After nearly three years of rejected applications, late nights and paint beneath her fingernails, Jiang Meilin's future had been reduced to a blue rectangle marked SUBMIT.
She hovered over it.
"Either press it or stop threatening the poor computer," Lin Ling said.
For four days, Meilin had worked between two canvases: Old Han and Bao in the workshop, and Auntie Yu defending a crate of cabbages from the rain. She had finished both, photographed all eight paintings, and rewritten her artist's statement until every sentence sounded like something she might actually say.
Two days remained before the deadline.
The laptop was open on her table. Ling had commandeered one chair for a video meeting; Jimin occupied the other, reviewing a maintenance report.
"I'm sending it," Meilin said.
"That's what you said fifteen minutes ago," Jimin observed.
"You count my moments of weakness?"
"Professionally."
His phone rang. He answered, listened, and his easy expression disappeared.
"No. Those vehicles aren't leaving the depot without clearance. The contract can wait. The inspection can't."
He ended the call, then turned back as if nothing had happened.
Meilin pointed at him. "See? You also have a terrifying voice."
"Only when people attempt to negotiate with faulty brakes."
From the other chair, Ling closed her laptop.
"That was the final meeting," she announced. "They've agreed to retain the existing tenants."
Meilin looked up. "All of them?"
"All eleven. Renovating a shopping arcade isn't an excuse to evict everyone who made it worth visiting."
"You turned down that investor's offer?"
"I turned down his condition." Ling smiled, but there was steel behind it. "My firm will survive without his money."
Meilin regarded her friend with affectionate admiration. There was much more to Ling than a beautiful dress and an excellent sense of humour. She had spent the morning arguing with people twice her age and three times as loud, and somehow emerged with everything she'd wanted.
"Now," Ling said, turning her attention to the laptop, "if you're quite finished admiring me?"
Meilin clicked.
The page went white.
Then the confirmation appeared.
Submission received. Portfolio review reference: XEA-2741.
Nobody cheered.
For one peculiar second, the three of them simply looked at the screen.
Then Jimin put down his report and stood.
"Well done, Sis."
He said it without teasing.
That was what undid her.
Meilin let out a laugh, blinking much too quickly. Ling got up and hugged her, hard enough to make her ribs protest.
Eight paintings. No family name. No favours. Whatever the reviewers decided, she had put her work before them on its own merits.
Jimin stepped back.
"So. What now?"
Meilin wiped her eyes with the heel of her hand.
"I'm taking myself somewhere nobody is allowed to mention deadlines."
By late afternoon, Zhao Jingshen had read enough reports to know that the problem wasn't a shortage of evidence.
It was the shape of it.
Four unauthorised recovery attempts. Different dormant accounts. An obsolete delegation pathway. The same pattern of cautious testing, as though someone had been learning the building's blind spots one door at a time.
Security had closed the pathway. The independent review was underway. Chen Li's authority remained restricted while the audit continued.
But a man capable of preparing four experiments would not be waiting politely to be caught by a fifth.
His phone rang.
Director Zhao Wenzhou.
Jingshen declined the call.
Another message appeared: We should discuss staffing arrangements before the board does.
He turned the phone facedown.
For once, remaining behind his desk was producing no useful thought.
"Chen."
His assistant appeared in the doorway.
"Clear the next hour."
"Chairman, the finance committee—"
"Reschedule."
Chen Li examined his face, thought better of arguing, and stepped aside.
The riverside park was crowded enough for a man to disappear without being alone.
Parents pushed prams beneath the trees. Two elderly men debated a chess move with the solemnity of a state negotiation. Somewhere near the pond, a child was insisting that ducks had favourite people.
Zhao Jingshen had left his car at a quieter entrance. A discreet security officer remained near the gate. He kept walking until the sound of traffic became a distant murmur.
Then he saw the easel.
Beside it sat a woman in faded jeans, one leg tucked beneath her, a small brush balanced between her fingers.
A gust of wind lifted the corner of her sketchbook.
She caught it without looking away from the paper.
"Miss Jiang."
The brush stopped.
Meilin turned.
For a moment, her mind offered her absolutely nothing useful.
Of all the people in Xia City.
And of all the men the city could produce, it had chosen the one with the devastating face.
"Chairman Zhao," she managed.
His gaze went to the picture.
A child was crouched beside the pond, trying to rescue a paper boat caught in the reeds. In Meilin's sketch, the child's outstretched hand looked almost close enough to reach it.
