Chapter Three: Beyond the Bleed

Every place that should have held Gu Yan had become a reasonable absence: an extra cushion on the sofa, one fewer bowl on the table, classmates closing naturally around the center of a graduation photograph. The world had not cut him out. It was redesigning itself to remove ugly gaps. Only the oldest family portrait retained a flaw. Six-year-old Gu Lan held the hand of an overexposed white shape exactly the size of a small child. “Blankness has an age,” she said beneath the restoration lamp. “These silver grains are as old as the print. It’s as if you were missing when the photograph was first developed.” An open circle had been drawn on the back. Cold traveled down Gu Yan’s spine. “I didn’t draw that. I was three.”