Sunday night, and I finally added the commission transfers the way Business tells us to add a column of numbers. Not because I needed a victory lap. I needed to know whether the prices I quote still matched the work I actually do.
The total came out near six thousand yuan. That sounds like a clean business story if you say it fast. Up close it is a pile of small jobs: badges, keychain faces, one character redrawn three times because the hair had to be shorter. Each payment arrived with a polite message and a file name that looked more professional than my desk.
For a long time I treated the price as a guess I hoped nobody would argue with. If someone hesitated, I dropped the number. If someone paid quickly, I wondered whether I had asked for too little. That is not pricing. That is negotiating against yourself before the other person even starts.
Business class has words for this. Cost is paper, time, and the Maths homework that waits while I fix an ear. Price is what someone agrees to swap. Value is what they think they got after the third revision. I used to confuse those three on purpose, because calling my time a cost felt like I was being dramatic about a hobby. The spreadsheet does not care whether I feel dramatic. It only shows that three revisions on a “cheap” commission can cost more than one careful full-body for a higher fee.
So I rewrote the list. Bust, half body, full body. Revision rounds included up to a point, then a clear extra. I am not pretending this is a company. I am sixteen and the commissions folder still lives next to ESL notes. But six thousand yuan is enough evidence that people are buying a conversation with a pencil, not a random pretty file, and that conversation needs a number I can say without flinching.
Tonight I put the new prices in the same note I send when someone asks. The total does not make me an economist. It makes me less willing to apologise for the hour before I have even opened the sketchbook.