Painted on Your Palm

Drawn in the Palm of Your Hand

Qiu Yingying is notorious at Dongyuan No. 1 High School as a “repeat offender,” breaking the rules in every way imaginable: dyed hair, tardiness, sleeping in class. She consistently scores just 28 points in math exams, placing near the bottom of her grade. Kim Mingyu is the head of the Student Council's Discipline Department, cool and aloof, impartial and stern. The students he's caught breaking rules could circle the track three times, earning him the nickname “Walking School Rulebook.”

Of all things, these two end up sitting together.

Kim Mingyu draws up a brutal study plan for her. He wakes her at six thirty every morning and checks her homework at eleven every night. When she slacks off, he fixes her with those dark eyes and says nothing until she meekly gives in. Qiu Yingying is fed up with her icy deskmate, until one day a sketch tucked inside her math book slips out by accident. The person in it is Kim Mingyu, in profile.

What she doesn't know is that Kim Mingyu also has a sketchbook he never shows anyone.

It's filled from cover to cover with drawings of her: sleeping with her head on the desk, chewing on a pen as she daydreams, smiling with her eyes squinted after tasting something delicious... Every stroke is rendered in meticulous detail. He's been drawing her for three whole years.

On the last page, a line of neat, firm handwriting reads:

“Qiu Yingying, from the day I wrote your name on the disciplinary list, I never planned to let you go. But I hoped it would be in another way.”

“When did you start drawing me?”

“The day you drew me.”