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Chapter Text

It had been years since Sylus Qin's name last scorched its way across the bestseller lists. The interviews had dwindled to podcasts run by aspiring critics with poor lighting and even poorer microphones. His royalty checks had grown emaciated, no longer thick with praise or padded by scandal. And yet, his arrogance remained, a fossilized artifact immune to market collapse.

He dismissed editorial feedback with the same disdain one might offer a housefly buzzing too close to an overripe fruit. When Kieran, his long-suffering editor, first suggested he consider pivoting to a new genre, Sylus didn’t even lift his eyes from the manuscript he’d been annotating with a red pen.

“Marketing trends, boss,” Kieran had dared to say, like data could dictate art. As if literature were an algorithm. When he'd laughed, he was shown analytical reports. Suspense had gone stale. Thrillers were the rotten produce at the bottom of the publishing cart, displaced by trendier fruits such as frothy romance with predictable twists, writing without substance, social commentary wrapped in social media sheen, whatever the market could digest before vomiting it back up for profit.

But Sylus Qin had not bled his soul onto a page for palatability.

He remembered the books that made him a legend in the first place. The searing courtroom drama laced with political backdoor dealings, the crime noir trilogy so bleak that readers wrote him letters about their nightmares. The controversial dark fantasy that cast a tyrant as its seductive hero, and split the internet in half. The book that dealt with totalitarianism and the deep dive into being an anti-hero and what it meant. He hadn’t just written books. He’d launched wars across book clubs, articles, forums, blogs, and conservative think-pieces.

He wasn’t arrogant because he still had something to prove. He was arrogant because he had already proven it, and the industry dared to forget.

Sylus Qin wrote stories where power corrupted utterly, where love begged repayments, and where redemption was a currency no one could afford. His heroes were liars, and his villains philosophers. Readers came to his pages to be ruined and thanked him for the privilege.

So when Kieran suggested to soften the edges, to follow trends, to be relevant again, he nearly laughed. He knew the real mastermind behind that question. The publishing industry had been raining down on him for years. He'd laughed not because they were wrong, but because they assumed he could care.

“You’re not writing a revolution anymore, Sylus. You’re writing ghosts. Not the scary kind, but the wandering, forgotten kind.”

The call was on speaker. Zayne Li ridiculed him on the other end as Kieran sat fidgeting across from him, not daring to move. Not even to pick up the wine he'd offered. Kieran was at the edge of the velvet couch, fingers twitching against the hem of his jacket, eyes darting from the glowing lamps to the cluttered manuscript pages sprawled across the living room table. The house still smelled like ink and wine, timeless, intimidating, and unmistakably Sylus.

The writer clicked his tongue. “You think that’s the problem? That I’m not chasing the hashtags hard enough? That I’m not folding digestible paperbacks for people who barely read past captions and tropes?”

“You’re still writing like the world is afraid of you, Sylus Qin. But let me tell you, no one’s scared anymore. They’ve moved on, gotten used to the rage, bored with crimes and thrills. It’s expected. Formulaic. Consumers are ever-changing.”

Sylus’s lip curled, a half-snarl, half-smirk. “You really dare to make me like one of your algorithmically crafted robots. What you want is a sterilized rebellion.”

“I want you to stop hiding behind your reputation,” Zayne explained. “You’re not a renegade anymore, Sylus. You’re a relic.”

A silence settled like dust between them. The kind of silence that came before something broke and shattered into bits and pieces. Kieran was drenched in cold sweat. Sylus leaned forward, his voice low, measured. “Then publish someone else. Find a youth with dyed hair and trauma-ballet metaphors. Let them pretend to bare their soul while chasing likes. Make them market books with trendy music and a billion hashtags.”

The phone call resounded with a beep. The line went still.

Sylus stood, grabbed the wine Kieran merely touched, and downed it in one go. “If they want to erase me, they should at least have the spine to say it themselves.”

Kieran’s mouth opened, then shut. His hesitation was damning.

Sylus’s eyes narrowed. “What?”

“They’ve... They’ve been trying to work with someone else. An online phenomenon. Twenty-four. Used to write in lowercase. Blends autofiction with poetry and sex. One of his tragic romances became popular. His pre-orders exploded after a tweet thread about his last breakup went viral.”

Sylus scoffed, voice low. “Of course. Trauma served rare, with hashtags for garnish.”

“They’re saying he’s the next you, boss,” Kieran said, the words burning like a confession. “Only more... marketable.”

The silence that followed was cold, not angry. Calculating.

He sat back down, drumming his fingers against his thigh. The room was thick with tension and the scent of wine residue. Kieran shuffled around, pulling out a file from his laptop bag. His knuckles were white around it as if he wasn't brave enough to open it and lay it out bare, only for Sylus to shred it into pieces.

Sylus raised an eyebrow and drawled a questioning hum. Kieran chuckled nervously, jaw clenched, eyes wavering.

“You want me to write what, exactly?” Sylus said, voice low and already bored.

Kieran coughed. “Just… you know. Try out some new directions, boss.”

Sylus tilted his head.

Kieran rushed to clarify. “Just until the market adjusts! Something leaner and punchier. Less of those… twelve layers of betrayal and two metaphors per sentence.”

Sylus leaned back, his ankle on his thigh. “You suggest I downgrade.”

“No,” Kieran lied. “I’m suggesting you diversify. Dip your toes in more palatable waters.”

Sylus squinted. “No thanks. I'm wearing socks.”

Kieran inhaled like he was about to jump off a roof. “Never mind, boss. Just listen.”

He opened his notebook, flipping past bullet points like a man walking through a minefield. He had a variety of genres and suggestions written down, neatly compiled into sectioned folders. Those he confidently deemed would make the mark were highlighted. Others crossed out.

“Crime Comedy?”

Sylus stared at him. “I’ve killed clowns for less.”

“YA dystopia?”

“I already lived through one. Don't blend nostalgia into trends.”

Kieran waved his hand, “Okay, okay. What about a cozy mystery?”

“Do I look cozy to you, Kieran?”

“No,” Kieran muttered, crossing it out. “Definitely not. Um... urban fantasy?”

Sylus picked up a pencil and snapped it in half.

“Okay! Paranormal erotica?”

Sylus raised an eyebrow, jaw clenching. Kieran could hear teeth grinding.

He backpedaled fast, saying, “Sorry, that was for someone else. Not you! Never you!”

There was a long pause.

“Children’s book?” Kieran tried again, more meekly.

“Once I wrote a character who set an orphanage on fire. Why do you think I'm capable of writing that, Kieran?”

“That’s why I thought it’d be a challenge!” Kieran laughed nervously. “You could try not burning something down, just once!”

Sylus tilted his head. “You still owe me money for the wine bottle you broke when you were 18.”

“Not the same thing!” He quickly countered. “Listen to me, boss,” Kieran's words softened, folding the list and setting it aside. “You raised me on tragedy. I wouldn’t know what good writing was if it hadn’t been for you. But if you keep ignoring what sells, they’re going to shelf you. You haven’t become outdated... you’re just uncooperative .”

Sylus didn’t respond.

He didn’t sigh, didn’t scoff, didn’t blink. Just let the silence spool out between them like a tripwire. With anyone else, silence meant absence. But with Sylus, it was sculpted and weighted. You had to earn the right to break it. 

Kieran hesitated, then tried again, quieter this time. “You always said a genre wasn’t worth writing unless it scared or intrigued you.”

Sylus’s gaze remained fixed on the fractured pencil. He looked as if he could crush the rest of it without realizing it.

“So?” he said, dry. “What exactly is your point, boy?”

Kieran leaned forward, just enough to bridge the space between them. His voice dropped.

“Then what scares you?”

Sylus’s jaw tensed. Barely perceptible. But to Kieran, who had grown up deciphering this man like scripture, it was thunder. It did something to him.

“I’m not afraid of anything,” Sylus said. Defensively maybe.

“Then prove it.”

The words hovered like a dare scribbled on a matchbox. Kieran didn’t flinch. He remembered using the same tone as a teen, pointing a cheap mic from a karaoke kit and daring Sylus to sing a pop song at full volume, even if the neighbours rammed his doors, even if the world came to an end. Kieran and his twin, Luke, had burst into synchronised laughter whenever he sang a high note like a broken tape record.

Sylus looked at him now like he wanted to snap something else in half. But there was a gleam behind the irritation. Curiosity, maybe, dangerous curiosity.

He tilted his head, almost amused. “What a cheap dare.”

“It worked when I was thirteen,” Kieran said, and shrugged. “Still works now.”

“I’m not raising you twice.”

Kieran smiled, soft and stubborn. “Then don’t. Just answer the question.”

Sylus leaned back in his chair, arms folding across his chest, the creak of the leather loud in the quiet room. His eyes moved to the window, watching the city flicker behind the curtain like a film reel of lives he didn’t live anymore.

What scared him?

He’d written kings crumbling under ideology, mothers turning in courtrooms, lovers bleeding dry for nothing but ego and nation. He’d killed hope in the climax. Had a villain deliver monologues so human readers wept without knowing why.

But love?

Love, he heard, was soft and undignified. Desperate. It didn’t sharpen, but it undid. It was the one thing he couldn’t experience, couldn't manipulate, only observed from a distance. He gathered Intel, listened to podcasts, and watched movies. Never real-time. Never felt the need to.

He exhaled, slowly and reluctantly. Then, as if dredging up something foreign from the back of his throat, he responded with a low voice.

“Romance.”

Kieran blinked. “I—what?”

Sylus leaned forward, elbows on the desk. “I’ve written about betrayal, war, guilt, and rot. But love?” He snorted. “I wouldn’t know where to begin.”

Kieran grinned, leaning forward like a conspirator. “Then we start there. Somewhere you’ve never been.”

Sylus shook his head, muttering, “What a stupid, ridiculous, terrifying idea.”

“For you, yeah.”

Sylus reached for his laptop anyway. He laid out sheets for quick notes and picked up a pen. Gripped it like a razor blade, or possibly a detonator. And then, like it meant nothing at all, he said, “Fine. Let’s see what happens when a monster tries to write about love.”

That night, the Word document was finally opened.

The first sentence he wrote was absolute garbage.

She touched his hand, and time stopped.

He stared at it with the expression of a man who’d accidentally stepped in something wet and unidentifiable. Then he scratched it out with such venom that the paper tore. It felt fake. Everything he tried felt fake. Romance wasn't something that moved in straight lines. It meandered. It broke. It patched up again. Moved on from there. It wanted nurturing and care, but Sylus Qin wasn’t adept at nurturing and care. He was adept at ruin.

Still, he wrote.

The second attempt started strong.

Not metaphorical or emotional.

It started with a literal stabbing. 

He hadn't even realized it at first. What began as a quiet dinner between two characters meant to fall in love somehow spiraled into an argument about moral philosophy, then a confession of childhood trauma, and then a fork to the throat. Sylus blinked at the screen, confused by his own fingers. The scene had felt so fluid while writing, honest, real, and tension-filled. But not exactly swoon-worthy.

He leaned back in his chair, reread the line—

“If you leave, I’ll bleed for you until there’s nothing left to spill.”

