The client said my designs lacked vision.

Vision! Can you believe that?

After all the time I spent—sleepless nights with ink-stained fingers and half-eaten meals, obsessing over every detail down to the exact shade of marble for the columns—this is what I get? Dismissed like some fresh-faced academy graduate with a sketchpad and a dream.

I laughed in their face.

Then I cried in the alley behind their estate.

Then I drank. A lot.

Now I’m stumbling through Sumeru’s winding streets, half-soaked and fully humiliated, my robes clinging to my legs like disappointment, and the rain won’t stop. Neither will the hiccups.

“Hic—Ha. Perfect. Just perfect,” I mutter, blinking hard as the droplets mix with whatever’s leaking from my eyes. I don’t care anymore.

The world is blurry. Wet. Cold. I'm swaying with each step. The bottle's long gone, probably left on a merchant’s cart I leaned on too long. It doesn't matter. My head is swimming anyway.

I make it to the door somehow. Bang my hand against it a few times before I remember—I have keys.

The door slams open the second I unlock it.

“Kaveh.”

Uh-oh.

Alhaitham stands there, shirt half-buttoned, eyes sharp as a whetted blade. His arms are crossed. That vein on his forehead is doing the thing. You know the thing. The one that means he's about to scold me like a professor whose favorite student just turned in a paper titled Architecture is a Scam.

“You’re soaking, and you smell like fermented desperation.” He grabs my arm roughly—not enough to hurt, just enough to guide me inside like a storm-drenched stray cat.

“Don’t touch me, you brute,” I slur, stumbling into the foyer. My sandals squeak against the polished floor. “You don’t care. You never care. You’re just mad ‘cause I’m a mess again.”

“Kaveh,” he growls. “You’re drunk. Again.”

“I’m always drunk, aren’t I?” I hiccup and nearly trip over my own feet, catching myself on the wall. My sob catches me by surprise. “They said I wasn’t good enough, Haitham. I spent weeks—”

“I told you that client was going to exploit your sentimentality. You don’t listen!” His voice is rising. His chest is heaving. “You give everything to people who don’t deserve it, and then you end up like this.”

“Why do you care?” I shout. My throat is raw. My vision blurs again. “You don’t even like me! You just keep me here out of guilt or pity or some twisted moral obligation—”

“I care because you’re an idiot!”

His voice cracks. And for a second—just a second—there’s something like fear in his eyes. Not anger. Not frustration. Just...fear. Like he’s scared he might lose me to this, to myself.

The silence after that is deafening.

I sink to the floor. I can't hold it in anymore. I cover my face and sob, knees drawn to my chest. My robes are wet and sticking to me, my hair plastered to my cheeks.

I expect him to walk away.

Instead, I feel a towel drop on my head.

Then arms—awkward, stiff arms—wrap around me like he doesn’t know how to do it right but he’s trying.