[Two Male Leads]
[Obsessive, green-tea puppy x cunning, flirtatious young master]
“Xu Yi's world is a precise sketch, every line exactly where it belongs. Then Chen Han appeared and overturned the entire palette.”
Xu Yi is the perfect art student in everyone's eyes: from a privileged family, brilliant at painting, and accustomed to keeping people at a safe distance with a warm yet aloof smile. In reality, he's a flirtatious player who knows exactly how to manipulate people. Chen Han, meanwhile, is a cool, aloof student who transferred in with an air all his own. Like a wary stray dog, he keeps everyone at a distance.
When their homeroom teacher forces them to sit together, Chen Han draws a dividing line on the desk and warns him coldly, “Don't cross it.” Xu Yi responds with a sketch of a puppy with its fur standing on end, writing in the empty space: “Taming wild animals takes patience. I love training naughty puppies.”
A paint war, a standoff on a rooftop in a torrential downpour, and a self-harm scar discovered by accident. Xu Yi gradually realizes that hidden beneath Chen Han's sharp edges is a vulnerability no one knows about. And Chen Han is the first person to see through Xu Yi's perfect facade and recognize his loneliness.
“They are each other's odd ones out, yet in each other's eyes, they found the missing piece of their own souls.”
Xu Yi teaches Chen Han to use a paintbrush instead of scars to express his pain. Chen Han, in turn, tears away the mask Xu Yi has carefully maintained and forces him to face his true emotions. When the college entrance exams are over, Xu Yi receives an acceptance letter from the London College of Art, while Chen Han chooses to head north to the Central Academy of Fine Arts.
On graduation day, Chen Han disappears into the crowd, leaving behind half an eraser engraved with his name. In the empty classroom, Xu Yi draws one last sketch: two puppies and a fox running in opposite directions, one east and the other west.
“Youth is an unfinished painting, and they promised to add the final stroke for each other one day in the future.”
[The Nontraditional Romance Studies series (High School Arc)] Vol. 1
(School life / Bad ending)
Theme: At the boundary between growing up and saying goodbye, two lonely souls save each other, learning to paint stars with their scars and measure true feelings by distance.
