I don’t sleep well.

Again.

By the time Monday morning comes, I’ve maybe managed three hours total, broken into fragments between staring at the ceiling and checking my phone and trying to convince my brain to shut off.

It doesn’t matter.

I have to function today regardless.

The alarm goes off at six-thirty.

I’m already awake.

Have been for the past hour, lying in bed watching the room get lighter, trying to psych myself up for this.

First working session, Elliot Jun, starting the actual collaboration.

I get up, shower, get dressed in something that looks professional without trying too hard.

Dark pants, simple button-down, nothing that will make me look like I’m compensating or trying to prove something.

Competent.

By seven-fifteen I’m ready.

The session doesn’t start until ten, but I’m leaving now anyway.

Early enough that I won’t run into Bael and avoid any possibility of conversation or eye contact or having to exist in the same space as him before I need to be professionally functional.

I grab my laptop and the portfolio I’ve been reviewing obsessively for the past week, check that I have everything I need, and head downstairs.

The house is quiet.

Mrs. Wen is in the kitchen but doesn’t comment on the fact that I’m leaving this early but asks if I want breakfast.

"I’ll get something on the way," I lie.

My stomach is too unsettled to eat anything right now anyway.

Liang Feng is already waiting.

I get in the car without looking back at the house, without checking if Bael is watching from a window, without letting myself think about anything except the session ahead.

The drive takes forty minutes.

I spend it reviewing my notes on my laptop.

Not because I need to, I’ve memorized every detail of my design at this point, but because focusing on the work keeps my brain from spiraling.

By the time we pull up to Dingshan headquarters, I feel marginally more prepared.

Still exhausted but functional.

I can do this.

The building is exactly as imposing as I remember from the submission day.

Glass and steel and careful minimalism that screams competence and money.

I walk through the lobby, check in at the reception desk.

"Li Runze for the design collaboration session."

The receptionist smiles professionally. "Of course, Mr. Li. Seventh floor, conference room C. Mr. Peng is expecting you."

I take the elevator up.

The seventh floor is quieter than the lobby, more focused, the kind of space where actual work happens instead of performative business theater.

Conference room C is at the end of a hallway lined with architectural renderings.

I knock once.

"Come in," a voice calls from inside.

I open the door.

The room is medium-sized, dominated by a large table with chairs around it.

One wall is entirely windows overlooking the city. Another wall has a massive display screen, currently showing the Dingshan logo.

A man in his forties stands near the table, holding a tablet.

He looks up when I enter and smiles.

"Mr. Li," he says, extending his hand. "Peng Hao. We’ve corresponded via email. Good to finally meet you in person."

I shake his hand. "Good to meet you too."

"Please, sit." He gestures to the table. "Mr. Jun should be here shortly. Can I get you anything? Water, coffee?"

"Water is fine, thank you."

He pours a glass from a pitcher on the table and sets it in front of me.

"So," he says, sitting down across from me. "As outlined in the email, you and Mr. Jun will be working together over the next two months to develop an integrated design proposal. We’ll have these sessions twice a week, Mondays and Thursdays, ten to two. On Thursdays, we’ll have a professional consultant joining to review your progress and provide feedback."

I nod. "Understood."

"The goal is to combine the strongest elements of both designs into something that exceeds either individual submission. We’re looking for genuine collaboration here, not just cosmetic integration."

"Makes sense."

"Good." He glances at his tablet. "Mr. Jun placed first, as you know, but that doesn’t establish any hierarchy in this process. You’re equals in this collaboration. Your design placed second for a reason—the sustainability integration and circulation planning were exceptional. We want those elements preserved in the final proposal."

Something in my chest loosens slightly at that, not just included as an afterthought.

Actually valued.

"I appreciate that," I say.

The door opens.

A man walks in, maybe late twenties, carrying a leather messenger bag and looking slightly rushed.

"Sorry," he says immediately. "Traffic was worse than I expected."

"No problem," Peng Hao says, standing. "Mr. Jun, this is Li Runze. Mr. Li, Elliot Jun."

Elliot crosses to me, hand extended.

I stand and shake it.

He’s an alpha... I can tell from the scent, clean and understated, nothing overpowering, but there’s nothing aggressive or territorial in his demeanor.

Normal, professional.

"Good to finally meet you," Elliot says. "I’ve been looking at your design all week. The green corridor integration is brilliant."

"Thank you," I say, slightly caught off guard by the genuine compliment. "Your density solutions were impressive."

