CHAPTER 3: THE FIRST STROKE

THE SAKURA BETWEEN 

The brush dripped.

Xiuying held it above the white paper, wrist suspended exactly as her grandfather had taught her.

Elbow raised.

Shoulders loose.

Breath steady.

Heart quiet.

At least, that was how it was supposed to work.

A bead of ink gathered at the tip of the brush.

Heavy.

Ready to fall.

Xiuying pulled the brush away.

Again.

She had accepted Ren’s challenge.

One hundred paintings in one hundred days.

It sounded ridiculous now.

At seven o’clock, with Ren standing across from her and anger still burning beneath her skin, it had sounded like a challenge.

Two hours later, it sounded impossible.

He had left almost immediately after their agreement.

No instructions.

No inspirational speech.

No hovering over her shoulder.

Just one expectation.

“Eight o’clock tomorrow morning. I see painting number one.”

Then the gate had closed behind him.

It was now 9:13 p.m.

Painting number one did not exist.

Xiuying stared at the paper until the white began to hurt her eyes.

She tried Chengdu.

Nothing.

Her grandfather’s courtyard.

Nothing.

Qingcheng Mountain disappearing beneath rain.

Nothing.

Every memory she reached for became another one.

Jian standing beside her sketchbooks.

Jian’s seal where hers should have been.

Li Mei wearing his shirt.

Your paintings are depressing.

Xiuying’s wrist began to shake.

“Stop.”

The ink trembled at the end of the brush.

“Stop thinking about him.”

Her hand shook harder.

She dropped the brush onto the inkstone.

A black speck landed on the edge of the paper.

Xiuying stood.

She needed air.

Or food.

Or noise.

Anything except another blank page.

She walked into the kitchen.

Dinner had been delivered while Ren was there: grilled fish, rice, pickled vegetables and soup arranged neatly inside a lacquered box.

Xiuying stared at it.

Her stomach felt hollow, but eating seemed like work.

She took two bites of rice anyway.

Her mother would somehow know if she didn’t.

Then she wandered toward the sleeping room.

A futon had already been laid out.

Perfectly.

Of course.

Xiuying was beginning to suspect that nothing in this house was allowed to be crooked.

Then she noticed the envelope on the low table beside the futon.

Black.

Again.

“You people really like black envelopes,” she muttered.

Her name wasn’t written on this one.

Only a single letter.

R.

Xiuying opened it.

Inside was a photograph.

She stopped.

Rain on Qingcheng Mountain.

Her painting.

It hung on a concrete wall inside a dark modern room, framed beneath a single warm light.

No other artwork surrounded it.

No clutter.

Nothing competing for attention.

Just her rain.

Her mountain.

Her grief.

On the back of the photograph, someone had written in English:

My study in Tokyo.

It has been here for two years.

—R

Xiuying sat slowly on the edge of the futon.

He had kept it.

For two years.

The painting she had sold in a Chengdu café for five thousand yuan had crossed an ocean and ended up here—treated as though it mattered.

She turned the photograph over again.

Why?

Why would Sato Ren remember a painting made by an unknown young artist from Chengdu?

Why build an entire residency around her?

Why now?

There were too many questions.

And she had known Ren for less than three hours.

Xiuying shook her head.

“Don’t.”

She placed the photograph beside her.

“Don’t make this into something it isn’t.”

Ren was a businessman.

The Sato Foundation ran cultural programs.

She was a Chinese ink painter.

That could be all.

For now, it had to be.

Still, when Xiuying returned to the studio, her hand wasn’t shaking as badly.

She sat.

Picked up the brush.

Then looked outside.

The rain had returned.

Quiet Kyoto rain.

It gathered on the pointed edge of a maple leaf above the stone basin.

One drop swelled.

Held.

Fell.

Tik.

Xiuying watched the ripple spread.

Her grandfather’s voice came back to her.

Not Jian’s.

Her grandfather’s.

If you cannot paint what you feel, paint what you see.

The feeling will come later.

Xiuying breathed in.

Then out.

“Fine.”

She lowered the brush.

“I’ll paint what I see.”

The first stroke touched the paper.

Black entered white.

Xiuying froze.

She had done it.

Not a mountain.

Not a landscape.

Not something worthy of Tokyo.

One drop of rain.

The ink bled slightly farther on one side than she intended.

Imperfect.

She almost started again.

Instead, she added a second stroke.

A maple leaf.

Then the suggestion of the stone basin beneath it.

Then one broken circle where water met water.

A ripple.

She stopped trying to make something important.

She simply painted.

And for the first time since Jian’s studio, time disappeared.

When Xiuying finally put down the brush, nearly an hour had passed.

Most of the paper remained empty.

In one corner sat a tiny world.

A leaf.

A falling drop.

A ripple.

Nothing more.

Xiuying stared at it.

Her first instinct was to find everything wrong with it.

The leaf was uneven.

The drop had bled.

The circle wasn’t complete.

Jian would have hated it.

That thought almost made her smile.

Xiuying reached for her seal.

Then remembered.

Her seals were in Chengdu.

Inside a cardboard box marked DO NOT OPEN.

For a moment, disappointment washed through her.

