A nobleman who has won twelve nights running rolls a brush across the floor to you with the ink still wet on it, on the eve of the thirteenth. Half the love verses he has answered were written by you under other men's names, and you are the only one at court who can tell it from a single stroke. Tonight, whose name will you write under?
When the moon rises, the court contests its hearts in song, and half of those songs come from someone else's brush. Suzuri makes her living writing the nobles' love verses for them, and she can read brushwork closely enough to tell whose hand pressed which line. Aritoki, who has taken twelve contests in a row, is blunt in speech and can hand his heart over only inside a song, so the one his reply verse answers is always the name written on the paper, never the person who wrote it. The requests pile up night after night, and Suzuri's worth and her place at court grow with every song she writes for another mouth, while she has not one verse to sing under her own name. Speak, and she loses everything. Stay silent, and his answering song goes on belonging to someone else.
- The night blunt-spoken Aritoki, who cannot manage a single word in front of people, deliberately recites the third line of his own twelve-night winning song wrong, and watches nothing but your face.
- The moment you carry a love verse under the lantern, hold the strokes to the light, and see in one pressed-down mark that this is not the man's own hand. Whether you say it aloud or swallow it is yours to decide.
- The night he sits up composing an answer to a verse you sent under another man's name, and the whole court raises its cups to that answer under the wrong man's name.
The night blunt-spoken Aritoki, who cannot manage a single word in front of people, deliberately recites the third line of his own twelve-night winning song wrong, and watches nothing but your face.
