One of the fluorescent lights in the office was flickering.
Ethan Lu stared at it for about ten seconds, then shifted his gaze back to the screen. It was 9:47 p.m., and only he and Zhang, at the desk beside his, remained on the entire floor. Zhang wore headphones, with a gaming livestream open on his monitor. Every so often, he moved the mouse, pretending to work.
Ethan said nothing. He proofread the final page of the report, saved it, and sent it. Then he leaned back in his chair and heard a faint crack from his spine.
The afternoon meeting was still stuck in his head. The manager had pounded the table and chewed out the new project planner, saying her proposal was “completely out of touch with reality.” Ethan had read the proposal. There was nothing wrong with its direction; it simply wasn’t mature enough yet. If the manager had been willing to sit down with her for ten minutes and tell her what she could adjust, the project planner could have turned it into something good.
But the manager had chosen the easiest way—reject it, then tell her to start over.
The project planner had returned to her desk with red-rimmed eyes. Ethan had seen her hands trembling. He’d wanted to walk over and say something, but in the end, he’d only set a cup of hot tea on the corner of her desk without saying a word.
It wasn’t that he was afraid to speak. He just didn’t know what good it would do. In his six years at the company, he’d seen the same thing happen too many times. Talented people came in, had their edges worn away, became obedient parts, and then left. The ones who stayed learned not to have ideas, not to have expectations.
Ethan shut down his computer and picked up his coat. As he passed Zhang, Zhang pulled one side of his headphones off. “Ethan, leaving this early?”
“Yeah.”
“What about the materials for tomorrow’s meeting—”
“Already sent them to your inbox.”
Zhang froze for a moment, then gave him an embarrassed smile. “Ethan, you really are…”
Ethan patted him on the shoulder without answering and walked into the elevator.
As the elevator doors closed, he saw his own face in the mirror. Thirty-one years old, faint shadows beneath his eyes, the lines at the corners of his mouth a little deeper than last year. He remembered the look on his father’s face the day the printing shop went under—not anger, not grief, but a kind of very quiet exhaustion.
He didn’t want to become like that. But he didn’t want to stay here either, watching the lights go out one by one.
Aiden Fang slammed his mouse onto the desk. The design draft on the screen was sitting at version seventeen.
Version seventeen.
He could recite the client’s feedback from memory: “Make it a little more lively.” “You can be bolder with the colors.” “My wife doesn’t think this font looks good.” “You’re the professionals, but I think it could use a few more adjustments.”
He drew a deep breath, pushed his chair back, and tipped his head up toward the ceiling. A coworker leaned over. “Aiden, you okay?”
“I’m thinking about a philosophical question.”
“What?”
“If a design gets revised seventeen times, is it still a design?”
His coworker gave two dry laughs and ducked back out of sight.
Aiden rubbed his eyes. He knew he shouldn’t be like this. That was simply how the industry worked: the client paid, so the client called the shots. When he was studying design, one of his professors had said, “Design exists to serve people.” Aiden agreed. What the professor hadn’t said was that sometimes “serving people” meant mashing your best work into a ball, throwing it in the trash, and smiling as you said, “Sure, I’ll make another revision.”
He opened his phone and scrolled to his conversation with Ethan. The last message was from Ethan yesterday: “Getting online tonight?” Aiden had replied, “Sure.”
It was the thing he looked forward to most all day. Not the game itself, but the time when he didn’t have to pretend.
Ryan Su stood at the entrance to the restaurant, his tie loosened, his suit jacket draped over one arm, the smile from three hours earlier still hanging on his face.
The victory dinner had just ended. He’d closed a major account that day, and the entire sales team had congratulated him. The manager had toasted him three times, saying, “Ryan is the ace of our department.” His coworkers had slapped him on the back and said, “Stick with Ryan and you can’t go wrong.”
He’d smiled at everyone, responded with the right words, and clinked glasses at precisely the right angle. He was too familiar with all of it. He’d learned it as a child in his mother’s little food stall—customers didn’t care how good the food was so much as whether you made them feel valued.
But now, standing at the restaurant entrance with the autumn wind blowing past him, he suddenly felt exhausted.
