“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.

Before I left, Jack invited me to a party at a private club on the east side of the city.

“It’s a networking event reserved for the elites. They’re all bigshot partners.”

The only reason I went was not for me, but for Lisa instead. Before I left for good, I had to make sure she and the team were left in good hands, preferably assigned to a respectable project.

The event was held in a century-old villa built with mahogany, where waiters carted around trolleys made with silver. When I instinctively helped the waiter hold the cumbersome oak door open, he looked at me gratefully. I thought it was the only genuine human interaction I’d had all day.

I could hear the sound of laughter and conversation spilling through the ajar door.

“I’m going to be honest, Ethan. Arya’s blueprint was as perfect as they come. I don’t know how you have the heart to rip it from her.”

Then, I heard Ethan’s voice. There was the usual mark of arrogance in his voice, the kind that was distinctive of Ivy League graduates, albeit mixed with the taste of scotch whiskey.

“I don’t know what to tell you. There were problems with the design. I can’t sacrifice my integrity as a juror just because she sleeps with me, can I? It’s business at the end of the day.”

Then, I heard someone defending me. It sounded like Michael’s voice. “Her on-site project in the Bronx is very elaborate and well done–”

“Her vision is too narrow.” Ethan dismissed his remark candidly. “We can talk about her talent when she starts doing real architecture instead of fiddling around with measly ‘kitchen renovations’ and ‘shop decoration’ projects.”

I stood outside the entire time and didn't even feel mildly affected. I had long become immune to his theatrics of belittling me in front of his peers to demonstrate how “objective” he was.

Then, I opened the door and found a seat at the end of the table. I worked like a professional saleswoman that night; all I did was endorse Lisa and her team to every architect willing to listen to me.

“Lisa has had a lot of experience working with the brownstone buildings in the Brooklyn district. She is very attentive when it comes to historical details.”

At one point, I caught the interest of a visiting MIT professor. He commended my opinion on the adaptive use of material when it came to working on heritage buildings. He was a very witty man and told a few clever jokes about Boston’s terrible traffic and their brutalist architecture, which gave me a nice chuckle.

Throughout the entire conversation, Ethan twirled his glass of Macallan 18 without taking a sip from it. He fixed a sinister look on me the entire time. When they were leaving, he suddenly yanked me out of the crowd and shoved me into his Tesla parked on the side of the road.

The moment the door shut, I found myself in a claustrophobic space filled with a suffocating smell. It was a mixture of the smell of expensive leather, cigar smoke, his Tom Ford cologne, and a hint of Chanel No. 5 that did not belong to me.

“Were you flirting with another man in front of me?” His voice came out as a deep rumble. I could see the anger in his eyes.

“It’s just networking,” I said, trying to open the door.

Suddenly, he crossed his arm over the length of my body before pinning me against the car window, trapping me in the corner of the passenger seat.

“I’m in the top rung of the architecture industry in New York. Is there anything that I cannot do for you?” he questioned.

I could smell the liquor on him when he drew closer.

“Did you have to be all over those second-rate scholars like some kind of beggar?”

I felt a wave of exhaustion wash over me when I looked at him.

He would never understand. A few years back, Lisa went out all to help me secure a junior draftsman position in a project led by him. She drank so much at a networking event that she had to be rushed to the ER.

Upon hearing about the news, his reply was a dismissive text, “Tell her to behave professionally.”

This time, I hissed at him, “I don’t want to owe you any more favors, Ethan.”

I turned away. The MIT professor I spoke to had given me several of his close contacts in the Bay Area of California, but I made sure not to tell him about it.

At this point, he loosened his Hermès tie and allowed his voice to soften. This was his usual way of earning my sympathy after abusing me.

“Listen, honey. I have a new project for commercial development. It just so happens that I need a project coordinator…”

Just then, my phone vibrated.

It was a text from Lisa that read, “The flight is confirmed. I’ll see you in San Francisco.”

With that, I curtly rejected his offer before opening the door to step outside. The gust of chilly night air blasting in my face was a welcome relief from the repulsive smell of his perfume.

“Ethan.” I stood by the roadside with my back facing the dazzling streetlights as I said, “We're going our separate ways from now on. I’m good on my own.”