There is a balm in your coat pocket and another next to the laptop. A third is somewhere at the bottom of your bag. It goes on before the morning meeting, again after lunch, again on the walk home. By nine at night your lips feel tight anyway, and the corners sting a little when you laugh. The usual explanation is that your lips got used to balm and stopped looking after themselves, so now they need more of it. Or that this particular balm quietly stopped working. Either way the answer is more: reapply more...

Sepuluh menit setelah cuci muka, wajah kamu ketarik. Toner yang kamu pakai sejak awal tahun sekarang perih di sekitar rahang. Di bawah lampu kamar mandi, pipi kelihatan belang dengan pola yang bulan lalu nggak ada, dan rak di atas wastafel isinya lebih banyak dari yang bisa kamu sebutkan tanpa melihat. Langkah yang biasanya diambil: beli satu botol yang katanya menenangkan, taruh di rak bareng yang lain. Hasilnya botolnya nambah satu, pertanyaannya masih sama persis kayak pas bangun tadi pagi. Kamu nggak bisa nunjuk satu botol karena terlalu banyak yang berubah barengan. Serum baru datang di minggu...

Your face feels tight about ten minutes after you wash it. A toner you have used since spring now stings along the jaw. Under the bathroom light your cheeks look patchy in a way they did not last month, and the shelf above the sink holds more bottles than you could name with your eyes shut. The usual next move is to buy something calming and put it on the shelf with the others. That leaves you one bottle heavier and holding the same question you woke up with. You cannot name the culprit because too...

Three bottles sit on the shelf at roughly the same size, all holding something clear and watery. One says essence. One says serum. One says ampoule. The ampoule costs the most, so you pick that one up first and assume the word has been earned. Almost everyone reads those three as a strength ladder with essence at the bottom and ampoule at the top. It is a fair guess. Ampoules do tend to come in smaller bottles at higher prices, and smaller plus pricier usually means more of something per drop. The guess falls apart as...