Chapter 2

Seven years ago, in the brightly lit hallway of the architecture building, Mia ran into me while carrying a model.

KT board scattered all over the floor. She crouched down to pick them up, and when she looked up, her eyes were red. "It’s due tomorrow..."

I stayed up with her until four in the morning, helping her recut the materials and adjust the structure. At dawn, she fell asleep with her head on my shoulder, a glue gun still clutched in her hand.

Later she said, "Ethan, you make me feel more secure than any drawing ever could."

We graduated together, got into the city design institute together, and then quit together to start our own studio. In the first two years, we squeezed into a 320-square-foot rental apartment, ate instant noodles while sketching drafts, and could be happy for days just from landing a small project.

Three years ago, the studio finally got on the right track. She held my face and said, "We can plan our future now."

I bought the apartment we live in now, and both our names were on the deed. She said she wanted to design our home herself, from layout to materials, without anyone else’s help.

I believed her.

I was even moved by how hands-on she was.

"You didn’t throw away that sketch, did you?" I heard my own voice echo through the room. "You refined it, took it to the bidding, won the project, built it, and even got an award for it."

Mia didn’t say anything. She walked over to the workbench, pulled out a tissue, and slowly wiped her hands. She only did that when she was nervous.

"So what?" she finally said, not looking at me. "What exactly are you trying to say? It was just an initial idea. I turned it into a complete design. Legally, that’s a work made for hire. The copyright belongs to the company..."

"That was our home!" I shouted, the first time in seven years I had ever shouted at her. "It was the future we talked about night after night, the future we imagined over and over! You sold it, Mia. You sold our future!"

"Then what was I supposed to do?!" She spun around suddenly, tears welling in her eyes too. "Ethan, you’re always so idealistic! Doesn’t opening a studio cost money? Doesn’t expanding need a name? Do you know how many follow-up projects we got because of Cloud Isle?!"

"So that gives you the right to steal?"

"I didn’t steal!" Her voice turned sharp. "That was my design too! I put in work too! Yes, the original inspiration came from one of our conversations, but I was the one who turned it into a workable plan! I was the one who drew hundreds of drafts! I was the one who spent three months at the construction site!"

"Then why didn’t you tell me?"

That sentence threw the room back into silence.

Mia opened her mouth, and tears finally fell. But she wiped them away quickly, like she was wiping away something shameful.

"Tell you, and then what?" She gave a bitter smile. "Listen to you lecture me about 'design principles' and 'architectural passion'? Or hear you tell me that 'we can’t trade our dreams for money'?"

"Ethan, I’m tired. I don’t want to live in rental apartments anymore. I don’t want to count every penny anymore. I don’t want to see furniture I like and have to wait for a sale. I’m thirty this year. I want real things. Is that wrong?"

I looked at her and suddenly felt incredibly unfamiliar.

Was this woman in a silk blouse, wearing a watch, with perfect makeup really the same girl who used to bounce in place with excitement after finishing a model?

Or had that girl died long ago, dying in one after another midnight struggle for survival, and I was only showing up to her funeral today?

"About the wedding budget," I said slowly, "the extra two hundred thousand you wanted, that was to cover the studio’s cash shortfall, wasn’t it?"

Mia’s pupils shrank.

Her phone rang at that moment. She glanced at the screen, her face turning even paler, and hung up immediately.

"Who was that?" I asked.

"A client." Her answer came too fast.

"Which client calls at ten p.m. on a weekend?"

"Ethan, enough!" She grabbed her bag. "I don’t have to report every single thing to you! If you think I’m that awful, then we have nothing to say to each other!"

She slammed the door on her way out.

Just like three days ago.

But this time, I didn’t stand there waiting for her to come back.

I walked over to the pile of drafts, pulled out that drawing, and spread it flat on the workbench. Then I opened my phone and took a photo of the drawing next to the Cloud Isle promo image on my computer screen.

The second the flash went off, I saw my own face reflected in the glass window.

Expressionless, eyes cold.

Like I was looking at someone else’s story.