I got home just after six.
My daughter was already at the table, trial papers spread out everywhere, the good desk lamp dragged over from her room for the occasion.
"How's it going?" I asked.
She didn't look up. "Don't ask."
Fair enough.
I put the kettle on and started on dinner. Nothing complicated, just enough to get something warm into her between papers.
When I brought her tea over, the lamp was angled straight at her face, the way it always is when she's reading something for the fourth time.
That's when I noticed.
A few small white spots along her forehead, right where her fringe usually covers. Nothing dramatic. Just visible, under that particular light, in a way they wouldn't be under the normal ceiling light.
I didn't say anything about it. She didn't need one more thing pointed out to her this week.
I just quietly noticed, the way you notice tiredness in someone's eyes before they've said a word about it.
Exams do that. Late nights, skipped meals, the same worried expression held for weeks at a time. It shows up somewhere eventually.
I went back to the kitchen and finished the dishes, but I kept thinking about it.
Upstairs, in the bathroom, the bottle Ninuo had given me was still sitting where I'd left it weeks ago. Full size, not one of those little trial ones — she doesn't really do samples, she brings the real thing or nothing at all. ageLOC Activating Cleanser, the normal-to-combination one.
I'd been meaning to try it properly. Tonight seemed like as good a night as any.
I used it with the LumiSpa, small circles, no pressing, the way I'd seen it done a dozen times on Xiaohongshu by now.
Two minutes. That's all it takes, apparently.
It felt nice. Slow, in a day that hadn't been slow anywhere else.
I went back downstairs with a towel still round my neck.
"Hey," I said, keeping it light. "Want to try something? Two minutes. Not a big deal, just wash your face properly instead of the wet wipe thing you do at midnight."
She glanced up, suspicious. "Is this a skincare ambush?"
"It's a break," I said. "From the paper. That's all."
She looked at the clock, then at the paper, then back at me.
"Maybe later," she said, and went back to her highlighter.
I almost laughed. Where she'd picked that phrase up from, I couldn't say.
I left the bottle on the bathroom shelf where she'd see it, and didn't push it any further.
Later would come, or it wouldn't.
I went back to the dishes, and let the kitchen light do what the desk lamp had done an hour earlier — show me exactly how tired we both were, and not much else.