He stared at the cup in his hands. It steamed faintly, the bitter brew carrying all the familiar cues: temperature, texture, aroma—each aligned with a very specific version of comfort. He barely sipped, only holding it to let the warmth settle into his fingers like it once had during evenings on a balcony long erased.

  He brought the cup to his lips, held the liquid for a second, then set it down untouched. The coffee, real or not, did its job. The heat reminded him of holding something alive.

  The contract lived in the center of his thoughts. It sat there like an unopened letter. He imagined the system at work, sorting through his mind, softening its edges, redirecting impulse, and correcting what it deemed flawed. Calis had promised no erasure and said memory remained untouched.

  Still, he questioned.

  Would the laughter from his childhood still feel distant and warm?

  Would the sting of shrapnel in the shoulder still flicker across his nerves during storms?

  He wondered if the shape of loss could remain without its substance, and if memory without burden could still matter.

  His hand moved toward the contract disk on the table.

  And withdrew his hand.

  He lay back on the bed, which cradled him in silence. His eyes closed, and he tried just for a moment, to summon that old balcony again. The heater clicked, the sky scraped with clouds, and wind moving through trees.

  He held the memory like a coin. Familiar and curved, slowly warming in his palm.

  Then, aloud, he spoke:

  “Run simulation archive. Family sequence. Winter setting. Local year 2049.”

  A brief pause.

  The voice of the system responded in his mind, calm and featureless as always:

  “Confirmed. Initiating memory simulation. Please note: emotional state will be preserved as per authenticity constraints. Simulation may not adapt to mental instability outside original bounds.”

  “Understood,” Iven whispered.

  The world folded inward.

  -

  Time had passed, and he opened his eyes to find chalk dust under his nails.

  A soft clatter echoed behind him. It was the sound of a dropped marker. Outside the tall windows, snow drifted slow and thick, the clouds smudging the sky in long gray streaks. His breath didn’t fog. The room maintained a perfect 22 degrees Celsius, but he still rolled down his sleeves out of instinct.

  He stood at the front of a classroom.

  The whiteboard glowed with a filtered projection: colors. Basic ones. Red. Blue. Yellow. Each tinted with an animated ripple when touched. A rainbow hovered above a simplified diagram of a tree, its segments blinking slowly in sequence.

  A child with copper hair raised her hand halfway, then slowly lowered it again, unsure.

  “Cyan,” Iven said aloud. “Say it with me.”

  “Cyan,” echoed a dozen voices. A few wavered. A few shouted like it was a chant. One boy in the back coughed into his elbow, then repeated the word half a second late.

  He smiled.

  He stepped off to the side and moved between the desks, his footsteps padded by the thick classroom carpet. Markers clicked open and shut. Chairs squeaked. Someone dropped a pencil and muttered a gentle apology to no one in particular.

  At the center of the third row, Mari hunched over her board, scribbling with three markers at once. She had drawn a sun, then transformed it, coiling the rays in jagged loops until they looked more like icicles than warmth.

  He crouched beside her desk.

  “You changed it again.”

  Mari nodded solemnly. “It’s cyan fire now. It burns like the cold.”

  “Why cold?”

  She shrugged. “Because the yellow was too hot.”

  He considered it, then nodded. “Fair.”

  A quiet chime sounded, less like a bell and more a tonal sweep. The class shifted all at once. Chairs scraped, backpacks zipped, conversations sprouted from nowhere.

  Iven watched them move with small momentum, the inertia of young minds carrying forward. They shuffled papers, tapped shoulders, and chased each other’s laughter into the hallway before the door even opened all the way.

  One stayed behind.

  Tomas.

  His oversized jacket sleeves dangled below his hands, gloves still clutched like crumpled questions. He stood near the bookshelf, eyes hesitant but not fearful.

  “My dad’s running late again,” he said.

  Iven nodded. “You can wait here.”

  Tomas wandered toward the front, tracing his fingers across the edge of a desk. “Can I draw?”

  “Only if you use exactly one hundred colors,” Iven said.

  The boy grinned and slid into the seat closest to the board.

  Iven cleaned the surface, wiping away the projections with casual swipes. The chalk smell lingered faintly beneath the sterilized air, a detail added back to modern classrooms for "sensory nostalgia." It still clung to the fingers, dusting the tips with proof of something taught.

  The heater gave a gentle clunk, the oldest artifact of the room. Outside, the snow had begun to build against the base of the windows. It made the light inside feel warmer, like the room was holding its breath in a pocket of quiet.

