The Restoration Rival novel · Chapter 4 of 21

Chapter 4: The Talent Board

I walked out of the reading room without saying goodbye to anyone.

Wen caught me on the stairs.

"Ken."

"Don't."

"He's like that with everyone. It's not personal."

"It's a little personal."

She grabbed my coat sleeve and made me stop on the landing.

"Then it should make you want to do something."

"I do things."

"In a studio. Alone. Where nobody sees."

I pulled my sleeve back.

"What do you want me to do, Wen?"

She already had it in her hand.

A flyer, folded twice, with a strip of tape still on the corner.

CAMPUS TALENT COMPETITION. OPEN TO ALL DIVISIONS. FIVE ROUNDS. FINAL IN MARCH.

"You've been restoring since you were eleven," she said.

"You fixed Grandma's whole tea set with a chopstick and a pot of glue."

"That's not a talent."

"It's a talent. There's a whole division for it. Applied arts."

She pushed the flyer flat against my chest.

"Sign up. Before somebody else from the arts division does."

The sign-up desk was in the student union, third floor.

A girl behind the table handed me a form without looking up.

Name. Division. Piece.

I wrote SU KEN in the box. Then I stopped.

"What's the piece?" she said.

"It's a restoration."

"Of what?"

"A celadon bowl. Northern song style. Cracked in four places."

She looked up.

"You have to bring it?"

"I bring it. I fix it on the stage. That's the piece."

She wrote something down.

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