Then she picked up the brush again.

Beneath the painting, she wrote her name.

Lin Xiuying.

She stared at the characters.

Her name.

Not Jian’s.

Hers.

That was when the tears came.

Quietly at first.

Then all at once.

Xiuying covered her mouth, but there was nobody in the house to hear her.

She wasn’t crying because the painting was beautiful.

It wasn’t.

She wasn’t even sure it was good.

She cried because yesterday she had believed Jian had taken painting away from her.

And tonight, she had discovered he hadn’t.

He couldn’t.

She stayed beside painting number one until she fell asleep against the studio wall.

At 7:59 the next morning, the gate opened.

Xiuying’s eyes snapped open.

She checked the clock.

“Seriously?”

Footsteps stopped at the genkan.

A moment later, Ren appeared at the edge of the studio in dark socks, his shoes properly left at the entrance.

Today he wore a charcoal-grey suit.

He looked as though he hadn’t slept much either.

His eyes found Xiuying first.

Then the painting.

He stopped.

Xiuying suddenly became aware of everything wrong with it.

Too much empty space.

Too small.

Too simple.

She stood quickly.

“It’s not finished.”

Ren said nothing.

“I mean, technically it is, but I can make another one before tonight. Something bigger.”

Still nothing.

Xiuying’s stomach tightened.

“Say something.”

Ren walked closer.

He crouched beside the paper without touching it.

His gaze followed the maple leaf.

The drop.

The broken ripple.

Then the enormous field of untouched white around them.

“Why did you leave all this empty?”

Xiuying folded her arms.

“Because there was nothing there.”

Ren looked up.

“Exactly.”

She frowned.

He returned his attention to the painting.

“Yesterday you told me Kyoto was too quiet.”

“I don’t remember telling you that.”

“You didn’t.”

That made her look at him.

Ren pointed toward the painting.

“You told me here.”

Xiuying said nothing.

“You could have painted the entire garden,” he continued. “Instead, you painted the smallest thing happening inside it.”

His finger hovered above the ripple.

“You painted the silence around the sound.”

Something tightened in Xiuying’s chest.

“It’s just a raindrop.”

“Then why did you cry after painting it?”

Her eyes widened.

“How do you know I cried?”

Ren glanced at her face.

Xiuying touched beneath her eye.

Probably swollen.

“Oh.”

For the briefest moment, Ren smiled.

Then he reached into his jacket.

“I brought something.”

He placed a small wooden box on the table.

Xiuying opened it.

Inside was a carved stone seal.

Two characters were engraved into its face.

She couldn’t read the Japanese inscription completely, but beside it, on a small card, was one English word.

SAKURA

Xiuying looked up.

“What is this?”

“An offer.”

“Another one?”

“I make many offers.”

“I noticed.”

Ren sat across from her.

“Some artists use an art name separate from their legal name. I thought you might want one for the hundred-painting project.”

“You chose Sakura?”

“It was a suggestion.”

“Why?”

His eyes moved toward the garden.

“Because you arrived in spring.”

Xiuying waited.

“That’s it?”

“No.”

Ren looked at painting number one.

“Cherry blossoms don’t stay.”

“That’s depressing.”

“They fall.”

“Still depressing.”

“And people cross oceans to see them anyway.”

Xiuying went quiet.

Ren continued.

“Yesterday you thought falling meant ending.”

He nodded toward the painted raindrop.

“Today you made falling the beginning of something.”

Xiuying looked at the seal again.

SAKURA.

A new name.

But this time, nobody was taking Lin Xiuying away from her.

She turned the seal over in her hand.

“If I use this, it’s only for the project.”

Ren nodded.

“My paintings still belong to Lin Xiuying.”

“Of course.”

“And if I decide I hate the name tomorrow?”

“I’ll have wasted money on a very expensive seal.”

She smiled.

“Good.”

Xiuying pressed the seal carefully into red paste.

Then stopped.

Instead of placing it over her written name, she stamped it beside it.

LIN XIUYING

SAKURA

Both.

Ren watched without commenting.

Xiuying sat back.

“So?”

“So what?”

“Does painting number one count?”

Ren looked at the tiny raindrop surrounded by all that white.

“It counts.”

“Even though most of the paper is blank?”

“Especially because most of the paper is blank.”

He stood.

Xiuying looked at the remaining sheets stacked beside her.

Ninety-nine more.

Yesterday, that number would have terrified her.

Today it only looked difficult.

Difficult she could survive.

Ren headed toward the door.

“Same time tomorrow?”

Xiuying asked.

He looked back.

“Eight o’clock.”

“What if number two is terrible?”

“Then I’ll tell you.”

She narrowed her eyes.

“And if it’s good?”

“I’ll tell you that too.”

“You’re annoying.”

“So I’ve been told.”

The gate slid shut behind him.

Xiuying turned back to painting number one.

A leaf.

A drop.

A ripple.

Her name.

And beside it, a second name she had chosen to accept.

For the first time since leaving Chengdu, the blank paper waiting beside her didn’t look like emptiness.

It looked like space.

Xiuying reached for another sheet.

Ninety-nine to go.

END OF CHAPTER 3