—and muttered, “What the hell is wrong with me?”

The third draft fared no better. In this one, the characters met during a prison riot. She smuggled in a knife in a hidden pouch in her sleeves, and he fell in love with her as she stitched up his wounds after a shivving. At the end of chapter eight, they were intimate in a closet while a guard bled out in the hallway.

Sylus had written it in one sitting, fevered and urgently. Tissues were everywhere, a bowl of soup in one corner, and the heater whirred his illness away. For a moment, he thought he’d cracked it. The intimacy, the desperation, the ache. But the moment he closed the document and saw the title he’d given it, “Razorblades of Reverence,” he realized he’d written yet another romantic apocalypse, not just… well… romance.

He poured himself a drink and tried again.

Then he began the story of a man who fell in love with his stalker. It was supposed to be twisted, yes, but redemptive. By chapter fourteen, she had him tied to a chair and whispered confessions like lullabies. By chapter twenty, he’d fallen in love with his captive and asked her to kill his enemies. By chapter twenty-seven, they did. Together.

He wrote lines like:

“We were both broken things, but together, we made the most beautiful ruin.”

And stared at them with something close to pride. He sent it with the same fervent speed of holding the job’s importance more on deadlines than efficiency. Kieran called after two days.

“This is not a romance, boss,” Kieran said, spiraling but keeping his tone sincere.

“Stockholm Syndrome is a dynamic,” Sylus replied without irony.

“Not a genre.”

Attempt fifth: The female main character is an overworked ER nurse drowning in unresolved trauma. She crosses paths with a reclusive sculptor known for creating art from bones, driftwood, and grief. Their chance encounter unfolds into a quiet, intense relationship built on shared pain and mutual dysfunction. Together, they descend into a co-dependent spiral, culminating in the murder of the female character’s therapist and a symbolic act of arson to “cleanse” their pasts. In the final scene, they sit in front of the flames, holding hands, watching the cabin, and perhaps their humanity, burn to ash.

The manuscript landed in Kieran’s inbox the next morning without warning—no subject line, no message, just a cold, clean attachment titled draft_romance_v5. It was unnerving in its precision. Formatted flawlessly, every page numbered, margins uniform, and paragraph indents surgically neat. Kieran didn’t open it right away. He stared at the file icon for a long time, heart pinched between dread and morbid curiosity. Then he double-clicked. And read. Then read again.

By the fourth day, he was at Sylus’s door, banging his fists, which echoed down the hallway like war drums. When the door finally creaked open, Kieran pushed his way inside without a greeting, arms full of paper. The manuscript had been printed and assembled, but only barely. Its once-pristine pages were now wrinkled at the edges, bent and bruised from hasty handling. Red ink marked nearly every page, like a murder scene. Circles, arrows, whole paragraphs bracketed with aggressive question marks. Some sections were underlined with what appeared to be increasing levels of existential panic. One of his notes simply read:

“WHY IS THERE A MURDER HERE?! THEY WERE MAKING PANCAKES TWO PAGES AGO.”

Sylus, who sat barefoot and unbothered on his leather couch, barely looked up from his glass of vodka. The TV was blaring a rom-com that didn’t seem to entertain the man at all. “You finished it,” he acknowledged dryly.

“I survived it,” Kieran shot back, throwing the manuscript onto the table with an audible slap.

It fanned open, revealing more red marks. One paragraph had a sentence in all capital letters. It read, “SENTENCE FRAGMENT OR PSYCHOTIC BREAK??” scribbled in the margins. Some pages had handwritten post-its stuck to them with phrases like “Is this a metaphor or a threat??” and “PLEASE explain why there are so many fires.”

Kieran pointed to the top of the first page. “You... you called this romance?”

Sylus raised an eyebrow. “Is that not what you asked for?”

“You wrote a love story that includes manslaughter, improvised sculpture from bones, and a suspiciously casual murder in a pancake-making-bonding scene. You murdered the genre.”

Sylus only smiled faintly. “I thought it was rather tender.”

“They kill her therapist and hide the body.”

Sylus shrugged. “Joint trauma bonding experience.”

Kieran stared at him like he’d just suggested publishing a cookbook that ends in cannibalism. “You don’t know what romance is, do you, boss?”

There was no defensiveness this time, no bark or bristle. Sylus looked vaguely entertained. “I suppose I thought I did. But every time I tried to write about longing, it turned into more killing.”

Kieran sank onto the couch and rubbed his face. “You will never be able to write romance at this point.”

“I disagree. At least this one ends with a kind of love.”

“Burning down a cabin together is not a happy ending.”

“Depends who you ask,” Sylus said, his fingers poised dramatically over his laptop as it booted up. He got up, navigating around the keys and the touchpad on his way. The screen blinked white, another Word document popped open. The cursor blinked against the screen.

“Boss…” Kieran’s voice was hesitant, stretched thin between dread and disbelief. He hovered near the threshold of Sylus’s study, as if proximity might somehow stop what he already knew was coming. “What are you doing?”

Sylus didn’t look up. He was already halfway across the room, sleeves rolled up, glass of vodka in one hand. The screen’s glow cast a pale light across his face, part novelist, part doomsayer, staring down the sixth incarnation of his monstrous creation.

“You didn’t like what I wrote,” he answered calmly, voice void of emotion. “Again.”

“I know. But you can—”

Sylus dropped into his desk chair with a defeated grace. “So I’m starting draft six. Congratulations. You’ve officially driven me into genre purgatory.”

Kieran rubbed his temples. “You don’t have to—”

“I do, actually.” Sylus turned in his chair, eyes sharp. “Because, apparently, I was dared by none other than you. And now we’re here.”

He opened a new document with the grim efficiency of someone preparing to perform surgery on himself. The blank page stared back, accusatory.

Kieran took a step closer. “Look, maybe we can work out some ideas—”

“No. I’m done with your ideas, marketing notes, your spreadsheets, and your genre polls.” Sylus waved him off like an overzealous mosquito. He nodded to the door without looking up. “Lock it on your way out.”

“What—why?”

“Because I’m about to get in the zone.”

Kieran hesitated, standing in the liminal space between responsibility and flight. Then the clack of keys started, erratic at first, then focused, furious, as if Sylus was interrogating the keyboard. The door clicked shut. Kieran stood in the hallway for a long moment, blinking at the wood. He sighed.

“He’s nesting,” he muttered to himself.

Kieran paced like a man rehearsing an apology that might turn into a resignation letter. Eventually, he stopped, exhaled a tight breath, pulled out his phone, and tapped a contact at the top of his favourites list. The line barely rang once before Luke answered with a drawl.

“Kieran. If you’re calling to confess a crime, wait until I’ve had coffee.”

Kieran rubbed at his temple. “I need help.”

“Oh no,” Luke said immediately, chipper. “You went back to the literary war criminal, didn’t you? You poked the dragon!”

“I thought I could steer him,” Kieran muttered. “I thought if I framed it right—”

Luke made a noise, partly a snort and partly a chuckle. “Framed it? Oh, please, you know what you’ve done.”

“Luke—”

“Kieran, I can tell you blind that the boss’s ‘romantic climax’ might either involve murder, crime, or arson. What did you expect, anyway? You dared Sylus Qin to write a romance. That’s like turning a battlefield into a nursery and wondering why everything’s on fire.”

There was a long silence on the line. Kieran stared at the ceiling like it might offer divine intervention. He paced again, toying with his lip between his teeth. Then, with a dramatic groan, sank into the couch. “So what am I supposed to do? They want something emotional, something that can be an immediate hit. He won’t open up unless he's writing about revenge or ritual sacrifice. I’m out of ideas.”

Luke clicked his tongue. “You could always write it yourself. Ghostwriting is fun, thankless, and doomed. Perfect for you.”

Kieran snorted. “Don’t joke around.”

“Then maybe, just maybe, do what the rest of us normies do when we want to understand love.” Luke paused, savoring it. “Make him date someone. Let him fall in, fall out, get wrecked, get weird about it. He can't keep dissecting love like it’s a corpse.”

“I’m trying to help him, not get killed. He’s been avoiding love for ages, and we’ve seen it. He says there’s no need for it.”

“And I’m telling you, this is the only way. He doesn’t need literary CPR. He needs to feel something. And you—” Luke added, voice lilting with glee, “—need to grow a spine and say it like an adult instead of whispering suggestions like you’re offering a crow some jewels.”

Kieran sighed, already regretting the call. “You’re enjoying this.”

“Immensely. Also, I’m printing one of Boss’s lines and hanging it in my office. The circulation department will love it. What was it? ‘We made the most beautiful ruin.’ Incredible. I want to see how long it takes HR to investigate.”

“Luke, please,” Kieran said, burying his face in a throw pillow. “Just tell me what to do.”

“I have, Kieran.”

“You want me to—what? Set him up on a blind date?” Kieran groaned. “He’ll kill me, Luke.”

“Maybe, but think of the art. What’s a little homicide in the name of love? He needs a counterargument. And lucky for you, the world is full of complicated, emotionally literate people who are perfectly capable of breaking his heart.”

Kieran pinched the bridge of his nose and took in a deep breath. “Do you have someone in mind?”

Luke's grin could be heard through the phone. “Oh, do I.”

Kieran didn’t respond, but his twin declined the call anyway. He stared at the muted TV, at the frozen image of a rom-com couple kissing in the rain under bad lighting, and with too many teeth. Sylus would hate that. But if Luke was right, and that was the most annoying part, because he usually was, then Kieran had one last shot to get his novel on track. Not with edits, annotations, red marks, and outlines. But with an actual, real, terrifying, emotionally messy human experience.

“I’m going to die.”

Chapter Text

Sylus had spent the better part of the week refreshing his inbox like a ritual, half in hope, half in dread. After dumping in yet another manuscript to Kieran—his sixth this year, this one a lean four-hundred-page tragedy—he waited. And waited. But unlike previous times, there was no reply, not even a short “Got it, boss!” or the usual thumbs up emoji-laced reaction Kieran sent when he didn't have the energy for real words. Normally, Sylus prided himself on his detachment. Rejection rolled off him like water off wax. He’d always been the sort to shrug, pour another glass of wine, and get back to drafting his next book. But this time felt different. There was an edge to his nerves he hadn’t expected, a restlessness that made even his usual routines feel suffocating.

He told himself it wasn’t desperation. Maybe it was the quiet ache of wanting back into the publishing world, or the weight of five rejections that had begun to feel less like industry standard and more like personal indictments. But Sylus didn’t want to name it, he didn’t want to admit how the silence from Kieran, the boy he watched grow, the only editor who ever seemed to understand his voice, was beginning to gnaw at his confidence.

This latest manuscript had felt like a gamble. It followed a twisted romance between a high-ranking government councilman and a morally fraying detective, two people caught in a spiderweb of secrets, loyalties, and quiet betrayals. He’d toned down the bloodshed this time, fewer bodies, more mind games. But the ending was as dark as ever. They didn’t kill each other. Instead, they died for each other, willingly. A double suicide. The final act of devotion, or perhaps the final manipulation.