  Tomas drew in blue and green and then switched to silver. His drawing was slow and attentive, and he didn’t ask for help. Iven needn’t offer.

  A small, chipped mug of staffroom coffee sat beside the window. He took it up now and sipped once. Lukewarm, though slightly metallic.

  The school always quieted like this in the late hours, after the bustle drained out. The janitors wouldn’t arrive for another twenty minutes. The hallway lights dimmed to conserve energy, while somewhere in the administrative wing, a printer hummed and then stopped. Someone typed a memo and closed a tab.

  Tomas didn’t speak again. His gaze stayed steady, lips pressed together in that expression kids wore when nothing else in the world needed doing except the thing in front of them.

  Iven sat down at his desk and watched the room. The corners faded into amber, and the windows framed the falling snow like a stage curtain slowly descending.

  He had nothing to teach at that moment.

  But somehow, it felt like he had learned something.

  Eventually, Tomas’s father arrived, coat half-zipped and a wireless earpiece still lit on one side. He mouthed a thank you as Iven nodded. No words were exchanged, just a glance that understood lateness and apology in equal measure.

  Iven gathered his things with slow hands, tucked the lesson tablet under one arm, and stepped out through the west entrance. The cold bit softly at his collarbone, and the snow crunched with a crisp honesty beneath his boots.

  His car, an EV from the newest modular line, sat idling in anticipation of his arrival. It brought a faint harmonic hum, like a sigh waiting to begin. He reminisced of the times of public transport, but he couldn’t help but rap against the hood like a proud father.

  He slid into the driver’s seat and closed the door behind him.

  The interior lights blinked twice in recognition. A synthesized voice offered him a welcome back, then dimmed. He waved away the console’s suggestion for a navigation update. It could wait.

  The cabin air warmed quickly. Just enough to soften his knuckles and loosen the tension in his lower back. He pulled a simple meal from the passenger seat. Boxed rice, greens, and something protein-adjacent wrapped in biodegradable film.

  He turned on the music.

  The car’s speakers eased into sound, not particularly loud, but rich. An old jazz sample, laced with lo-fi textures and the occasional static pop, played as if it had been waiting all day for him to ask. Brass murmured low over gentle percussion with the tit-tats, a voice half-singing in the background, not in his language, but comforting all the same.

  He took slow bites between breaths.

  Outside, the world remained gray, the streets half-buried, the wind running its fingers through empty intersections. The heater clicked once, then again, holding steady.

  He noticed something then.

  A small, unnecessary groove along the dash. A decorative strip of brushed aluminum that caught the faintest edge of sunlight filtering through the overcast. It served no function and added no performance. It existed purely for the way it felt to trace with a fingertip. Someone had designed that detail into the car, likely spending days in meetings to add the design in.

  For him, or someone like him.

  He smiled faintly and finished his food. His hands were wiped clean on the inside of the lunch wrap before folding it flat and placing it in the side bin.

  The drive to the warehouse took less than ten minutes.

  It wasn’t far. Just across the village, where old zoning lines met the new developments of transit. The roads unfortunately grew wider here, the plows slower to respond. The parking lot had been swept earlier, but a fine frost had already begun reclaiming it.

  A small pest control van idled near the back entrance. Two men in heavy-duty coats stepped out, checking pressure hoses and rotating valves on their backpacks. One nodded as Iven approached.

  “Finished with the quarterly?” Iven asked, tucking his hands into his coat pockets.

  “For now,” the older one said, brushing snow from his clipboard and tapping the warehouse door. “Whatever lives in your walls doesn’t like this stuff, but probably less so with what's going on in your lab. Smells like celery and regret.”

  Iven chuckled softly. “If I’m good with the smell, then they would find a way.”

  The younger one, balding under his thermal cap, gave a thumbs-up from around the corner. “You’re clear for now. We'll swing back next week, just to make sure the little bastards got the message.”

  Iven thanked them with a nod, then turned toward the warehouse.

  He scanned his badge at the side panel. The light blinked green and the doors slid apart with a hydraulic sigh.

  Warm air met him first. It was dry, neutral, and faintly tinged with the chemical trace of ethanol and silicone from the workbenches. It also smelled like celery. Fluorescent strips overhead cast steady light across the wide interior, pooling softly over clusters of desks, workstations, and segmented lab modules arranged like a quiet hive. No one looked up, as they knew he had arrived.

  Jules nodded once from her console near the materials wall, her fingers clacking between data streams as she mapped stress tolerances onto simulation meshes. Rajiv gave a thumbs-up without glancing away from his dual-screen array, one hand occupied rerouting their mold pressure outputs through a newly suggested curve. Someone laughed in the back corner, too focused to share the joke, but not too busy to have it.

