A seventeen-year-old crush is a toppled box of paints, an unsigned sketchbook, a heartbeat hidden beneath a strawberry Band-Aid.
The cherry blossoms at Qingchuan High School always tint the drawing paper pink in March, but art student Jiang Yan can't mix the broken shade of pink from her memories. The boy who climbed in through the window that day knocked over her paints, but left a strawberry Band-Aid behind amid the mess. Cheng Xu always says he hates sentimental stuff, but Jiang Yan once saw him crouched in the back alley, bandaging a stray cat's wound. Grass clung to his uniform cuffs, yet his fingertips were gentler than spring snow.
He teased her for filling her sketchbook with ginkgo leaves and orange cats, but secretly caught the sunlight falling as she stretched on tiptoe to reach her easel. She counted the moles on his earlobe like ink dots, but when they shared an umbrella in the rain, she discovered that the raindrops clinging to his lashes shone brighter than stars. When the long-forgotten sketchbook in the art room revealed countless sketches of herself from the boy's point of view, Jiang Yan finally realized that those “chance encounters,” the hot milk from the convenience store, the strawberry Band-Aids tucked into her pencil case, and the “accidental” passes deliberately sent astray on the basketball court were all carefully designed “bug programs” by an ENTP genius.
Theme: Secret feelings of youth become Band-Aids and sketches, as a boy pieces together the full shape of their mutual crush through little acts of tenderness.