When a message finally came from Kieran, and one sentence, nothing more: "meet me at your café boss, usual time 😎,” Sylus wasn’t sure if it was hope or unease that tightened his chest.

Now, seated at a window table of his own damn café, the one haven he’d designed for people who hated noise and loved existential dread with their mochas, the one he’d opened as a means of extra money, Sylus waited. The place smelled like roasted beans, old paper, and the low murmur of focused individuals. He had spent the last ten minutes pretending not to glance at the door every time it jingled. Another five pretending he wasn’t rehearsing a speech in his head, something scathing, but not too scathing. Something like, Next time you ghost me, I’m submitting the manuscript to a fanfiction site under your name, and suing you for stolen work.

The door opened again, and this time it was him… no, them. Both of them. Kieran shuffled in first, clutching papers and guilt in equal measure. Luke followed, coat half off his shoulder, looking like he hadn’t stressed about anything in years. The only similarities were the elaborately styled fiery, red hair and of course, the faces.

Sylus had always said that if you put the twins in a room with a single chair, Kieran would write a heartfelt apology note for sitting in it, and Luke would sell it back to you at a markup. It wasn’t that they weren’t alike, no, the terrifying thing was how similar they were under the skin. Same sharp eyes, same competitive streak, same impossible capacity for tricks and chaos. But where Kieran wore his heart like an easily wrinkled button-up, Luke wore his like a concealed weapon that’s close, clever, and just a little bit smug.

Sylus had helped raise them through their messy teen years filled with hormonal disasters and dramatic friendships. He'd been barely in his twenties himself, still figuring out how to be an adult without setting things on fire, and yet somehow found himself as the de facto older brother-slash-parental figure when their actual family had… well, imploded like an underfunded indie film. They’d looked up to him, disturbingly so. Sylus, the brooding, slightly unhinged writer-figure who lived on wine and disillusionment, had unintentionally become their north star. Naturally, they’d followed him into publishing. Because nothing says "I admire you" like choosing the exact same battlefield and then charging into it with wildly different weapons.

Kieran became an editor, the empathetic kind who sometimes used emojis in professional emails and gently wrote “consider revising” on paragraphs that deserved to be set on fire. His desk was covered in highlighters, sticky notes, and tons of manuscripts. Luke, on the other hand, became a circulation manager, a job that required zero emotional attachment and maximum manipulation of spreadsheets and human beings. He ran numbers like a mob boss and smiled like he was always in on a joke nobody else understood.

Two halves of the same literary disaster. And yet, they worked.

Sylus sometimes wondered if this was his penance for raising two human henchmans who now made it their business to meddle in his. One obsessed with structure and story arcs, the other with distribution, readership metrics, and convincing people to read things they didn’t know they needed. Together, they were building an empire.

And Sylus was just trying to finish one emotionally compromised manuscript without setting his laptop on fire. All over again.

“Ah, twins,” Sylus said as they approached, “hello to the prodigal circulation manager and his empathetic sidekick.”

Kieran winced, but didn’t deny it. “Good to see you too, boss.”

Sylus gestured to the seat across from him with a flourish. “Sit. Enlighten me. What’s more pressing than the tragic, slow-burning suicide pact I sent you last week?”

Kieran slumped into the chair. “I read it.”

Sylus narrowed his eyes. “That sentence usually has a second part.”

Luke snorted as he slid into a chair next to Kieran. “The second part is that it’s currently above his pay grade to handle that much emotional damage in one go.”

Kieran tried to glare at him, but it came out more like a pout. “It’s not that! It’s just... the chief’s been cracking down on time. I’ve got ten other authors on rotation now. Most of them actually finish the desired things.”

Sylus raised a brow, voice calm but edged. “So you’re not in charge of me anymore?”

Kieran paled. “Boss, I am the deputy editor. But I’ve got to juggle priorities. Chief Editor Xia wants to focus on manuscripts with a ‘market-ready trajectory,’ his words, not mine.”

Sylus leaned back, folding his arms. “So you’re giving up on me.”

Kieran panicked. “No! Absolutely not! That’s not what this is.”

“He’s not,” Luke said smoothly. “In fact, this meeting is about giving you someone else.”

“I don’t need a therapist,” Sylus replied.

“Not a therapist,” Kieran said quickly. “A recruit.”

Sylus scoffed. “Sorry?”

Kieran took a breath. “We have a new crop of editorial interns on a probation period. We’re assigning each of them to a veteran author for immersion. The one to sign a contract at the earliest gets a permanent job. And one of them, well, she specifically requested you.”

Sylus gave him a look that could have pulled out his soul from his body. “Why?”

“She has read almost all of your early works. Says she has admired you greatly.”

“Pity,” Luke muttered. “She hasn’t read the manslaughter romance yet.”

Sylus ignored him. “So what, I’m supposed to… babysit her? Why me?”

Luke's grin widened. “Because you need someone with grit and pace that matches yours. And because, you also need someone who has a high tolerance and way with things.”

Sylus folded his arms. “Still sounds like babysitting.”

Kieran hesitated. “There’s… a second part to this.”

Sylus gave him a long, slow look. “Of course there is.”

“Well, to, uh— to get your manuscript moving again,” Kieran said, voice dropping like he knew he was stepping into dangerous territory, “you’re going to try… dating her.”

There was a beat of absolute silence.

Sylus’s stare was glacial. “Dating her?”

“For research,” Luke added helpfully. “Authenticity, immersion, emotional nuance, all that good stuff. Your progress with romance has been stuck for months, and we’re desperate.”

Sylus leaned back, fingers tapping rhythmically against his cup. “You’re actually setting me up. Like some glorified bachelor experiment.”

“Only if you say yes,” Kieran muttered.

He didn’t answer right away. Instead, Sylus looked out the bookstore café window, watching as pedestrians scurried by through the traffic, crowds awaiting the traffic signals and vendors welcoming customers into their shops with bright, marketing grins and convincing words.

“What about you, twins?” He sighed. “Won't you get into trouble?”

“We won't!” Kieran swore, three fingers up. “None of the superiors would know. Promise!”

Luke nodded immediately. “You know, in this industry, writers and editors have dated a lot! You can treat it like an insider dating game, boss.”

Sylus laughed. “A what?”

“Dating game. She'll be desperate to keep the job and come to you with a contract. Only sign the contract if she agrees to date you. Hit two birds with a stone. Break up when your work's done. Both of you benefit.”

“You want me to seduce your intern.”

Kieran made a choking sound. “No! No seduction! Just... get to know her. Let her into your world a little. You’ll both get something out of it.”

“Unless she stabs me.”

“She won’t stab you,” Kieran said.

“She might,” Luke offered. “But only if she’s read your fifth draft.”

Sylus sighed, long and contemplative, and picked up his coffee again. “Fine. If this blows up, it’s on both your heads.”

Kieran grinned. “Deal.”

Luke made a loud high five with his brother, relishing their victory. He lifted a cup of steaming mocha coffee that Sylus ordered for them, pointing it towards him, “To love and literary self-destruction.”

Sylus shook his head with a lopsided grin. He clinked his cup with theirs. “To poor life choices disguised as artistic intent.”

It had taken two weeks before things came into motion. Sylus Qin didn’t reach out to the twins. Not once. He lingered in that minimal space between what he knew and what he feared, rooted in logic, but ankle-deep in unease. Kieran hadn’t brought the annotated manuscript. Worse, he hadn’t even mentioned it. No edits, no notes, no praise or gentle critique. Nothing. And for someone like Kieran, who would usually tail him like a puppy, his silence spoke volumes. It unsettled Sylus more than he cared to admit.

Still, that wasn’t the only thing feeding the tension coiled around him like wire. The so-called dating game had somehow become part of the arrangement, something Sylus hadn’t anticipated when he first accepted Kieran's dare. He may become a bachelor of some sorts soon, at least behind the scenes. For the book. For romance. A reluctant participant in a narrative he hadn't a clue about. And the worst part? It wasn’t just some prank born of their desperation. It was a request from them.

And how could he say no?

Not when Kieran, usually sharp, tireless, invincible, looked like a ghost walking on fumes and caffeine. Not when he was clearly still patient with Sylus, still trying and climbing uphill, still bringing hope to the table even if all Sylus could offer was wine. Not when Luke, calm to the point of unnerving, had finally stepped in, not out of obligation or curiosity, but out of certainty. And when he chose to involve himself, it wasn’t because he was bored, it was because he had to admit that Sylus really needed help.

That alone told Sylus everything he needed to know.

The twins didn’t need another burden. They didn’t need him unraveling, questioning the arrangement, complicating things further. Even if he tore up the contract with Linkon Publishing House and walked away, the fallout would land on them, and they were already fighting enough. Fighting executives, schedules, politics. Fighting for him.

For his name. His books. His legacy.

So Sylus stayed quiet.

He spent the week throwing himself into physical distraction. Renovating his bookstore café and chipping away at the outdated charm he’d once held so dear. Out went the cracked leather chairs and dim amber lighting. In came sleeker furniture, more curated displays, a refined coffee bar with industrial edges. He kept the scent of old paper, though. Some things had to stay.

He needed it to feel like progress and momentum. Like something in his life was being reshaped by his own hands, not just dictated by someone else with their carefully spun illusions.

But every night, as he stood behind the counter or leaned against the back shelf watching contractors drill and polish, his thoughts drifted somewhere darker. He wondered if he could ever really pull off the illusion of romance, if he could handle a woman with any semblance of grace or understanding, or if he was simply too rigid, too logical, too frayed around the edges. He questioned whether any of this, the bookstore, false dating, and compromises would ever lead him back to the summit. Back to a place where his books mattered. Where people read his name and believed in it. Where his worth wasn't something he had to explain or perform, but something they felt in sentences, in stories, and in the silence between them.

And whether he still had it in him to write like that again.

The bell above the door chimed with clarity one afternoon, too early for the usual customers and too crisp to be anyone casual. Sylus didn’t look up immediately. He recognized the sound of leather shoes on restored wood, the faint scent of a pine and juniper cologne that used to linger in late editorial meetings.

Sylus raised his head. “Zayne.”

Zayne Li stood at the threshold of the newly renovated café with a paper bag in hand, wearing a dark trench over his usual black. Director of Linkon Publishing House. Former novelist. Still razor-sharp in mind and mouth.

“Are you gutting this place or building a shrine?” Zayne asked, walking in.

“Depends on the worshipper,” Sylus said dryly, nodding at the bag. “You bring peace offerings or critiques?”

Zayne held it out. “Lemon tarts. Before you complain, I remembered you hate the flaky kind.”

Sylus took it with a grunt that almost passed for gratitude and gestured for him to sit. Zayne did, slipping into a chair by the counter with an ease of a man who didn’t need to be invited. They sat for a moment in quiet, the kind that spoke volumes of deadlines survived, creative breakdowns shared, the occasional drink thrown at a pitch meeting and the still-there friendship of two men who had not so much parted ways as chosen different trails.

“I didn’t come here to criticise you,” Zayne said finally. “Though I will say I had trouble debating with departments that wanted to revoke your contract.”

Sylus leaned back. “So you came to tell me off.”

