The following day, the organizing committee of the competition put together a livestream for a podcast at a loft studio somewhere in SoHo. The so-called “roundtable discussion” was, in truth, a carefully orchestrated public stunt for crisis management.

Ethan sat in the lounge chair, still dressed in the Tom Ford suit from the night before. His tie was loose, which made him seem rather hungover, yet it also gave him an air of nonchalance. It was a good embodiment of the “effortless social elite” look that was popular amongst the masses.

When he spoke into the microphone, he assumed his usual ‘mentor’ role.

“Arya is a doer. She works incredibly hard.”

He paused briefly before continuing in an arrogant tone characteristic of a head lecturer from the Harvard School of Design.

“However, I’m sure you all have heard of the term 'less is more’ used widely in architecture. Excessive flair can sometimes lead to an overdone product.”

Then, he abruptly changed the subject and brought Sophie into the conversation.

“Sophie is something else entirely. She is a genius when it comes to creating a curated experience. Her instinct for space is… phenomenal.”

I looked at him and felt my stomach churn.

Overdone?

I spent three whole months in an abandoned factory in the Bronx to cover up countless graffiti spray-painted by gangs. I went door-to-door conducting community surveys. Was that supposed to be overdone?

Meanwhile, Sophie was lounging on a beach somewhere in the Hamptons, drawing up blueprints on her iPad. What part of that was instinctual?

While Architectural Digest and Dezeen commended my design as being refreshingly humanist, my partner was publicly humiliating me on a live stream.

I wanted to offer a retort, but a wave of memories rushed over me, gaslighting me with remarks that I shouldn’t be so sensitive or that it wasn’t that serious.

Since this was all for show, I decided to end the farce.

“Ethan.” I adjusted the microphone before crossly cutting off his sentence with a signature podcaster tone. “That was an excellent speech, but I’ll have to interrupt you for a moment. I need to go to the washroom.”

I took off my headphones before getting up to leave. A wave of silence fell over the studio.

During the intermission, Ethan confronted me in the back alley.

He lit a cigarette and frowned. “Have you lost it? I put this whole thing together to give you some exposure. You were supposed to acknowledge and discuss what you learned from your failure. While you're at it, you should applaud Sophie's talent… It'll do good things for your career.”

So that was his real goal all along.

There had been countless accusations of Sophie being a nepo baby online. That was why he needed me, a “veteran” with technical expertise to vouch for Sophie and to prove that her victory was earned. That was the only way the accusations could be stamped out.

The whole affair was laughable. I shot a look at him.

“Ethan, I’ll give it to you. It’s a pretty good PR strategy.”

I forced a sarcastic smile before continuing, “But I'm just a runner-up. I can’t possibly have the merit to critique the champion, do I?”

With that, I turned and walked away, leaving him to the onslaught of cold gusts of wind in the alley. This time. I was done with the whole song and dance.

“Ethan’s new project listing is about to be closed! It’s for a prime location in the heart of Brooklyn! Aren’t you going to try to fight for it?”

Lisa grabbed my arm firmly.

I took a look at my phone and saw that there were unread messages.

“I’m not going.”

Lisa’s hand trembled with rage, causing her to spill her oat latte onto the table.

“What do you mean you’re not going? That was your design! He robbed you at the award ceremony!” She was yelling at this point. “He’s taking advantage of you!”

“What about it?” I interrupted her lethargically.

Of course, I realized he was taking advantage of me.

Four years ago, we were holed up in a shoebox apartment somewhere in Chinatown, working on a project in the Lower East District. In that place where even the vermin avoided, we spent our days drawing up blueprints.

After we became successful, he became the darling of the New York Times, while I remained unknown. When I tried to fight for at least a bit of credit for the design, he smiled briskly and practically executed me in front of all the shareholders in the conference room.

“Arya, you shouldn’t let your feelings cloud your judgment. It’s very unprofessional.”

He hardly needed to raise his voice to make me come off as the laughingstock of the entire company. I was reduced to a useless doll with a pretty face, trying to climb the corporate ladder by latching onto her boyfriend.

“There are some things he was right about.” I said while looking at Lisa with a vacant look in my eyes, “I’m not cut out for this.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“I’m tired, Lisa.”

When I said that, I felt like I was cutting off the last thing that kept me going. All those dreams we had about winning the Pritzker Prize for architectural design, those vows of leaving a mark on the Manhattan skyline were gone.

The urgent wailing of an ambulance siren filtered through the windows. The sound was slowly fading off into the distance, a metaphor of my symbolic death in the final year of my contract.

The process of terminating the contract was mercilessly smooth. The procedure was as cold and perfunctory as writing off a bad debt. It was apparent that, as far as Moore Architects' finance department was concerned, their return on investment had already peaked.

Mr. Morrison sat behind his enormous mahogany table while he addressed me. He adjusted his gold-rimmed glasses before announcing as if he were delivering a closing statement in a courthouse.

“Arya, you may have talent, but to make it in this industry, you need a killer instinct. You’re too soft.”

He shrugged indifferently before offering a rather insulting piece of advice.

“But you do have a very solid foundation in design theory. Maybe you could consider applying for a part-time lecturer position at Parsons or Pratt? As they say, if you can’t do, you can at least teach.”

I signed my name on a document and wrote a check for the “termination of contract fee” to reimburse the firm for the so-called training they had invested in me. With a stroke of the pen, all of my savings originally intended for a down payment on a studio apartment were all but gone.

By the time I walked out of the office building in the city center, it was dusk. The December wind in New York cut through me like a blade. The avenue was adorned with festive Christmas decorations. There was even an ongoing light show outside a large department store. The light installation projected giant snowflake patterns onto glittering chandeliers, dazzling a cohort of tourists.

Amidst the wondrous landscape, I felt empty inside. Then, my phone vibrated. It was a text from my grandfather.

“My dear granddaughter, you’ve done a wonderful job! I saw your name printed on the World News Journal again!”

I felt tears pooling in my eyes when I read the message.

Grandpa was a first-generation immigrant who spent a large part of his life doing hard labor under the California sun. He hardly knew anything about the Pritzker Architecture Prize, nor did he know what a partnership contract was.

When I was in architecture school, he would don his reading glasses and help me with memorizing a variety of architectural terminologies. He would mispronounce “Sustainability” as “Sustain-a-bubble” or “Architecture” as “Art-lecture.”

Over the years, I had to tell him countless lies, saying that I’d visit him after the project was wrapped up, that I was very valued by my boss, or that I was doing great in New York.

I chased after fame, prestige, and Ethan for six years… just to end up empty-handed. The entire time, Grandpa was watching over me in the small town of Sunnyvale in California. I was his only source of pride.

I stood bracing the cold wind on Fifth Avenue and took a large drag of the frosty air containing a faint scent of the aroma of roasted chestnuts and car exhaust. Then, I reached for my phone to buy a one-way flight ticket on the airline's application, from JFK to SFO at six o'clock tomorrow morning.