  Iven slid into his usual station and his chair remembered him. The screen adjusted, lenses blinking open like eyelids returning from sleep. Within seconds, he was in it, looping through the latest updates from the injection trials, pulling figures from a shared spreadsheet, cross-checking compatibility with their new starch-fiber blend.

  They had solved the chemistry two weeks ago. A mix of bioresins and engineered cellulose that degraded in water but resisted pressure. It was stable enough for packaging, yet cheap enough for scaling. The first victory had come quiet, with only a raised eyebrow from Jules and a faint clap from Rajiv that he claimed wasn't sarcastic.

  Now came the hard part.

  Implementation. Mold calibration. Temperature differentials that warped structure. Environmental tolerances for shipping routes. Real-world friction between idea and infrastructure.

  Iven loved every part of it.

  His co-owners, engineers by profession but entrepreneurs in posture, treated the venture like a shared dream someone had accidentally made real. They’d started with sketches on napkins during a food summit in Somalia. Three years later, they had contracts lined up for testing across four cities. They were expected to be the second most profitable company in their field, and if the next week of testing held, they might surpass the leader.

  He smiled as the model’s numbers aligned on screen. His fingers tapped faster while his eyes scanned lines for errors. The numbers felt like conversation, the curves of the yielding graphs like dialogue between material and time.

  He didn’t stop until a low chime pinged in the corner of his screen.

  He blinked, and the timestamp glared back at him.

  20:47.

  Dinner had passed.

  Again.

  He leaned back, rubbed his eyes with the heel of his palm, and exhaled. Around him, the warehouse was quieter. Some left for home without anyone noticing. Others had stepped away, likely eating or checking messages. The lights remained steady, the machines never begging for sleep.

  Iven smiled again, smaller this time.

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  Then he stood and stretched, feeling the pleasant ache of time well spent.

  He gathered his things with slow familiarity. Badge clipped back to his collar, jacket over one arm, tablet tucked beneath the other. The walk to the car was short. Outside, the air hung with the scent of winter salt and distant engines, while the hum of traffic floated over the skyline like a restless tide.

  By the time he reached home, the lights in the front window had already dimmed. Not off, just dimmed. His key clicked in the lock with a quiet finality, and the door slid open.

  She was there, in the hallway.

  Arms crossed. Brows leveled.

  “You said you'd be home by eight.”

  Iven set his things down gently. “I know.”

  “It’s nearly ten.”

  “I know.”

  She exhaled sharply, then turned on her heel and disappeared into the back rooms, footsteps clipped.

  He stood there for a moment, jacket still half-off, staring at the faint outline of her shadow against the far wall. The house was lived-in, its shoes by the mat, a water glass still sweating on the kitchen counter, the soft scent of dinner long cooled.

  “I’m doing this for us,” he called gently. “It’ll pay off soon.”

  There was no reply. Just the faint rustle of drawers opening in another room. Fabric shifting, a chair creaking as someone sat to resume a task.

  She was strong. Stronger than him in many ways. Her days were filled with work, errands, and planning for a future they still tried to believe in. She never snapped, but disappointment, in her hands, was sharper than anger.

  He stepped out of his shoes and moved quietly through the living room, brushing his fingers over the back of the couch, tracing the edges of domestic life like a visitor in a museum he used to belong to.

  He didn’t know how to fix it. Not yet. He didn’t even have time to think about how.

  His body ached with fatigue, and tomorrow promised more of the same. Logistics, meetings, and material integrity reviews. But they were close. So close. The packaging prototype had cleared its final pressure trials. The testing cities were waiting with just a few more approvals. Then shipments. Then scaling. Then profit. Then…

  Then maybe he could breathe.

  But that wasn’t tonight’s problem.

  He rubbed his neck and whispered to himself, “Tomorrow me can figure that out.”

  He stepped away from the main hall, his socks silent on the hardwood. His soft steps passed through the quieter part of the house, the one with doors that rarely moved, where the walls knew to muffle their echoes. It still creaked like it always did.

  At the end of the hallway, he turned the knob slowly.

  The door opened with a soft click, just enough for the light from the hall to stretch across the carpet like a visitor who knew not to wake the room.

  The boy lay curled on his side, limbs tangled in a blanket too thin for the season. A stuffed dog, its ears frayed, rested beneath his chin like a second breath.