Zayne gave a thin smile. “Only partially. The rest is information. Or a warning, depending on how you take it.”

Sylus said nothing.

Zayne reached into his coat and pulled out a file, untidy for someone so famously meticulous, and laid it on the counter. He didn't speak a word about it, but Sylus could guess what it contained.

“Is romance really that hard for you?”

Sylus looked away, jaw clenched. “Romance is subjective. My version just doesn't seem to appeal to you lot's standards.”

“You've written it once.” Zayne said, brows rising. “And it was beautiful.”

“It was a portion for one of my political thrillers.” Sylus reminded him with a tone in a cutting edge of accusation, “In collaboration with an anonymous writer who acted as a script consultant whom you forcefully assigned me.”

“You were facing a creative block.”

“I didn't deny that. But you know I could've done it alone.”

Zayne only clicked his tongue, dismissing the topic. He said, “You know Luke and Kieran have been juggling your situation behind the scenes.”

“I’m aware.”

“They were the ones to ask me to intervene.”

“Of course they have.”

Zayne raised a brow. “You say that like you’re not grateful they still give a damn.”

Sylus looked away, swaying his crossed legs, a habit he could never get rid of. But how could he open up to others if he can't even be bare to himself?

Zayne continued. “They think the solution might be someone with stronger editorial chemistry. Someone who doesn’t care about your history or your stubborn perfectionism. Someone who might challenge you instead of dancing around your process.”

Zayne Li didn't seem to have a clue about Luke and Kieran’s dating suggestion then. Sylus could almost laugh.

“What—like she's terrifying?”

Zayne smiled slightly. “She’s competent. That alone should terrify you.”

Sylus took the file and opened it to the first page. He paused before keeping it back. “So what’s the deal?”

“You don’t need to make a move just yet,” Zayne said smoothly. “I’ll let you know when the time’s right. We asked her to review your past work, but instead, she sent back stacks of her own critiques, seems she’s thorough, to say the least.”

“And what do you think?”

“I think if anyone can make you write like you used to, it’ll be someone who doesn’t worship the name Sylus Qin.”

That earned a rare huff of laughter from Sylus.

Zayne rose slowly, brushing off invisible lint from his coat. “You know, most of us in the upper floors… editors, directors, even finance, we were writers once. Some of us still are. You could’ve joined us. Could’ve taken a seat at the table.”

“I never wanted the table,” Sylus murmured. “I just wanted to write.”

Zayne looked at him for a long moment, and for once his voice softened. “And that’s why we still make room for you.”

He turned toward the door, then paused, hand on the handle. “She’s not what you’re used to. Don’t try to push her away before you actually meet her.”

The bell chimed again as the door swung open and closed behind him. Sylus stared at the folder on the counter, untouched. He chuckled to himself. A new editor, a new gamble, another set of eyes to tear into his words and make meaning of him. 

For now, he let the file sit.

He didn’t touch the file. He should, but he didn’t. It sat there like a sealed prophecy, waiting for the moment he felt brave enough, or foolish enough, to crack it open. Instead, Sylus moved toward the back counter, where the espresso machine was hissing with half-hearted need, and let his hands move on autopilot. Mug, steam, slow pour. The act had always helped him simultaneously think, and not think. A strange mercy. 

It was the soft thud of books landing on the front counter that broke his rhythm. No, not a single book. A huge stack.

“Just these,” a voice said. Low-toned, controlled, feminine.

He turned.

Philip, the loyal cashier who’d been around for as long as the bookstore was open, looked back at Sylus, then towards her. He blinked in confusion, then began scanning the worn covers slowly. Sylus caught a glimpse of the top one, You Can't Kill A Dragon You Made, and stilled. He remembered writing that title, remembered the care with which he'd written three books in the series. Knew the subtle color shift on the spine, knew the older font, the way the dedication page had been nearly torn in the first edition. The same novel he'd had to co-write with a nameless script consultant.

He took a few steps forward, eyes moving down the stack. Dooms Doors, The Desert Forgets First, All Villains Write Their Own Epitaphs—book after book. All his. All from the past decade. All with varying degrees of dust and subtle neglect, like someone had pulled them off the forgotten ends of the shelf he'd decided to move at the back. That one shelf that hadn't been seeked by the customers in a long time. The only place he thought would suit his outdated literary works.

His chest tightened without reason.

She turned just as he reached the edge of the counter, bumping into him with the soft, almost soundless collision of someone who hadn’t expected another presence in her path.

“Sorry,” she said coolly, adjusting the sleeves of her coat as she stepped back.

He caught her eyes and the smoke in them. A soft, diffused kind of darkness framed in black liner and eyeshadow that deepened at the corners. Her lips were full, painted a deep, elegant red that said she chose her words carefully and let them cut. Long, dark hair spilled pin straight down her back, and she smelled faintly of rosewood and something citrusy he couldn't name.

Sylus opened his mouth, unsure what to say.

She was already turning away.

By the time he blinked again, she was almost at the door, coat swaying around her legs, not a single glance cast back. Just the stack of books, now neatly bagged, and the delicate imprint of her presence like heat dissipating from a room too quickly. He stared at the door long after it closed. Then his gaze dropped to the bag the cashier had tucked near the register.

The receipt had been printed.

After reading her name, he exhaled. 

The file Zayne has handed him sat open to the first document on the back counter. And finally, he felt its weight differently.

Maybe this story was already starting.

Chapter Text

“You mean to tell me you were ready to be my office rival, just like that, without even knowing that Sylus Qin can’t write romance?”

It wasn’t a question. It wasn’t even a surprise. It was an accusation, pure and uncut, delivered with the force of a slap and the elegance of a gut punch. The kind of conviction that didn’t need punctuation, only presence. It smeared across her expression like spilled ink on a white blouse. Obvious, permanent, a little humiliating. The accuser had the kind of dooming energy that arrived before she did. Long black hair that bounced like punctuation at the end of every sentence, eyes so sharp and cutting they looked artificially enhanced, and a plastic cup of cold, mocha coffee clenched in her hand like it was a sacred relic.

“But he did,” Tara replied, leaning in as if proximity could prove a point. Her voice trembled, not with uncertainty, but with the kind of disbelief that still hoped to be wrong. “He did once. Remember?”

A beat passed.

“Have you ever heard of a glitch in the matrix?”

The fellow editor intern said it with the solemnity of someone quoting scripture as if that one story wasn’t an exception, but proof of divine intervention. A cosmic hiccup that somehow validated her entire argument. Tara, beaten, more tired, and far less enchanted by office folklore, just stared at her. Not incredulously, but with the resigned stillness of someone waiting for the punchline to a bad joke they’d already heard before. 

That didn't come.

“A glitch,” Tara sighed soon after, resigning to her fate. “Oh, so that’s what it was. The universe must have sneezed so that Sylus Qin could accidentally write a romantic excerpt.”

The intern didn’t even blink. Her expression was all innocence and unbothered certainty, like she hadn’t just blasphemed the entire editorial department by suggesting that Sylus Qin, the literary equivalent of a locked filing cabinet, had once produced genuine romantic feeling on purpose. Her soft smile dimmed only slightly, the light behind it flickering into something more thoughtful. She shifted her weight, the ice in her cold coffee tapping the plastic like a clock winding down.

“Then why would he need a replacement?” Tara asked. “Why change editors now, after all this time?”

The editor intern didn’t answer right away. She was watching Tara instead, the way a wary cat watches a new piece of furniture, bright, colorful, poorly assembled, and likely to collapse under the weight of expectation. 

Four interns had shown up that day. Two had already been shuffled off like mismatched socks to a different department. The remaining pair, herself and Tara, had been dropped into the heart of the beast that is Chief Editor Caleb Xia’s editorial cockpit. And Tara had marched into the department, trailing the scent of lavender shampoo, caffeine optimism, and whatever cursed perfume the internet community was into. Short brown hair bobbing with every step, a too-cheerful greeting for everyone she passed, and eyes that sparkled like she’d read the employee handbook and thought it promised joy. 

The editor had taken one look at her and felt… tired. Not irritated, not threatened. Just the slow, inevitable ache of knowing this girl was about to learn some very hard truths. Because Tara had hope. Not the hard-won kind that grows slowly despite disappointment, but the clean, untouched variety, flimsy and fresh like it had just been unwrapped. She clung to it like it could substitute for experience, and maybe it could, in other industries. But here? In publishing? Hope alone was practically a liability. She remembered the meeting. Chief Editor Xia had laid out the names on the table like evidence at a trial. Tara didn’t even hesitate. While the others skimmed, weighed, and deliberated, Tara lunged out a hand that shot out like it was instinct. Sylus Qin. She’d picked him up without reading past the name. A hopelessly hopeful case, the editor thought, or worse, someone who believed the myth.

Her, by contrast, had drawn the short straw like in a horror movie. Her folder held nothing but the redrafted manuscripts of a rising indie darling, work that, only months ago, had been scrubbed from a fanfic site after a server crash because of the intensity of readers he had. She remembered watching it while visibly pale. She thought she’d been handed a literary landfill. But she found herself caught later in the break room, hunched over a printout, brow furrowed in concentration and immersion, and then something shifted. A slow, grudging curl at the edge of her mouth. She didn’t dread the assignment anymore. Not entirely. Because the fanfiction was good. Raw, maybe, and also unpolished. But it was alive. And that was the thing that made things work in her case. The intern hadn’t wanted that last pick, but she could make it work.

“Editors don’t just disappear, Mr. Kieran can’t just give up on him,” Tara added, a little more softly. “He is one of the editors who work. He kept a man like Sylus Qin in print. And he was in print every year without fail. Until, well…”

The older woman exhaled slowly, as if the words tasted bitter.

“Because later, something must have broken,” she said at last, wondering if her deduction had any weight. “And no one wants to say it out loud.”

Tara frowned. “None of them would talk about it.”

“No, they won’t because it’s embarrassing for them. Because he was their golden boy, and because he’s the kind of name you put on press releases and literary panels that are clean, consistent, and stoic. And when someone like that fails, it’s not just his fault, not just a personal failure. It’s structural. It’s bad optics."

Tara let the words settle. “He’s not writing now, is he?”

A beat passed. Then, the faintest sigh. “Even if he is, it’s nothing they can use because it will be nothing they want to sell, that I am sure. Because who changes a veteran author’s editor to interns that barely know how this world works?”

Tara’s fingers curled against the table. “I am only a gamble.”

She couldn’t say anything. Her mouth curled downward into pity. She reached out a hand to pat her back, gently caressing in small circles. “I think they picked you because you didn’t know any better,” she said finally. “And because everyone else who did ran.”

Tara didn’t answer right away. She bit the inside of her cheek. Hard. She wanted to protest, but nothing came out. Because if she opened her mouth, she was scared the only thing that would fall out was the truth that was as clear as day. She hadn’t known. Not too much anyway. She’d seen the name and felt that sharp, giddy thrill in her chest. Sylus Qin. The literary legend. The man who’d made her cry once when she was in college. All with a single paragraph about holding someone’s hand before a cruel departure. She remembered the way the prose had struck her with quiet, precise devastation. 

