The word in the margin was written in six letters of cramped, upright script.
WARD 7.
Lin Yue did not read the word again. He looked at the hand that had made it.
The stems were thin, and the loops were closed too tightly. Every letter that could be a stroke was a stroke, and every stroke ended in a small, tapering flick, as if the pen had been lifted before it was quite finished. The two lines beneath the word had been drawn in the same breath, one slightly longer than the other.
He had seen that flick before.
The front desk. The first night. A ledger lying open under the lamp, fourteen names in a column, every one of them already written.
Lin Yue.
He remembered how it had looked under the light. He had not been thinking about handwriting then. He had been thinking about how the ink had dried before he arrived.
Observed: the same narrowing at the end of each stroke. Observed: the same closed loops.
Not observed: a hand holding the pen.
"Lin Yue."