  The rhythm of sleep filled the space. No flickering screens, ambient reports, and voice command overlays humming in the background. Just the slow rise and fall of a child learning, night after night, that the world would still be there when he opened his eyes.

  Iven leaned against the doorframe, his eyes tracing the shape of the boy’s face. He saw the small furrow in his brow that always lingered, even in sleep. Like he dreamed too hard, or loved too deeply.

  And in that moment, none of the weight of deadlines, market shifts, or lab results felt greater than this.

  He stepped inside, slow as breath.

  Kneeling by the edge of the bed, he adjusted the blanket, gently tucking it back over the boy’s shoulder. The child stirred, murmured something unreadable, and slipped deeper into whatever world waited behind closed eyes.

  Iven stayed there for a while.

  Then, without a word, he stood, gave the stuffed dog a light pat on the head, and pulled the door almost shut behind him—leaving it open just enough for the hallway light to slip through.

  His own room wasn’t far.

  By the time he reached it, his shoulders had already begun to loosen.

  He folded himself onto the bed, sheets cool against his skin, muscles releasing in waves. The house held still around him, as if it knew the balance of silence and breath. Somewhere in another room, his wife moved something, a ruffle of work. Somewhere deeper, the boy dreamed.

  Iven closed his eyes.

  And for the first time in days, sleep came quickly.

  -

  The morning unfolded quietly, as it often did.

  Iven woke before the alarm, body trained by years of early rises and field briefings that left no room for snooze buttons. The sky outside held that pre-dawn dimness, just barely hinting at the shape of rooftops and trees beyond the windowpane.

  He rolled out of bed, spine clicking once as he straightened. The air felt sharp in his lungs. Clean, a little dry, the kind of air that reminded him he was alive and expected to do something with it.

  Downstairs, he slipped onto the mat in the spare room. The furniture had been moved long ago to make space. He didn’t need much. Just enough room for push-ups and stretches. It was a familiar pattern of breath and sweat that had followed him since service.

  Thirty minutes of calisthenics. Twenty minutes of cardio. Ten minutes with the tension bands until his arms hummed and the burn settled in. Nothing flashy, without apps tracking progress. Just a routine he knew by heart.

  Afterward, shirt damp and muscles charged with ache, he walked into the kitchen and reached for the fridge.

  The sandwich came together quickly. He sliced into the loaf he picked up three days ago. A few cold cuts from the deli drawer, shaved thin. Cheese, onions, and a touch of mustard. It was a breakfast that didn’t try too hard to impress, but impressed his friends nonetheless.

  He sat at the counter with his sandwich in one hand and his phone in the other.

  The newsfeed greeted him with its usual mess and distractions. Economic reshuffles, celebrity splits, tech developments dressed up as revolutions. He skimmed, scrolling absently until a familiar name popped up. The same politician. The one with the permanent grin and the manufactured voice that somehow always struck the wrong chord.

  He scoffed, thumbed past the headline, and didn’t look back.

  Some voices didn’t deserve breakfast.

  He set the phone aside and finished the sandwich with slow, methodical bites. No rush. He washed his hands at the sink and glanced at the time.

  Still early, he thought.

  In the bathroom, the water ran hot and steady. Steam filled the air, curling over the mirror and softening the edges of the world.

  He looked at his reflection. Tired, sure, but he earned it.

  As he stepped into the shower, he let the heat settle into his skin and thought of nothing. The meetings, deadlines, and children’s drawings washed away his thoughts. The water left behind the strange calm that came with morning routines, holding the rest of the world at arm’s length.

  Today would begin, same as always.

  When he emerged, towel slung around his shoulders, the house had already shifted tone. He heard the hum of appliances, the scent of toast and lemon cleanser, and the soft clang of a plate being set into the drying rack.

  He followed the familiar sound into the kitchen.

  She stood near the sink, arms crossed, eyes half-lidded with focus, watching an electric kettle build toward boil. Her hair was tied back, damp at the tips. A half-folded newspaper rested beside her, alongside her tablet with messages already blinking across the surface.

  “Morning,” Iven said gently.

  She gave him a glance and a nod. “You missed him. He left before sunrise again.”

  Iven rubbed the back of his neck. “Sleep schedules don’t align much these days.”

  “No,” she said. “They don’t.”

  He leaned against the counter, watching her as she moved. She poured coffee into two mugs, steam curling around her wrist.

  “How do you sleep so little and still do all this?” he asked.

  She didn’t answer at first. Just set a mug in front of him and tapped the edge.

  He picked it up, felt the heat press into his fingers.

  “It’s not healthy,” he added, quieter. “You need more sleep.”