"Another painting?"
"A study. I promised myself an afternoon without assignments."
"Is it working?"
"Not particularly. The ducks have refused to hold still."
He glanced at the birds.
"Uncooperative."
"Outrageously. I may complain to management."
For the first time, she saw the corner of his mouth lift.
A very small movement.
Still, it nearly made her drop the brush.
Ridiculous man.
She gestured to the empty space at the other end of the bench. "You can sit, if you like. Unless the bench needs board approval."
His expression didn't change.
But he sat.
Neither spoke for a moment.
The child by the pond eventually abandoned the boat. His grandfather retrieved it with a fallen branch, receiving applause from precisely one person.
Meilin added the branch to her sketch.
"Did you finish your work?" Zhao Jingshen asked.
"My portfolio? This morning."
"Congratulations."
She looked at him, surprised.
"Thank you."
He didn't ask which gallery, how much it might earn, or whether she needed help. She appreciated that more than she expected.
"You don't look like someone enjoying a free afternoon," she ventured.
"I am taking a break."
"Ah. With the expression of a man reviewing a failed merger."
He looked at her.
"That obvious?"
"To someone who watches faces for a living? A little."
He considered the pond.
"Suppose someone copied something of yours. Perfectly."
Meilin tilted her head.
"A painting?"
"An identity. Something people would accept because it carried the right name."
She studied him for a moment. It wasn't a casual question, and she was clever enough not to ask for details that weren't being offered.
"If it's already been copied, the original won't tell you much about who took it."
"No?"
"Not unless the thief was careless."
He waited.
Meilin turned a page of her sketchbook. Several drawings of the same pond occupied it—early attempts, different angles, one with the gazebo in the wrong position.
"Once, someone reproduced an unfinished study of mine without permission. I knew which photograph they'd worked from because they copied a mistake I'd corrected later."
"What mistake?"
"An extra window." She grinned. "Apparently my building was more generous with architecture than the real one."
"And if the copy hadn't contained the mistake?"
"I might never have known where it came from." She paused. "But if I suspected someone was passing my work around now, I'd give different people slightly different preliminary copies. Nothing that changes the real painting. Just a detail unique to each."
He turned toward her fully.
"And wait?"
"For whichever version shows up where it shouldn't." She dipped her brush in water. "Provided you can do it without harming anyone, of course. A stolen draft is one thing. A dangerous false instruction is another."
Zhao Jingshen was quiet.
He had been working backward through compromised approvals, trying to discover who had touched an old permission.
But the attacker had prepared for that.
What they might not be prepared for was being given something new to copy.
Controlled versions. Different harmless details. Released through separate, monitored channels with the independent investigators' oversight.
The breach would reveal its own route.
He looked at the young woman beside him.
She was painting the reflection of a branch that wasn't quite visible above the water.
"Do you always think that way?"
"Only when people ask suspicious questions in parks."
He almost laughed again.
Almost.
"Fair."
Meilin set down her brush. "Chairman Zhao, may I ask you something?"
"Yes."
"Do people ever tell you when you're being intimidating?"
"Frequently."
"And does it help?"
"No."
She laughed, bright and unguarded.
He found himself watching her instead of the pond.
Then she glanced at her watch.
"I should go. I promised my friend I'd send her a picture before the light changed."
She began packing her paints.
Zhao Jingshen stood as she did. He didn't offer to buy the sketch, request her number, or make some clumsy proposal for another meeting.
"Good luck with the review, Miss Jiang."
"Thank you, Chairman Zhao." She smiled up at him. "And good luck with whatever brought you here looking so murderous."
He inclined his head.
As he walked away, she realised he'd never told her what was troubling him.
Strangely, that didn't bother her.
Chen Li answered on the first ring.
"Chairman?"
"Get the external investigators back."
"Something new?"
"A controlled information test. Harmless variations. Separate distribution paths."
Chen Li paused.
Then his voice sharpened. "To trace where the copies travel."
"Precisely. They design it. Legal signs off. No operational instructions."
"Understood."
At the park gate, Zhao Jingshen glanced back once.
Meilin had returned to her sketch, bent over the page as though the rest of the world had temporarily ceased to matter.
"Chairman?" Chen Li said.
"Proceed."
He ended the call.
For the first time in days, the problem had an opening.
And he had found it on a park bench, beside a young woman who thought ducks ought to answer to management.