The scent of ink drifted through the whole summer, yet it still wasn’t enough to contain the feelings Su Wan had kept hidden for three years.
The quietest student in the calligraphy exam-prep class, she lived in a world of rice paper and ink sticks, and of Lin Yang, the boy in the next-door art studio who was always borrowing her inkstone. While she practiced the “Preface to the Orchid Pavilion,” he would secretly draw a cat holding a brush on scrap paper. When she got stuck lettering the school magazine, he would offer her a mint and say, “Your brushwork should breathe like you do when running the 800 meters.” On rainy days, he would carry her soaked calligraphy work all around the school building, looking for a dryer.
Su Wan’s brush wrote “Yang” again and again on the rice paper, only for her to quietly cut the characters out and start over. Then, at a calligraphy exhibition, a cat drawn by Lin Yang was displayed beside her “Summer Night.” Under the cat’s paw was a note on which he had imitated her handwriting: “The breeze is so gentle, perfect for saying I like you.”
This is a story of moonlight in an inkstone, traces of ink on fingertips, and a boy’s confession hidden in a painting, sweet in just the right way.
