Saturday.
We got to Chatswood right on eleven — the same building above the bakery, the same narrow stairwell, the smell of warm sugar following us up before we'd even reached the door.
Ninuo was already there, mid-sentence with Mei when we walked in. She caught my eye, wrapped up whatever she was saying, and told us she couldn't stay — somewhere else to be that morning, she'd only swung by to say hello before we went in.
"Neck and back," I said to Mei, before Ninuo was even properly out the door. "Nothing dramatic. She's just been hunched over books for weeks."
"Already told me," Mei said, not looking up from the booking sheet. "Ninuo texted me last night."
That's the thing about her. She's never in a room long enough to explain herself, and somehow everything's already been arranged before she leaves it.
While my daughter was in with the therapist, Mei and I ended up talking properly for the first time — usually it's Ninuo doing most of the talking, Mei just working quietly in the background.
"You're not doing this too? The Nu Skin thing?" she asked, like it had only just occurred to her to check.
I said no.
"Honestly, seems like such a waste," she said, wiping down the counter without really needing to. "Knowing someone like Ninuo — that successful — and not building alongside her."
I laughed it off. Said something about the shop keeping me busy enough as it is.
But it sat there after she said it. It's not the first time the thought has crossed my mind. Watching Ninuo these past few weeks — the calls she takes mid-sentence, the way a whole room seems to rearrange itself around whatever she needs done — somewhere in the last month she stopped being the friend I was catching up with and started being something closer to proof. Proof that there's another way to spend your days than the one I picked.
My daughter came out almost an hour later, walking differently. Looser. She didn't stop talking the whole way home — how good her shoulders felt, how she hadn't realised how tight they'd been until they weren't.
I watched her lean back into the seat, half-asleep before we'd even hit the highway, and for a while that was enough to push Mei's comment out of my head.
Then somewhere past the second set of lights, it came back.
Such a waste.
I still don't know what I'll say if she asks me again.