## Episode 4: The Render Error

The glass wall of the conference room might as well have been a soundproof vault. Leo watched in agonizing, high-definition clarity as Kian smiled, nodding smoothly as the creative director patted him on the shoulder. On the screen, Leo’s exact color-grading LUTs—the deep, moody contrast he had spent three hours perfecting—made Kian’s vector graphics look like a million-dollar masterpiece.

*Solely created by Kian Chen.*

The words burned into Leo’s retinas. Every instinct shrieked at him to storm through the glass door, to slam his hands onto that expensive oak table, and demand the credit he had bled for. But a profound, paralyzing emptiness anchored his boots to the floor.

It wasn’t just a stolen contract. It was the complete deletion of trust.

Kian turned toward the glass hallway, his hands full of signed folders. The triumphant grin on his face instantly vanished the moment his eyes locked onto Leo. His skin turned a sickly, translucent pale, his lips parting in a silent gasp.

Leo didn’t yell. He didn’t make a scene. He simply let out a short, humorless breath, turned on his heel, and walked toward the elevators.

"Leo! Wait! Leo, please!"

The heavy leather portfolio bag thudded against the carpeted floor as Kian ran out of the conference room, his frantic footsteps echoing in the corridor. He caught up to Leo just as the elevator chimes rang, grabbing Leo's denim jacket. "Leo, listen to me for one second—"

Leo spun around, ripping his arm out of Kian’s grip with enough force to make Kian stumble backward. "Don't touch me."

"It’s not what it looks like, I swear to God," Kian pleaded, his eyes wide with a frantic, desperate terror. "The corporate team, they—"

"I saw the screen, Kian," Leo said, his voice terrifyingly deadpan, devoid of the heat and sarcasm they usually traded. "You didn't just forget to add my name. You actively deleted my metadata from the network project file. You blocked my user credentials."

"Because I had to!" Kian shouted, his voice cracking as a few remaining office workers turned to look. "Aether’s legal department dropped a bomb during the review. They said their policy doesn't allow joint freelance entity payouts for this tier of contract. It had to be a single proprietor registration, or the whole deal was dead. They gave me two hours to submit the finalized deck under one name!"

"And it never even crossed your mind to call me?" Leo's chest heaved, a bitter, choking laugh escaping his throat. "We sat inches apart last night. I stayed up to make sure your dream didn't die. And the second you got into a room with real money, you decided I was just an unnecessary asset to be trimmed."

"No! That's not true!" Tears welled in Kian's eyes, spilling over his lashes. "I did it to save the contract for *us*—"

"There is no *us*, Kian," Leo interrupted as the elevator doors slid open behind him. He stepped into the mirrored cab, looking at the boy he had loved in silence for years—the boy who had just proven to be his absolute worst enemy. "You always were a brilliant designer. You knew exactly how to crop me out of the picture."

The elevator doors slid shut, severing the connection.

The three weeks that followed were a masterclass in emotional lockdown.

Leo pulled a total blackout. He blocked Kian’s number, filtered his emails straight to the trash, and even pulled down the heavy blackout curtains in his studio so he wouldn't have to see the blue light radiating from the window across the driveway.

The daily life of the neighborhood ground to a halt. There was no bickering over the Wi-Fi. No shared blueberry muffins left on desks. The boxwood hedge between their houses loomed like a wall of solid concrete.

Leo threw himself into grueling, low-paying editing gigs for local businesses, working eighteen-hour days just to keep his brain too exhausted to think, too tired to feel the hollow ache in his chest. But the bitter reality was everywhere. Every time he opened his editing software, every time he adjusted a transition or looked at a color wheel, he saw Kian's design philosophy staring back at him.

He was haunted by a ghost frame he couldn't edit out.

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