But that was years ago. And apparently, a glitch in the damn matrix. Now, all she had was his reputation, a very soulless folder, and the growing suspicion that she’d been sent into a minefield with nothing but a highlighter and a hopeful attitude. Her stomach twisted from dread, and the sudden, bone-deep fear that she was going to fail, and worse, that she was going to do it publicly.

“Maybe I can still get reassigned,” she murmured, only half to herself.

She snorted in reply. “Now that you’ve touched the file? That’s like trying to return an exorcism mid-ritual.”

Tara’s eyes widened. “It can’t be that bad.”

“Then by all means,” the editor said. She rolled her chair towards Tara and peered into her computer screen. “Go ahead and open the document. Let’s read it together.” She gestured toward the file like it might start hissing. Tara hesitated, and her hand hovered over the laptop like it was a bomb detonator.

She clicked.

A silence followed, which remained for an hour.

“Is this… a story about two psychopaths in love?” Tara asked, her voice thin, like she was hoping she’d read it wrong.

The editor didn’t answer right away. She was too busy laughing, sharp, amused, disbelieving. She leaned back in her chair with the kind of ease that only came from watching someone else unravel. Her fingers wrapped around her coffee cup like it was the only stable thing in the room, and she took a long, deliberate sip before answering. “Oh, this is hilarious,” the laughter still clinged her words. “Positively unhinged. And I say that with a degree of professional admiration.”

Tara stared at the screen in silent horror, scrolling a few lines down just to make sure. Nope. Still there. One of the characters was professing love while casually discussing dismemberment as a metaphor for emotional vulnerability.

“You read all of his books, didn’t you?” Tara asked, a little too quickly.

The editor gave a half-nod, eyes flicking back to her monitor where the fanfiction draft glowed like a digital crime scene. “Mm-hm. Had a few missing from my shelf, so I went out and bought the rest after lunch yesterday. Paperbacks. Some hardcovers. His older stuff is nearly out of print now, did you know that? I only found it in that one place and the bookstore cafe is something else, really. You should go too.”

Tara let out a nervous laugh. “And… were the books you bought good?”

The question hung there, like a trap she didn’t mean to set. The editor turned in her chair, fixing her with a slow, unreadable look. Her expression didn’t say yes or no, it said, Why do you want to know?

“Aren’t you a fan?” she asked instead, her tone just a shade too even.

Tara fumbled, eyes darting back to her screen as if it might offer an escape. “I mean… I’ve only read one of his books. The one everyone was reading back then. I loved it. But that doesn’t mean…”

“Doesn’t mean what?”

Tara hesitated. Then, very quietly, she admitted, “Doesn’t mean I know who he is.”

The silence that followed wasn’t heavy. It was careful. Like something had shifted, not loudly, but definitively, just like a book sliding off a shelf when no one was looking.

She gave a small, knowing exhale through her nose. “No,” she said softly. “You don’t.”

She turned back to the fanfiction on her screen. Her expression sharpened into something more thoughtful. The prose was jagged. Unfiltered. There were fingerprints of something real underneath all the stylized madness, emotions that hadn't been workshopped out of existence. Not publishable yet, but not lifeless either. “This paragraph is a mess,” she murmured absentmindedly. “But he’s reaching for something very immersive.”

Tara didn’t say anything. She just watched the editor, watched her change, slightly, subtly, from someone observing a wreck into someone starting to read between the wreckage. And for the first time, Tara felt something worse than dread.

She felt herself becoming… replaceable.

The internship week dissolved into a monochrome parade of administrative busywork and enforced silence. She kept her head down, as expected. Edited a thirty-page grant proposal that read like dried paint. Reformatted an author Q&A full of semicolons that should’ve been buried. No one said it aloud, but it was clear, interns weren’t expected to learn. They were expected to last.

She might have, had the fanfiction author not arrived.

He made his entrance on a Wednesday, or maybe she was just hallucinating by then because there was no real difference between the days except the temperature of her coffee. He didn’t so much walk into the office as he descended into it. Wavy, meticulously styled purple hair, trousers that swished like they cost more than the building’s annual stationery budget, and the sort of posture only achievable through theatre school trauma or divine favoritism. He wore smugness like cologne. You could smell it before he spoke.

And oh, he spoke.

“Cutie,” he said, addressing no one in particular as he swept past the cubicles. “The lighting in here is aggressively fluorescent. Is this where creativity comes to die?”

She looked up just long enough to confirm that yes, her patience had a ceiling.

He found her desk. Of course he did. Not because she’d invited him, but because apparently, the entire point of this week was to bulldoze every expectation she’d walked in with. She hadn’t even had the chance to request his updated contact information, let alone schedule a meeting. But there he was, arms folded, chin tilted, looking at her like a problem he couldn’t wait to fix.

She blinked once, and very slowly. Then said, “Mr. Qi Yu.”

“Just Rafayel is fine.” He grinned. “Are you the one they’re dangling like seaweed? How quaint.”

“Not seaweed,” she replied without looking up. “But your inconvenience.”

“Even better,” he cooed, leaning in, lowering his voice to a confidential hush. “I do love a bit of chaos with my morning coffee, miss editor.”

The next forty-five minutes were a study in professional masochism. He had immediately signed the contract and had questions, too many of them, all irrelevant. He wanted to know if the manuscript could feature animated annotations. Whether it was appropriate to have an author photo where his chest was exposed. Whether the publishing house would spring for a scent consultant, “because the vibe of the book smells like sea water on the shore, and I simply won’t compromise.”

She didn’t respond to most of it. Just typed, nodded, typed a bit more. Behind her polite expression, however, was a tide beginning to turn. Not rage exactly. But the clean, slicing awareness that whatever she thought this job was going to be, it had quietly become something else. He was an invasion in her everyday life, and was already orbiting her desk like a slow, chaotic satellite, and the others, Tara, the other interns, even the senior editors, had started watching with thinly veiled interest. Like they were waiting for something to snap. Or click.

She didn’t like being part of anyone’s entertainment. And she especially didn’t like being underestimated. That would prove inconvenient for them. All of them.

Somewhere between constant back and forth to Rafayel's house and the consistent appeasing with his demands, her mind drifted back to a week ago, a whirlwind montage. It started with a rent reminder slipped under her apartment door like a passive-aggressive ghost, an unexpected acceptance email from Linkon Publishing House, and her wiring all the savings she'd conjured to the government hospital back in town where her grandmother lay fading gently, night after night.

She lives in a cramped apartment above a laundromat with thin walls and no insulation. Her coffee pot broke a month ago, and she walks everywhere to save on transportation. Every cent she earns is split between rent, fashionable closet, and her grandmother’s hospital bills in a town too far away for weekend visits. She doesn’t dream big anymore. She dreams small, like a desk by the window, a full afternoon without fear of her name being on a page without shame or someone else’s fingerprints on it. That’s it. But even that feels too much. She’s terrified of starting again, of failing on her own terms. That's why she can only edit, correct the grammar, trim the passive voice, and tell herself it’s close enough to what she used to be.

Now here she was. Assigned a desk, an awfully boring intern task, and a strange man with alarming scale of expectational standards that she could barely comprehend.

“You're here again?” she asked, rolling her chair back to face him with all the enthusiasm of someone discovering a raccoon in their trash.

“Is that a problem?” Rafayel tilted his head, the picture of offended innocence.

“Not at all.” She sighed, watching him grin with the delighted scrutiny of someone front-row at a circus act. “But if you don’t have anything better to do than making fun of me or yanking me around like some editorial marionette, then I suggest contacting me—”

“You—hey!” he cut in, affronted. “How rude. I’m done with the revision for chapter eight, thank you very much. That’s why I’m here. You think I just waltz in to bother you and don’t do any real work?”

She raised a single, withering brow. He did waltz in. And he absolutely bothered her.

And yet.

Rafayel raised his chin like a monarch receiving a compliment he already believed. His hair shimmered under the office fluorescents like it had its own lighting designer. With a flourish, he handed her a neatly clipped set of pages. “Go ahead. Be amazed.”

She nodded, smoothing out the creases in her skirt, and took the draft. As her eyes flicked over the newly revised lines, her expression shifted from wary to impressed. He began to hum as she read, a tuneless thing, probably improvised and definitely annoying. Meanwhile, his fingers wandered across her desk, tinkering with her post-its, tapping the lid of her lukewarm coffee, flipping through the stack of manuscripts and magazines like they were casual weekend reading.

“It’s called artistic immersion,” he said smugly, catching her glance.

“I won’t deny it,” she said, holding up a thumb. “The lines are strong. Surprisingly so, coming from someone who thinks ‘structure’ is a personal attack.”

“Cutie,” he said, placing a hand to his chest. “I am structure. I just like to accessorize it.”

Before she could swat him with a stapler, or worse, indulge his ego further, a voice cracked across the floor like a whip against marble.

“Miss Tara.”

They both turned, the air in the department thinning fast.

Caleb Xia.

Chief Editor Caleb’s voice never needed to rise. It carried authority in surgical strikes, each syllable honed and precise. He was standing near the entrance, clipboard in hand, expression sharp enough to cut glass. Tara stood just inside the doorway, small and hunched, her shoulders trembling ever so slightly. Her hands clutched a folder to her chest like it was a shield, or maybe a final offering.

“You were supposed to last have Sylus’ signature by yesterday,” Caleb said. “Not today. Yesterday. Do you understand the difference, Miss Tara?”

“I—I tried,” Tara’s voice was soft, nearly swallowed by the quiet. “I went to his house again this morning. He wouldn’t—he said he’s reconsidering and wouldn’t sign until—”

“Until what?” Caleb asked flatly. “Until next quarter? Until Jupiter aligns with Mercury?”

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. Her voice cracked, and she looked down as a tear slipped past her smudged eyeliner. “He wouldn’t even read the revisions.”

The room went still. Still in the way wild animals freeze when sensing a predator. 

She stood slowly and pushed her chair back with deliberate calm, walking past Rafayel, who offered her a dramatic, two-fingered salute. “Tread carefully,” he intoned like a prophet at the gallows. “The alpha wolves bite the hardest. I've read that in an omegaverse fanfiction. Not that I have written any—"

“Shut up." she muttered. There was no venom or bite in her tone.

But before she could take another step, Tara was already returning with her shoulders taut, face blotchy, and tears hastily wiped with the back of her sleeve. She moved like a wraith slipping back into a routine, heading for her desk without so much as a glance toward Rafayel, or anyone else. Caleb had vanished into his office, the glass door swinging shut with a hush that felt final.

She followed quietly, approaching Tara’s desk with a slow, deliberate calm. When she reached her, she rested a steady hand on Tara’s trembling arm.

“It’s alright,” she murmured, voice low and even. “You’re not alone in this. We’ll figure it out, I promise.”

“I can’t.” The words burst out of Tara like a leak in a dam, breathless and broken. “I tried everything. I gave him both versions. I printed summaries, brought him coffee, and adjusted every single footnote. He didn’t even read them. Just—just looked at me like I’d wasted his morning.” She sniffed, swallowing a sob. “He said the royalty clause was laughable. He didn’t want the print copies, and said I was a distraction. I must be— I must really be wasting his time.”

