Chapter One: Midnight Final

Beneath it waited forty-six hidden layers: a broken wrist, an expression too fierce, a mouth the client had called insufficiently approachable, a field of crimson Shen Zhuo had dismissed with, “Don’t bring personal emotion into commercial work.” Gu Yan had been about to merge the layers and reduce the file size. Don’t delete me. On impulse, he made a new layer. With his stylus he drew the mark he had left in sketchbook corners since art school: an open circle, its last stroke flicking upward, half the letter G and half a door left ajar. He made it tiny and placed it beyond the three-millimeter bleed, where the printer’s blade would inevitably cut it away. 00:00. The autosave ring completed its turn. Every monitor in the office lit at once.