Short Short: 'The Connoisseur's Love Letter'

The Connoisseur's Love Letter

Do you know what 'suki' means?
It's a term used in the tea ceremony, referring to a love for elegance and refined taste.

I finally wrote a letter to the boy in my class I'd had a crush on for so long.
I poured my heart into it, writing the final line with trembling fingers.

'I love you.'

……Or so it was supposed to be.

The next morning, I picked up the stationery I'd left on my desk.
The moment I held it up to the light, my heart went cold.

There it was—written as 'I am a connoisseur.'

Of all people, he's the vice-president of the tea ceremony club.
This typo is nothing short of a cruel joke by fate.

After school, he came running over.
'So you're interested in the tea ceremony too!'

From that day on, we began spending every day whisking tea together.

My hands were awkward holding the tea whisk for the first time, and I was clumsy with the silk cloth.
But his profile, smiling through the steam, was gentler than anything else.

The scent of the tatami mats, the steam from the tea kettle, the sound of our footsteps on the floor.
The entire atmosphere of the small tea room was being dyed in the colors of love.

The bond formed by a typo in a letter was quietly warming my heart, just like the water in the tea kettle.

—This love, too, must be a refined taste.

Afterword

This is my second entry for the weekly short-short note theme 'Typo Collection'.

Hey, do you know what 'suki' means? You don't, right?
I didn't know it until very recently either.
I was originally thinking of a different story related to the tea ceremony, and it was a word I stumbled upon while doing research.

Still... I wondered if it was really possible to mix up 'suki' (connoisseur) and 'suki' (love).
I was skeptical even as I wrote it, but I let my imagination run wild wondering what would happen if such a thing actually occurred, and that's how this piece came to be.

If you thought even a little bit, 'This typo is quite refined, isn't it?', please watch over me warmly with a like, follow, or comment.

My ongoing series 'Delivery Person Roruko No. 2' doesn't have any typos, but it does have plenty of incidents, so please take a look at that too.

On X, I mainly post about food delivery, as well as novels and AI illustrations. Please feel free to take a look if you have some time to kill.

*This work is a work of fiction.

The characters, organizations, place names, and events that appear are unrelated to any real entities. Additionally, while some descriptions are inspired by the posts and activities of real X (formerly Twitter) users, there is no connection to any specific individual or organization, and the content is constructed based on creative fiction.