“You’re not wasting anything,” she said, her voice taking on quiet steel. “Least of all your time. You did more than anyone would’ve expected. More than most people would’ve dared.”

Tara looked away, shoulders shaking. “I don’t think I’m going to pass probation. Maybe you’re the one who deserves this job. Not me.”

“Don’t say that.” She gently tightened her grip, grounding them both. “We’ll adjust the timeline, loop in the circulation team, talk to legal, and restructure the royalty clause. If there’s even a thread to hold onto, we’ll hold it. We’ll work on the problem.”

“But I’m not like you.” Tara’s voice cracked again, “I panic. I freeze. I forget everything I planned to say. You—you always sound like you know exactly what to do.”

She smiled, small and tired, brushing a strand of hair behind Tara’s ear. “That’s just noise control,” she said. “Half the time I’m winging it and praying no one notices. Believe me, I’m as lost as anyone.”

Tara let out a broken little laugh, the kind that escaped by accident. Her hands clutched the folder like a lifeline, but the trembling began to slow. 

From her own desk, where Rafayel had invited himself a seat, leaned back with his arms crossed dramatically. “Touching,” he called in a faux-emotional voice, “A moving tale of two interns against the cruel machine of the publishing world. Someone grab a camera.”

“Rafayel,” she warned without turning.

“What?” he grinned. “I’m just saying, if you two start a rebellion, I want in. I’ll write you a biography.”

And from behind a stack of galleys, another voice chimed in, mocking and bitter. Fellow colleague Dimitri stood just to the side, in the department clearly not his, coffee in hand, his ID badge swinging with indifference against the lapel of his pressed blazer. A full-timer with tenure, connections, and a sharp tongue. The glint in his eye wasn’t curiosity, it was recognition sharpened by something more serrated. 

“She might’ve pulled it off,” he drawled, “had the fanfiction prince not descended like glittered doom from above, bringing bad luck and amateurness.”

“Dimitri, dude,” Rafayel said, flipping one of her pink unicorn pens through his fingers, “jealousy doesn’t become you. Try pettiness instead. It’s more your shade.”

Tara blinked through the remnants of tears, a thin smile finally forming. She looked up at her quietly steadfast companion, the only one who’d walked to her side instead of just watching.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

She just nodded, thinking she'd cracked the code, thinking Tara had finally found her footing again. She even thought, naively, that her quiet reassurance had stuck, that maybe Tara had steadied herself and devoted her hope back into the work, even just a little.

Wrong.

Because her next words shook her soul.

“Maybe I should resign.”

The words came out so quietly that for a second she thought she’d misheard. But Tara’s face said everything. Her eyes were dry now, not because the tears had stopped, but because there were no more left to give. Her voice didn’t wobble. It didn’t plead. It was empty. It was already halfway out the door.

No matter how much she pitied her growing hope, there was something in her that reminded her of herself. Then, when she freshly stepped into this industry, bearing ambitions and standards higher than skyscrapers, every goal which was opposite of what she attained years later.

She had to act before another seedling was trampled underfoot, before it even had the chance to break the soil and reach for the light.

She started with Chief Editor Caleb. She knocked on his office door an hour later, and stood there, sharp and composed, a folder tucked under her arm like it held gospel.

“Five minutes, please,” she said.

Caleb looked up from his desk, unamused. “You’re brave to interrupt me without an appointment.”

“It’s about Tara and the Sylus Qin project,” she said, stepping in anyway.

He listened, or at least, didn’t kick her out. But his response was short, clipped like thread. “Reassigning her weakens her in the eyes of the board. Do you want that on your conscience?”

“No,” she replied. “But letting her crumble under a client who refuses to collaborate is worse. She’s not incapable, but she’s incompatible with him. We all know Sylus Qin. You’ve called him a ‘hot coal in a child’s hand.’ So why is this on her?”

Caleb’s gaze flicked to her, briefly impressed by the backbone. Then he returned to his notes. “Life is full of bad pairings. Learning to navigate them is part of the job. She learns, or she leaves.”

That didn't help. At all.

Then, she tried Kieran. The deputy editor was notoriously sunny, fiery red hair, always rolled up shirtsleeves, a big grin, and that calm tone that made rejection feel like a lullaby. She cornered him while he was rushing in the hallway outside the layout room, where the scent of toner clung to the air and interns shuffled past like ghosts.

“Mr. Kieran,” she said breathlessly. “Do you have a moment? It’s about Tara.”

“Of course,” he said, smiling. “How’s she holding up?”

“She’s not. She’s... barely breathing through this. Sylus Qin has been stonewalling her, and she’s talking about quitting. I’ve spoken to the Chief Editor and there was no help. I need you to help me reassign the project, and not her job, just the project.”

Kieran sighed, his expression warm but evasive, the way one might look at a puppy begging for too much food. “I get it,” he said. “Believe me. I’ve had to dance around him myself. But this isn't a matter I can step into, because Caleb runs that show.”

“You could step in,” she whispered. “Please.”

Kieran offered a soft shrug. “We’re all tied to a wheel, you know? I admire your heart in this. But pushing too hard might drag you down too.” 

She hated how kindly he said it. Hated the way his voice was full of compassion while his feet were already walking away, and who knows where?

She was exhausted. 

She hadn’t written, edited, or read anything unrelated to this fight in an hour now. Her coffee was cold before she ever remembered to drink it. She ignored Rafayel's calls. She had bags under her eyes and post-its stuck to every surface like neon prayers. Luke was her last shot. Circulation team manager, chaotic prankster, same face as Kieran but different font. Too fond of rubber spiders and sarcastic notes taped to the vending machine. She caught him by the copier in his office, stuffing a doughnut in his mouth and humming along to something loud in his earbuds.

"Excuse me, Mr. Luke?"

He looked up from the papers he was reviewing, the usual glint of mischief dimmed only slightly by the late hour. “You’re not here to blame me for the slime bomb in the printer queue, are you? Because technically, that was Kieran.”

She gave a weak, obligatory smile. “No. Though I should make a note of that.” Her shoulders fell slightly as she stepped into his office. “I need your help. For real this time.”

That piqued his interest. He set down the papers and gave her his full attention. “Go on.”

She explained everything. Tara's trembling composure, the humiliation in front of Caleb, the impossible task with Sylus, and her quiet, heartbreaking whisper: maybe I should resign. Her voice was steady, but her eyes flicked downward more than once, as if replaying it all over again.

Luke didn’t interrupt. He let her finish in full before he folded his arms, expression unreadable. “So let me understand,” he said slowly. “You want me to approach Zayne Li, Caleb Xia, and the Legal to reassign a key author’s contract, Sylus Qin, no less, from an intern barely clinging to probation... to you?”

“Not to me!" She said quickly. “Temporarily. Just long enough to keep her from burning out.”

“Which still reads like a quiet replacement on paper,” he said, leaning a little closer. “You realize the optics of that, right? Especially to Zayne.”

“I’m aware,” she said. “I’m trying to change the narrative before it writes her out.”

Luke was quiet for a long moment, scanning her face with the precision of someone who dealt with numbers, distribution charts, and the painful logistics of failing print runs. Then, he exhaled. “Alright. Here’s what I can do. I’ll speak to Legal about redistributing the author’s deliverables under a temporary consult model. If it passes that threshold, it’ll be up to Zayne whether to allow it. But—” his gaze sharpened, “—you’ll be expected to take over Sylus Qin directly while working with Qi Yu. All communication, all feedback rounds, everything. Do you get what I'm saying?”

This request came with an unspoken ultimatum, either leave Tara to unravel under the pressure, or step into the fire herself and bear the weight of the consequences. It wasn’t a request anymore, it was a calculated risk, one that threatened to scorch her no matter the outcome.

She had submitted her portfolio of book reviews and literary critiques during the interview stage, including thoughtful dissections of several of the publishing house’s most volatile authors. Among them had been Sylus Qin. She remembered the way her pen had danced around the contradictions in his prose, the brilliance tangled in his cynicism. She wasn’t unfamiliar with his work. Not even remotely.

But reading his words in solitude and becoming his editor were two very different beasts. Reviewing him was a distant exercise, one rooted in analysis, safely buffered by paper and ink. Now, the prospect of speaking to Sylus Qin face to face, navigating his infamous moods, negotiating changes with a man known to reject even commas out of place, that was a heavier mantle altogether. One wrong step, and she wouldn’t just lose her footing, she’d be dragged through the trenches of his perfectionism, his pride, and his stormy temperament. 

Still, with Tara’s quiet desperation echoing in her ears, she knew the decision had already been made.

She hesitated. “That’s... not very ideal.”

“No,” he said plainly. “It’s not. That's why I need to ask you. What are the actual stakes for you? Why go this far?”

Her mouth opened. Closed. Then finally, with reluctant clarity, she replied, “Because I’ve been where Tara is now. And… someone once did the same for me.”

That earned the smallest nod of approval from him. He extended a hand, not to shake but to finalize the silent pact. “Then you’ll get your chance, but if it goes sideways, I won’t be the one covering for you.”

She took his hand, firm but slightly clammy. “Understood.”

“Also,” he added, already turning back to his desk, “you’re still on the hook for refilling the vending machine.”

That made her grin, even as the weight of the deal settled onto her shoulders. “Fine. But I’m not stocking those cursed wasabi chips you like.”

She left the room with quiet steps, the hum of the old fluorescent lights overhead barely louder than her shallow breath. The weight of the agreement with Luke still pressed against her spine like an invisible yoke, but she held her head high, fingers flexing at her sides as if bracing for what would come next. Her shoes tapped against the tiled floor, the soft echo trailing behind her like a sigh. 

As the door clicked shut, a shadow moved just beyond the doorway. Kieran, coffee in one hand, curiosity written across his face like a headline waiting to be edited. He stepped inside with a slow arch of his brow, peering after her retreating figure. “Oh,” he murmured with faint amazement, “it actually worked." He grinned, adding, “our lie becomes the truth, Luke. Someone really bulldozed through their safety and security to become an editor for Boss.”

Luke didn’t look up from the document he was reading, just smirked faintly, the corners of his mouth twitching. “Didn’t I tell you I would do something? I just didn't expect Caleb to help out.”

“He's very kind.” Kieran took a few more steps in, brows furrowed now, intrigued. “But how did you know she’d be compatible with him? I don’t remember seeing her in the dossier rounds. Have we known her before?”

Luke finally turned, leaning back slightly with a low chuckle, tapping his pen against the edge of his clipboard. “How can you forget her, Kieran?” His grin widened. “She was the only one who ever managed to change his mind on that entire plot pitch about ‘subtlety in romance undertones.’ The one where he nearly walked out because she suggested romantic hints between the characters through a gruesome battle scene. She reframed the concept entirely and made him publish it too.”

Kieran blinked, stunned, then gave a soft whistle of appreciation. “Holy crap! That was her?”

Luke just nodded, the grin still playing at his lips as he turned back to his notes. “Let’s hope lightning strikes twice. May fate play its cards.”

And with that, the room fell into a hush, the soft whir of the copier resuming its rhythm unbothered, unknowing, but somehow, the twins hoped it was charged with the start of something quietly monumental.

