Saturday.
Quiet after eleven, the way Saturdays go once the early rush clears out.
Aunty Deng came in around then, same as most fortnights, her trolley bag already half full from the Asian grocer two doors down.
Fish oil first — the same Australian brand as always, the only one her mother trusts. Calcium after that, the big tub, not the small one — her mother goes through it faster than she can send it. DHA for the grandson, though nobody's ever quite explained to me why a six-year-old needs it.
Boxed it all up the way I always do for her — bubble wrap round the glass bottles, the customs form half filled in before she even asks, the Quanzhou address copied straight off the last one.
She mentioned her niece then, almost in passing. Said the niece had been on Xiaohongshu again, sent her a video — some little face machine, blue light, a brand name she couldn't quite say right. Wanted to know if I could get one, post it over with everything else, save her mother the trouble of buying it there.
Told her I didn't carry anything like that. True enough — nothing on my own shelves does more than sit in a bottle.
She waved that off, said she'd assumed I could just order it in, the way I do the fish oil.
Had to explain the rest slowly, working it out myself as I went. Even if I could get my hands on one, it's not really a parcel thing. Skincare gadgets — anything with a battery, a circuit board — don't move the same way a bottle of calcium does. They get opened at customs over there, taxed properly, not the quiet pass-through everything else on my shelf gets. Heard it more than once over the years, running this shop — someone always finds out the hard way, paying nearly the price of the thing again just in duty before the box gets anywhere near the door.
Aunty Deng did the maths out loud, the way she does with everything. Said if the tax alone came close to the price of another one of the machine, may as well tell her mother to just buy it there, if she wants it that badly.
Agreed with her. Meant it too.
Finished taping the box while she was still shaking her head about it, more amused than annoyed. Wrote the weight on the customs slip, same three items as always, nothing on the list that wasn't already sitting on my own shelves.
Stood there afterward, box done, tape gun still warm in my hand, and noticed something odd about how easily all of that had come out of me. Not the tax part, exactly — that's just something you pick up, running a shop like this long enough. More the shape of it. How sure I sounded, explaining something I'd never actually looked into properly, just absorbed from years of parcels and complaints and customs forms.
Realised, taping the last corner down, that I already had a clear line for this, without ever sitting down and deciding it. My shelf is my shelf — fish oil, calcium, all of it grown or made right here, the whole reason anyone bothers shipping it home in the first place. Gadgets, machines, anything with a screen or a light on it, was never going to end up back there, video or no video. Hadn't planned that. Just noticed, standing there, that I already knew it.
Carried it out the back for pickup, Aunty Deng still muttering about her niece and her videos on the way out the door.
Stood a minute longer than I needed to, going over the list in my head — fish oil, calcium, DHA — wondering, not for the first time, what else people assume I can just order in.
Locked up a little after five, parcel gone, till counted twice out of habit.
Different thing altogether, on the drive home. The order I'd left open in a tab since Friday — three names typed in, nothing sent — still sitting there, untouched all week. Would finally get onto Ninuo about it tonight, once dinner was sorted. Get the doses right before I pressed anything.