. As Li Lan said, it needn't be beautiful throughout; she could record a day, share a make-up routine. Her sense of what to shoot got clearer and clearer.

In the end she put the camera down and made Li Lan tell her more, and Li Lan, in the mood for talking, lay on the bed and talked until the small hours. The next morning Li Cheng got up early with shadows under her eyes and yawned her way through drawing up a two-year plan.

Where Li Lan got these peculiar ideas she didn't know, and that Li Lan was cleverer than her she'd conceded after the high school entrance exam. So the rest of the holiday — Li Lan's one leisurely holiday — disappeared into that piece of talking out of turn.

Because after that conversation Li Cheng wheedled and dragged her into being cameraman and planner. Unable to shake her off, Li Lan helped with a few and then fled; she only knew so much, most of it talk, and the work came back to Li Cheng in the end.

Gratifyingly, the videos she posted were well received and the follower growth hit a small peak, which motivated her further, and she put more of every day into shooting and editing. By the end of the holiday the quality had risen and steadied, and something like a style of her own had appeared.