Chapter Text

“Zayne gave me a folder marked senior intern,” Sylus snapped on the call, voice already taut with irritation. “And what do I get? A stammering little girl who looked like she wandered in from a high school field trip! She couldn’t even look me in the eye. I rejected her for a full week, for your sake. What kind of circus are you running over there?”

“She was a stand-in,” came the reply, too calm for the fire building in Sylus’s tone. "A trial run. We were testing her persistence before giving her anything real. She’s not cut out for fiction editing. The intern who passed probation is on her way.”

“Wow, Caleb Xia.” Sylus scoffed, gripping the phone tighter, the lines around his mouth deepening. “Brilliant. So instead of competence, I got stage fright. And now the real one can’t even show up on time? Fantastic strategy you got there. Zayne must have lost his marbles to keep your position.”

“Let’s not get personal,” Caleb said, still mild, though a thread of strain tightened his voice. “She’s usually punctual. Probably caught in traffic or—”

“Or she doesn’t respect the clock,” Sylus cut in, eyes narrowing like a blade being sharpened. “Not exactly a promising first impression, is it?”

He tapped his finger against the folder on the table. A steady, pointed rhythm that sounded like a countdown. “I don't have the luxury of patience. If she’s not through that door in the next five minutes, send someone to drag her here.”

Caleb let out a laugh. “Relax. You’re wound tight, man. It’s been four minutes. You know me, I don’t waste time on dead weight.”

His jaw clenched. “What do you want, applause? Hang up the call.”

Sylus Qin had been awake since the faintest thread of dawn slipped beneath the curtains. Sleep had long abandoned him, and he hadn't fought to reclaim it. There was too much humming beneath his skin. He had even surprised himself by clearing the kitchen counter of empty wine bottles and vodka flasks and stacking tins and wrappers from too many processed meals. He cleared them with deliberate hands, rinsed away the residue of long nights and failed deadlines, scrubbed the stainless steel sink until it gleamed back at him like it hadn’t in months. It wasn’t cleanliness he was after, it was control, however fleeting.

Then came the clothes. He reached into the back of his wardrobe and pulled out the red shirt he hadn’t worn in years. Crimson, sharp, unapologetic. He buttoned it slowly, smoothing it against his chest like armor. Dark slacks followed, ironed flat. He didn’t remember the last time he’d dressed up. 

And he waited. Perched at the edge of the couch, spine straight, manuscripts stacked in precise columns beside him. His white hair had been coaxed into a sculpted, almost elaborate sweep that once graced event panels and book jacket portraits. 

Despite its newfound order, the room still carried the scent of paper and old wine. Outside, the afternoon sun grew brighter. Inside, Sylus Qin waited for her, for judgment, for the beginning of something, or maybe the end of it.

The bell came late.

Not by much, just enough to make Sylus check the time and pretend he hadn’t. He wouldn’t admit she was just a few minutes late. He adjusted a manuscript pile by a millimeter. Then brushed off imaginative lint from his pants. Slowly, he got up and sauntered towards the screen, watching a restless woman’s head as she rummaged with her bag. She seemed to huff after a pause and rammed the doorbell again. The second bell was rung three times in rapid succession, and then, quite suddenly, the door flung open without waiting for his invitation. Sylus tripped backward and stabilized himself before she stumbled inside like a gust of wind disguised in black leather.

“Hello. Sorry, I thought this was... no, it is the right house. Definitely. The number’s just smudged on the plaque outside or something. Or maybe I just have commitment issues with ringing the bell properly. Either way, hi. I am here.” She tilted her head, pursing those deep, wine red lips in quiet scrutiny.

There was a moment of silence. Sylus stared, one brow raised.

She wore a charcoal trench coat that fluttered around her like a cape, unzipped just enough to reveal a snug red top and high-waisted flared pants that clung to her like a challenge to gravity. Wine-red lipstick. Black boots that looked built to stomp out nonsense. A laptop bag swung from one shoulder like it had survived worse things than deadlines.

Sylus cleared his throat. “You’re late.”

“Oh, you are that type.” She pulled out her phone, waved the lock screen with a triumphant flourish. “Says here I’m only seven minutes past the hour. Not even enough time to chill a glass of wine.”

His expression didn’t flinch. Stone-cold. Utterly unimpressed.

She nudged the door shut behind her with a tap of her heel. Then, she slipped off her boots and tucked them neatly into the doorway’s shoe stand. The contrast was jarring, like watching a panther fold laundry. 

Sylus’s lips twitched despite himself.

She extended a hand. “Nice to meet you. I’m the new intern from Linkon Publishing House, here to discuss your manuscript and, hopefully, get your signature on the contract.”

He looked at her hand, then at her. “You’re too unprofessional. Is this deliberate? That you'll go back once I refuse and tell your higher-ups I didn't sign it because I'm moody.”

She smiled. “Yeah, you're right. I am still deciding if you’re worth the ink.”

She watched him turn without a word, utterly unbothered by her unfunny joke, of her presence no less. He walked away with the kind of careless grace that wasn't so much rudeness as it was indifference, his pace slow, deliberate, leaving her standing in the entryway like an afterthought.

A protest rose to her lips, but she caught it, pressing it down with a sigh. So that’s how it was going to be.

Fine.

She did feel guilty, because this was the day she came to realize how much she relied on her legs until they staged a full-blown rebellion. Stiff, sore, and about as useful as decorative chopsticks. Walking, her usual superpower, was off the table. Pride? That had evaporated somewhere between hailing her third cab and apologizing to a driver who politely suggested she “just try walking a bit.”

She glared at her phone again, like it had personally betrayed her, the little blue location dot spinning in confusion, as if mocking her sense of direction, or lack thereof. Until it blinked green. She was at the right house. Thank goodness.

Each street had looked the same, perhaps because the town was all she knew. She was fairly certain they’d passed the same lopsided mailbox at least four times, unless this city had a whole army of identical mailboxes planted just to mess with her. And yet, she pressed on. Limping through wrong turns, awkward U-turns, and a suspiciously long silence from her GPS, all for the noble quest of finding his house, a place that, frankly, felt like it had been wiped off the map out of pure spite.

No matter how lavish it looked.

She followed him further in, her footsteps softer but no less determined. The moment she crossed the threshold into the main hall, the atmosphere changed. The place had a presence, moody, curated, and unmistakably expensive. It was the kind of home that didn’t ask for compliments. It dared you to judge it. A steep staircase dominated the left side of the entryway, carved of dark oak and polished to a mirror sheen. Above, a constellation of modern hanging lights dangled from the double-height ceiling like suspended stars, warm, low, and gold-tinted, casting shadows that danced across dark walls and crimson accents. It was lavish, yes, but not in a showy way. Everything was sharp, chosen. Leather furniture. Iron fixtures. Art that leaned more toward abstract rage than restful landscapes. It suited him.

Her gaze lingered on the details, the way red bled into black in the floor rug like dried wine, the untamed sprawl of books that clung to the shelves like ivy, and the ghost of incense that still hung in the air, smoky, dark, maybe sandalwood or something older. 

Undeterred, she tried to match his pace. “Okay, okay, I'll admit I was late,” she sighed, giving in. “Technically, I’m fashionably disoriented. Dressing up like this? It’s a full-time job. You try squeezing into leather pants after breakfast.”

No, she can't admit the pathetic truth of how irrevocably directionally challenged she is.

“It takes me fifteen minutes to get ready,” he muttered over his shoulder.

“You’re a man. Men don’t have options, just ‘shirt’ or ‘other shirt.’” She adjusted her jacket, squaring her shoulders like someone preparing to step onto a stage, and caught up to him just as he lowered himself into a minimalist, blood-red armchair by the living room window.

No offer of coffee. No invitation to sit. 

Only silence.

She still stood firmly, expectant and hopeful.

Sylus finally turned to face her, the harsh morning light catching the silver in his hair, the lines beneath his eyes. He was statuesque, carved out of exhaustion and restraint, but it somehow looked attractive and charming on him.

“I’ll be honest,” he said. “I don’t want to work with you.”

She blinked. Then smiled, slow and deliberate. “You haven’t even seen me work.”

Maybe it was the whole week of being messed with. Maybe it was Luke and Kieran ignoring his texts and ditching their usual weekend plans like he didn’t exist. Maybe it was the fact that Zayne actually approved the nonsense Linkon Publishing House made of him. Thought he was a cosmic joke, a clown on stage. Whatever it was, he’d had enough.

He looked her dead in the eye and said, “I read your file. Your notes. The margins were dripping with sarcasm. One sentence had five question marks and the word ‘seriously?’ underlined ten times. Who does that? It was practically proof of your comprehension issues.”

She did not deter. Instead, she nodded. “Ah. The chapter where your main character gave a monologue to a bleeding guard as her hands raked the male lead’s body? I stand by that critique.”

Sylus didn’t flinch, but something shifted in his eyes, and she didn’t know whether it was annoyance or reluctant amusement. It was hard to say.

“Let me guess, you rejected Tara, only to ask for a new editor thinking they’d send someone fresh, young, compliant, and reverent. Someone who would hold your prose like sacred scripture and whisper, ‘Brilliant,’ every five pages?”

“You're wrong. I asked for someone who wouldn’t waste my time.”

“Well, congratulations!” She dropped her bag by the couch and sat with grace, “I’ll be the fastest waste of time you’ve ever met. Bonus? I’m old enough to skip the awkwardness and connect seamlessly. We might actually communicate and fix things. What do you think?”

“I think I don’t need fixing.”

“I agree,” she said, grinding her teeth, “you need dragging. Through mud. Lovingly.”

He didn’t respond, only stared with the same nonchalance. The same indignation. As if he could see through her, like she wasn’t even there, but what he was looking at was the overhead showpiece glinting under the lights on the showcase behind her. The flicker in her demeanour was imperceptible to anyone but herself. Still, it was there. A crack. Brief, flickering, maddening.

“Well,” she said, brightly, masking the catch in her throat, “is this the part where you pretend I’m not here until I disappear? Very classic tortured genius move.”

Still nothing.

She rolled her eyes and muttered, “You’re worse than I expected.”

That got a reaction, but barely. His fingers drummed once on the armrest, then stilled.

“I didn’t ask for you,” he said, tilting his head as if challenging her. “And I won’t work with you.”

“Why not? Are you allergic to competent women?”

“I said I don’t want you here.”

“Stubbornness doesn't look nice on older men.”

His voice dropped like a stone. “I don’t want a handler. I don’t need rewrites. And I surely don’t need someone parading around my work like they own it.”

She went still. Then asked, quietly, “Is that what you think I’m here to do?”

“You’re wasting both of our time.” He waved a hand, dismissive. “Leave. I have to take a nap.”

Something twisted in her chest, tight, sudden, like the moment before a scream. For a second, she couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t swallow the frustration gathering behind her clenched teeth. It burned there, wild and humiliating.

She bit the inside of her cheek, hard. After everything… after dragging herself from her hometown to find stability, after wandering across the city with knees that barely worked, after bending over backward to help Tara only to be met with cold silence the moment she got assigned to Sylus, and even when Tara's probation was excused as soon as she was granted the position of content strategist.