"We’ll see if we can make them work together." He grins. "Should be interesting."

Peng Hao gestures for us both to sit.

"Alright," he says. "I’ll give you a quick overview of the project parameters again, then leave you two to start working. I’ll check back around noon to see how things are progressing."

He pulls up a presentation on the display screen.

Project timeline, budget constraints, site specifications, community requirements.

Most of it is information I already have, but hearing it again in this context, with Elliot sitting next to me, both of us taking notes... makes it feel more real.

This is actually happening.

After about twenty minutes, Peng Hao closes the presentation.

"Questions so far?" he asks.

Elliot and I both shake our heads.

"Good. Then I’ll leave you to it. The room is yours for the next few hours. If you need anything, just call the front desk." He stands, gathers his tablet.

"Thursday we’ll have Zhu Yi joining, he’s the structural consultant I mentioned. He’ll want to see preliminary integration sketches, so use today to get aligned on overall direction."

Then he’s gone.

And it’s just me and Elliot and a table full of design documents.

For a moment, neither of us says anything.

Then Elliot opens his laptop.

"Should we start with site analysis?" he suggests. "Figure out where our approaches overlap and where they diverge?"

"Sure," I say, pulling up my own files.

He turns his screen slightly so I can see it.

"So your circulation pattern," he says, pointing to one of my diagrams. "You have pedestrian flow moving through the green corridors as primary pathways. That’s different from my approach... I was treating green space as destinations rather than connectors."

"Right. The idea was to make sustainable transit the default rather than something people opt into."

"Which is smart." He pulls up his own site plan. "But I was focused on maximizing residential density without compromising livability. Which meant clustering buildings and leaving larger green spaces between clusters."

I look at both plans side by side.

"What if we combine them?" I say slowly. "Your clustering maintains density, but we connect the clusters through green corridors instead of traditional streets. Makes the pedestrian pathways double as ecological infrastructure."

Elliot studies both plans a second longer, expression shifting slightly.

"It could work," he says, slower this time. "But your corridor widths... these numbers assume ideal pedestrian flow. Peak hours are going to bottleneck if we’re also routing through residential clusters."

I look back at my diagram, then at his density layout.

"Not if we stagger access points," I say. "Your clusters already break uniform flow. If we align entry nodes with that, the load distributes instead of stacking."

Elliot pauses. Then:

"...Alright. That’s fair."

He pulls out a sketchpad and starts drawing rough diagrams.

I start adding my own notes.

We work like that for the next hour.

Back and forth.

He asks about specific elements of my design, why I placed the community center where I did, how I calculated pedestrian load, what informed the pathway widths.

I answer, and he builds on the answers instead of dismissing them.

Suggests modifications that actually improve the concept rather than just changing it for the sake of asserting dominance.

It’s... productive.

I start engaging more as we go, the initial guardedness fading as I realize he’s treating this as genuine collaboration rather than a competition he already won.

By the time Peng Hao comes back around noon, we have rough sketches of an integrated site plan spread across the table.

"How’s it going?" he asks.

"Good," Elliot says. "We’re aligned on overall direction. Combining the green corridor circulation with clustered density. Still need to work out building orientations and some of the technical details, but conceptually it’s solid."

Peng Hao looks at our sketches, nods approvingly.

"This is exactly what we were hoping for. Keep going." He checks his tablet. "Thursday at ten, Zhu Yi will be here to review. He’ll want to see these concepts with some preliminary structural considerations, so use the next session to develop that."

"Understood," I say.

"Good work, both of you."

He leaves again.

Elliot and I work for another hour and a half, refining the sketches, identifying technical questions we need to resolve, making lists of calculations we need to run before Thursday.

By two o’clock, we’ve made significant progress.

"Same time on Thursday?" Elliot asks as we’re packing up.

"Yeah," I say. "I’ll run some circulation load calculations before then."

"And I’ll work on the structural grid. See if we can maintain the density without compromising the corridor widths."

We walk out together, part ways in the lobby with a professional nod.

I get in the car.

Lean back against the seat.

And realize that for the past four hours, I didn’t think about Bael once.

Didn’t think about Xue Lian or the fight or "nothing happened" or any of it.

I was focused on the work, on something that’s mine, something I can actually control.

The realization sits strangely.

Not relief exactly, just... awareness.

That I can function, that this collaboration is real and productive and something I earned on my own merit.

That for four hours, I was just Li Runze, architect, working on a professional project.

And for the first time in a week, that feels like enough.