Until Only Blue Remained by Ting-Fai Yu

2nd Prize Winner, Writes of Summer - Drabble Edition; Prompt: Wrong Answers Only

At school, Mrs. Williams asked everyone to draw their country.

Yousef drew a river and a sea, with an olive tree between them.
“Wrong,” she said. “This isn’t on our map.”
So he erased the tree until only blue remained.
“Correct.”

Wing-ho drew a sea of yellow umbrellas beneath a wall of skyscrapers. 
“Wrong,” she said. “This isn’t a country.”
So he drew a big red flag over the umbrellas.
“Much better.”

At recess, they looked at Liam’s piece, chosen for display. They saw black liquid dripping from a pipeline into a Tim Hortons cup on a cedar stump.

Wrong.

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Ting-Fai Yu writes fiction and creative nonfiction about people’s search for home when it is not given. He studied creative writing at Simon Fraser University’s Writer’s Studio and was selected for the 2026 Literary Journalism residency at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity. He recently received an honourable mention in the 2026 NYC Midnight 100-Word Microfiction Challenge. Born and raised in Hong Kong, Ting-Fai divides his time between Vancouver, B.C., and Taiwan.