Her time, her effort, her barely-holding-it-together sense of professionalism, all brushed off like dust on her sleeve. She had sacrificed so much, and now she was sitting there, humiliated, wondering if this dead end meant the end of more than just this project. Maybe even her job. Was she really that easy to overlook?

No, she wasn't. She couldn't just up and leave.

“I can’t go.” The words slipped out before she could reel them back in. They were sharp-edged, restless, half-spoken, half-spilled. “Not yet.”

Sylus raised a brow. He wasn't sarcastic, not even surprised, he just watched like he was waiting to see if she’d flinch under her own courage. She inhaled sharply and tried to smooth the edge, but it was out now. No taking it back. 

And he still didn’t speak.

Fine, then she would.

“Look, I know what you think I am,” she said, getting up to step forward. Her voice steadied, but her eyes flashed. “Some smug woman sent to ‘fix’ you. Another editor wanting to be your savior. Another voice trying to rewrite yours.”

He didn’t blink. But she caught it now, the way his posture shifted, very slightly, a bit guarded, like something inside him was coiling tighter. 

“But I’m not here because I want to babysit a man who thinks silence is a virtue,” she continued. “Or to be babysat by a has-been legend playing ghost. I’m here because I need this. You do too. Whether you admit it or not.” Her hands curled into fists. “I’m not just a replacement, and not your enemy. I really do want you back on those charts. On shelves and in headlines. I want your name spoken again in circles that matter. We can get there together, Mr Qin. You will write, and I'll help shape it.” Her gaze softened. “So no, I’m not leaving. Not until you throw me out yourself.”

Sylus finally looked at her, and really looked. The silence shifted as well, but it didn’t soften, not exactly. However, it wasn’t the same brittle contempt from earlier. It was observing and measuring. He saw the rawness she hadn’t meant to expose, the way her spine straightened even when her voice cracked. She wasn’t bluffing, but she was exhausted and still standing. And he hated how something in him… understood it.

“You shouldn’t have told me that,” he said at last, voice low.

“Why not?” she shot back.

“Because now I know what to do.”

“Go ahead,” she said, forcing steel into her voice. “Do it.”

“Leave before I really do,” he said flatly.

She crossed her arms. “Can’t. If I fail this, I will disappoint many, lose the job, the health insurance, and whatever thread of dignity I haven’t already mortgaged.”

“You should’ve thought of that before accepting this assignment.”

“Oh, so sorry I didn’t know you were less ‘tortured genius’ and more ‘six-foot-tall middle finger.’”

Sylus stood abruptly, his shadow slicing across the floor.

“Out.”

“I’m not leaving!”

“And I’m not working with you.”

“You think I want to be here?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I don’t!”

There was a pause. A taut, humming silence, like a held breath before a slap. Then he stepped forward.

Her eyes narrowed. “What are you—don’t you dare—”

It was too late.

One arm swept beneath her knees, and the other braced her back. She let out a full-body squawk, a couple of screeches, and a wailing cry as he lifted her with infuriating ease.

“Oh my god, you’re not serious! Put me down! I’m fragile! I bruise like a peach—”

“You’re loud like a blender.”

“Mr. Qin, I swear—”

The front door swung open, and cool air rushed in. He stepped out like he was returning an unwanted parcel.

“I have kitten heels! I will stab you!”

“I have a threshold,” he said. “And you’re over it.”

“You’re going to regret this, you vicious bastard—Oh my god, you put me on the streets in public!”

He set her down gently, and too gently for her liking. Right outside the yard gate, and not a drop of malice was in the motion, just the finality of someone placing a pile of trash exactly where it belonged. She tugged her coat straight with what little dignity she could scrape off the pavement. Her cheeks flushed with humiliation and fury and, gosh, something else too. Something sharp and aching and ancient, like being dismissed too many times by people who thought silence equaled strength.

She hissed, “I will haunt you, Sylus Qin.”

“Then be quieter about it,” Sylus replied.

The door clicked shut behind him. He didn't slam it, just clicked it in a controlled way. She stood there a beat too long. Then another. Then she looked up at the tall, immaculate house, to the long windows of what could be a study, and screamed, “Sylus Qin, I hope your pipes burst and your wifi dies!”

She gasped in triumph as the front door creaked open once more. Redemption. A second chance. She shuffled forward, only for a pair of boots to come flying out like unwanted guests at closing time. The door slammed shut with finality. She stared at the shoes on the ground.

Wordless.

Betrayed.

And just a little impressed by the pettiness.

Stomping back up the steps and past the porch, she jabbed the doorbell as if she was punching a boxing bag.

Once.

Twice.

A third time for emphasis. Her heart pounded, and her hands trembled. Sylus wasn't willing, not at all. It was barely dusk, and here she was, incompetent as an editor and unable to persuade a fallen star.

She shuffled to put on her boots, and the heels hit the ground with a thud. She heavily breathed, nose flaring with stubbornness.

Okay. Alright.

He wanted war, and she was war enough. A recalcitrant woman who will do things that make men docile.

“Fine,” the chaos in kitten heel boots muttered. “Game on.”

Burying herself in editorial work like it was the only lifeline she had left, highlighting, annotating, cross-referencing footnotes with a precision born of desperation, not perfectionism, she felt focused. Her desk was a storm of drafts, sticky notes, and half-drunk coffee cups, each one a testament to a new plan, a new angle, a new script to convince Sylus to reconsider. She scribbled ideas in the margins until her fingers cramped, rehearsed pitches in the elevator mirror, revised emails ten times before deleting them altogether. 

But no matter how focused she tried to be, she could feel Luke and Kieran’s glances flitting in her direction like moths to a scandal. Sometimes she'd even see the director looking her way, and Caleb Xia standing just a minute too long at her desk when making his daily vigilance rounds in the department.

They weren’t subtle, but always a little too curious, always pausing their work just long enough to make her feel like a walking rumor. And then there was Tara, who hadn’t spoken a full sentence to her since the reassignment. No eye contact. No replies. Just a hollow, professional distance that ached louder than any insult. 

Eventually, she involuntarily but desperately complained to Rafayel.

He nodded as she vented, offering dramatic comments and the occasional jokes that made her feel slightly less absurd for unraveling unprofessionally on his couch. He was someone she could slightly open up to without immediately regretting it. But even his princely, reckless presence couldn’t drown out Dimitri’s voice, always waiting to twist the knife. Every rejection, and every ‘no’ from Sylus, was fuel for Dimitri’s smug, snide remarks. 

“Maybe try aiming lower next time,” or “They don’t owe you anything, you know.” He treated her failures like entertainment, like she should be grateful that someone as “new” as her even got this far. But she wasn’t new. She wasn’t lucky. She was just tired, and trying her best. Trying harder than anyone seemed to notice.

Her strategies to win Sylus over began with spreadsheets and ended in criminal trespassing. After a week of radio silence, she decided, against every legal policy known to man, that persuasion required creativity. So, naturally, she broke into his house. Technically, “broke in” was a strong term because she found out his front door was always unlocked, more out of apathy than hospitality. 

As Kieran once remarked during a meeting and she had remembered, “There’s nothing in there worth stealing. And no one who’d like to visit.” Undeterred, she tiptoed into his absurdly over-the-top kitchen with a thermos of homemade stew. The recipe she cobbled together from fragments of Sylus’s old interviews and half-legible fan theories, most of which were probably lies. Still, the result smelled vaguely edible and nostalgically tragic. Exactly the vibe she was going for. 

She left it on the counter like an edible peace treaty, then slipped out, not expecting a response anytime soon.

Wrong.

A photo was sent to Linkon Publishing House the very next day, printed on matte paper and slid into a plain envelope with her name on top. It showed the lunch she sent, thrown out the porch, surrounded by what looked like a murder of crows perched on top, pecking the uneaten stew with a single degradable fork stabbed dramatically into a leaf.

He hadn’t said a word, hadn’t even written anything with it.

And the thermos? That was never returned.

Did that stop her? Absolutely not. Her next ploy was more… orchestral. She scraped together what little cash she had and promised “exposure” to a ragtag drumline of six overly enthusiastic college kids and a guy named Bob who just liked hitting things. They showed up outside Sylus’s house at noon, beating out a chaotic rhythm while waving a bedsheet banner that read, “Your manuscripts are great and knocking!” Or pounding, more accurately. It lasted six minutes before Sylus, still in his robe, calmly called the police. Not to press charges, just to ask if they could, “please remove the drummers cult currently assaulting my humble abode.”

Still, she wasn’t ready to quit. Next, she tried charm. Full-throttle flattery. Compliments that ranged from “Your metaphor and euphemism techniques are revolutionary,” to “Your handsome face structure would make a Greek statue weep.” Sylus, unamused, blinked at her with the flat expression of a man both unimpressed and deeply concerned. “Is this flattery, bribery, or the early stages of a breakdown?” he asked, before shooing her away with a flick of his hand like she was a persistent mosquito.

At this point, most people would’ve given up. But she wasn’t most people. She was a woman with sharp heels, a police warning, and an iron will, and that had to count for something.

The last straw, or perhaps her magnum opus, came in the form of a PowerPoint presentation. She marched right up to Sylus’s doorstep, and set up her laptop on his porch table like she was pitching to a boardroom instead of a man who hadn’t answered a single email in days and probably kept a flamethrower gun under his sink for moments like this.

Her opening slide? Sylus Qin: The Financial Decline of a Literary Hermit.

She cleared her throat and clicked.

Slide two: a chart titled “Suspicious Lack of Output = No Royalties = Eviction??”

Slide three: a stock photo of a man sadly eating instant noodles on the roadside, labeled “Future Sylus?”

Slide four: a photoshopped image of his actual face on a cartoon hobo with a sign that read “Will Write for Food.”

“I’m just saying,” she continued with mock-seriousness, “you haven’t published in a year, your mailbox is growing moss, and I’ve seen squirrels move into cracks in your house. You'd have to start selling heirlooms to pay property taxes for a house like this!”

“Please. You couldn't even maintain one if you had one.” 

“Listen, Mr. Qin, you're too financially reckless and an incompetent, broke man. Do you want to end up writing poetry in a public library bathroom for spare change?”

For a moment, Sylus just stared at her like she’d grown a second head.

Then, miraculously, he laughed.

Not a polite chuckle. A full, surprised bark of a laugh, velvety, deep, and incredulous.

He leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed, mouth curled into a reluctant grin. “Well,” he said, “I’d rather write in a bathroom stall than sign that pathetically glorified contract of yours. But points for originality.”

“Oh, come on. You need this. Even your wine collection’s starting to look like it came from a clearance rack at a sketchy liquor store.”

“I’m full of bitterness and resentment. Complimentary, like my wine,” he shot back. “Vintage, free and made with love.”

She gasped. “Sylus Qin making jokes? Are you— are you growing fond of me?”

“Fond is a strong word,” he replied, shutting the door slowly in her face. “Delusional is closer.”

But she could still hear the laughter as the door clicked shut. And for once, she didn't feel like she’d lost.