The major account was for a business management system. He’d spent three months building a relationship with the client, studying their needs, and creating a tailored proposal. But he knew perfectly well that the system had plenty of problems, and the after-sales support couldn’t keep up either. He’d brought it up with the company and received one answer: “Sell it first. We’ll talk about the rest later.”
Sell it first. Talk about the rest later.
He pulled out his phone and saw the messages in the gaming group. Ethan said he was getting online tonight, and Aiden had replied, “Sure.”
Ryan smiled. It was the first genuine smile of the day.
He called a cab, gave the driver the address, and opened the game in the back seat.
At eleven that night, the three of them met in the game.
Their characters stood in the plaza of a town, surrounded by other players coming and going. Aiden’s character was dressed in a loud, flashy set of gear. Ethan’s character always wore the same understated black outfit. Ryan’s character had an absurd golden helmet perched on its head.
“I got revised seventeen times today.” Aiden’s voice came through the headset, heavy with frustration.
“New record?” Ryan asked.
“One revision away from tying my personal record.”
“Then you should celebrate.”
“Go to hell.”
Ethan said nothing. He guided his character toward the dungeon entrance. Aiden and Ryan followed, and the three characters stood side by side outside the dungeon.
“I closed a major account today,” Ryan said, unable to make his voice sound happy.
“Congratulations,” Aiden said.
“Don’t congratulate me. The product is absolute garbage. I just packaged it nicely.”
Silence hung between them for a few seconds.
“I watched our manager chew out a new hire today,” Ethan said, his voice as even as if he were talking about the weather. “Her proposal was actually pretty good. She just needed someone to guide her. But no one was willing to spend the time.”
There was another few seconds of silence.
Aiden said, “Are we all doing things we don’t want to do?”
No one answered. The three characters stood at the dungeon entrance as the countdown above their heads ticked away.
Then Ethan said something.
“I want to start a company.”
Aiden’s character stopped. Ryan’s character turned to face Ethan’s, even though the in-game expression never changed.
“What did you say?” Ryan asked.
“I want to start a company,” Ethan repeated, his voice still even. “A different kind of company. Not one that turns people into parts. One where everyone can bring out their best work.”
Only the game’s background music played in their headsets.
“You’re serious?” Aiden asked.
“I’ve been thinking about it for a long time.”
“How long?”
“Since… probably since the day my dad’s printing shop went under.”
Ryan didn’t speak right away. He switched the phone to his other hand and watched the streetlights slide past outside the car window. The cab was crossing a bridge, with scattered lights glimmering on the river below.
“What kind of company?” he asked.
“A design firm,” Ethan said. “Aiden handles design, you handle sales, and I manage the people.”
“Wait, wait, wait.” Aiden’s voice suddenly rose. “You’ve already figured out the division of labor?”
“I told you. I’ve been thinking about it for a long time.”
Aiden laughed. It was his first genuinely heartfelt laugh of the day.
“You’re crazy,” Ryan said.
“Maybe.”
“Design firms have razor-thin margins, you know that, right?”
“I know.”
“Less than thirty percent survive the first three years.”
“I know.”
“How much money do you have?”
“Not much.”
Ryan fell silent again. The cab stopped at a red light, and he stared at the taillights ahead, a row of red lights.
“I sold something I didn’t believe in today,” he said. “I don’t want to keep doing this.”
The dungeon countdown hit zero, and a system notification told them to enter. But none of the three characters moved.
“I don’t want to revise version eighteen either,” Aiden said.
Ethan didn’t say anything else. He didn’t need to. He’d known Aiden for twenty years and Ryan for five. He knew that sometimes silence carried more weight than any words.
After a long while, Ryan said, “Let’s meet this weekend. We’ll talk in person.”
“Okay,” Ethan said.
“Okay,” Aiden said.
At last, the three characters walked into the dungeon. The world on the screen darkened, then lit up again, revealing a map none of them had ever visited before.
Ethan watched the screen, the corners of his mouth moving slightly.
It didn’t count as a smile. But it was the closest thing to one he’d felt in a very long time.