So I continued to the next past-its-prime towel. And I sucked in a breath when I saw what lay beneath. “It’s Moon Rabbit,” I whispered as my eyes traced the outline of a rabbit pounding a mortar with a pestle to make the elixir of life for Cháng’é. Just like in real life, Moon Rabbit’s shape was made up by the peaks and valleys of the moon’s surface. I looked up at him. “You really do let Chinese culture influence your work.”

“I’ve always seen the rabbit in the moon ever since my mother told me the story when I was a child.” He pointed to a woman’s silhouette beside the rabbit, partly ensconced in clouds but clear once I focused on that portion of the painting. Her hair was half up in two tall loops and half flowing behind her back. I could almost see the wind rippling through the ribbons on her dress.

“Cháng’é,” I said, then reached into my pocket and clutched the drawing I’d done of Cháng’é the sheep and Mr. Twinkie. With a grin I told him, “I named the sheep with antigravity boots Cháng’é.”

He stared at me with wide eyes, then walked over to the last painting. With a flick of the wrist, he pulled the towel off.

I gasped. Very loudly. I was lucky I didn’t swallow a bug. I looked from one Cháng’é to the next, the latter being a sheep dressed as a mooncake with antigravity boots, floating past a gorgeous, textured moon. A short laugh escaped my lips. “It’s perfect.”

The fact that we’d drawn the same thing for each other was adorable, unsurprising, and a reminder that we were indeed starting from square 5.2 as he’d said yesterday.

I sheepishly—pun intended—handed him my drawing. “Yours is much better than mine.”

Instead of laughing like I thought he would, he smiled. “I can’t believe you thought to do this. You have to sign it for me.”

I glanced at the bottom right corner of his nearest painting and saw that he had signed it in both English and Mandarin, the latter hand-drawn but resembling a printed name seal with its square outline, crisp Chinese characters, and red ink.

Before, I would have just signed Chloe Wang, but I did both, just to try it on. And when I formed each sun character in my Chinese name, I couldn’t help thinking how fitting it was that I was three suns and he painted moons.

He held my horrible drawing to his heart, and I was maximally embarrassed—why had I shown that to him? Especially after I’d seen what he was capable of?

He gestured to his sheep Cháng’é. “I painted it for you,” he said shyly.

I had given him Frankensheep and he was shy to give me this work of art he’d created specifically for me?