Thursday, later.
Kettle still hadn't been touched.
I sat back down at the same table, phone in one hand, laptop open in front of me, because reading anything that actually matters on a five-inch screen has never worked for me.
Ninuo's link was already there, sitting in the message thread like it had been waiting patiently the whole time we talked.
I'd braced myself for something long. A form with a hundred fields, boxes about goals and five-year plans, the kind of thing that makes you feel like you've signed up for more than you meant to.
It wasn't that.
Name. Email. Address. A box for Ninuo's ID, already filled in before I'd even reached it — the sponsor field she'd mentioned, sitting there quiet and unremarkable, like a return address on an envelope.
Five minutes. Maybe less.
I sat looking at the confirmation screen longer than the five minutes had taken to fill it in, half expecting something else to happen. Nothing did. Just a small welcome message, and underneath it, prices that had all quietly dropped by twenty percent — mine to see now, mine to use.
I hadn't quite believed her about the discount until I watched the numbers change in front of me.
Ninuo had mentioned, back at the café on Rowe Street, that most people don't start with the skincare at all. Start small, she'd said. A tube of AP 24® toothpaste. The little Scion® roll-on for under the arms. Nothing anyone has to think twice about buying.
I hadn't really looked at either of them properly until tonight. Ordinary-looking things, once you actually stop and read the packaging instead of half-hearing Ninuo talk about them over coffee.
And then, somewhere between the toothpaste and the roll-on, I thought of my daughter's formal.
Ten days had already thinned down to not much more than a week now, and I still hadn't sorted her shoes, let alone anything for after — the little favour bags her friends have started giving each other this year, a biscuit, a lip gloss, that sort of thing, nothing expensive, just something to say I thought of you.
A tube of toothpaste seemed like a strange thing to put in a formal favour bag. I know that.
But a little roll-on, wrapped properly, tucked in next to whatever else she puts together — that felt almost sensible. Small. Useful. Not a pitch to anybody, just a nice thing a friend's mum sent along.
I sat there working out numbers in my head. How many friends. How many bags. Whether wrapping paper from Coles would look cheap next to it, or whether nobody at seventeen actually notices things like that anymore.
Didn't order anything. Not tonight.
Just sat with the tabs still open, the kettle stone cold behind me, wondering if this was what a good start actually looked like — not a plan, not a business, just two small ordinary things and a girl about to walk into a hall full of people she's known since Year 7.
I don't know yet. I closed the laptop before I'd decided.