Qingman: The Two Set Out Together

He arrived late, but just in time. She had waited so long, and at last he came. Heroine: Dessert shop owner, unable to taste flavors, able to convey emotions through the shapes of her desserts. Hero: Emergency room doctor, secretly keeps lots of succulents, and always passes by her shop after late-night shifts. Lin Xiaoman’s dessert shop sits deep in an alley, with its lights still on at two in the morning. Her desserts look perfect, but she can’t taste a thing, until a man in a white coat walks in and buys one of her “failures.” He takes a bite and falls silent for a moment. “Could I buy this one? I just lost a patient and need something sweet.” Two lonely people, each awake in the middle of the night, find their beginning in a crooked little cookie. She uses desserts to express feelings she can’t put into words, while he records the passage of time through the growth of his succulents. He cures her insomnia, and she fills the emptiness in his life. With Xiaoman, a little is just enough, exactly right.