  “To work,” she said, “is to know how to rest.”

  It was a phrase they had once accepted together, long before either of them understood its cost.

  “And neither of us know how to rest,” she muttered eventually.

  They stood in silence for a beat, then another.

  He broke it. “You should rest more. He notices. Maybe not now, but one day he will.”

  She looked at him—really looked—and something settled in her eyes.

  “I want to do better,” she said. “I do. I think about it all the time. I make little plans. Write little notes. Tell myself I’ll take a half day. Just one. And then…”

  Her voice drifted, thinned into the steam.

  She turned and leaned back against the counter, arms crossing again, but tighter this time. “I feel like I’m choosing myself over him. Like I’m sacrificing his childhood just so I can… what? Check another box? Feel like I still matter outside of being a mom?”

  Iven said nothing. He couldn’t. Instead, he took a slow sip of the coffee she’d handed him. It scalded the back of his throat just enough to keep him grounded.

  She let out a sigh that wasn’t tired, but wasn’t strong either.

  “I just wish it was clearer,” she said. “How to do this right. We just need a little more time…”

  His eyes trembled, and he nodded. “Yeah.”

  And that was it.

  They stood there for a little while longer, each holding warmth in their hands, trying to believe it might last.

  -

  By the time Iven arrived at the school, the cold had already pulled back from the pavement, leaving behind that familiar film of early-day warmth and engine soot. Children clustered in groups, jackets half-zipped, voices high with fragmented stories and too much energy for small bodies.

  Inside, the lights were already tuned to soft daylight. His classroom waited as always: filtered projection screen humming gently, desks arranged in staggered arcs, color wheels preloaded on each interface slate. He hung his coat, ran a hand through his hair, and tapped the wall panel to review the day's soft itinerary.

  It wasn’t a hard job.

  The curriculum was fluid by design, and his particular segment, “early cognitive engagement through environmental color theory,” was the lightest of them all. He didn’t grade, nor did he discipline. He inspired, and that was the expectation. It was his role to make learning feel like discovery, to build emotional association with knowledge. To let them ask why as many times as they wanted.

  The other teachers had heavier lifts.

  Isa managed the structured portions: vocabulary anchoring, short-term logic puzzles, and behavior modulation.

  Jamileh, the most experienced of the three, handled the physiological chaos: recess, group coordination, and early behavioral diagnostics. She always said she could spot a future engineer by how a child broke a toy. And spot future heartbreak by how they handed it back.

  Iven simply taught them to enjoy thinking.

  He greeted his students as they filed in, some with sleepy grins, others already mid-story about the bus, the snow, and the breakfast that wasn’t hot enough. One had lost a mitten and insisted the sky took it. Another had drawn a diagram of what she claimed was a new planet, “just outside the sun’s shadow.”

  Iven praised her orbital lines.

  He set the first activity. Today, it was a sensory color exploration tied to smell and texture. Each child would pick a shade, then try to describe how it felt in the air. The results would be chaotic, sincere, and brilliant. He loved this part.

  And through it all, he remained present.

  The meetings and emails had yet entered his conscious, of which was filled with kids who still hadn’t learned to filter wonder.

  When the recess bell rang, Isa swept in to manage transition. He passed her with a nod, squeezed Jamileh’s shoulder as she prepped the hallway fieldboard, and stepped back into the empty classroom.

  He glanced at the color charts and the scattered drawings, the half-erased word “moss” someone had written in the corner.

  Time passed like light through fabric.

  And still, undeniably warm.

  -

  He sent a message to his team en route, voice-to-text, casually slouched in his seat while the car’s interior calibrated itself.

  “Dropping by the warehouse for essentials only. Taking a short break from everything else. Don’t kill the momentum while I’m gone.”

  It sent without a beep. The system understood his tone didn’t need affirmation.

  Something in him reacted, but whatever surfaced was buried just as quickly, sent back below the reach of thought.

  By the time he reached the warehouse, the light had softened into late afternoon gold, slanting between the beams like memory. He passed what looked to be two investors and their assistant on their way out. One offered a lazy salute, the other greeted flatly, “Afternoon.” The third didn't speak at all, just scribbled something on their tablet without breaking stride.

  Inside, the usual low hum greeted him. The machines did their work with light tapping on screens, half equations tossed into the air like dice. But beneath it all, a sharper tension hung. Arjun paced near the front terminal, gesturing at an interface that wouldn’t cooperate. Andi had her hands buried in her hair, eyes locked on a schematic. A few of the junior team watched nervously from their desks, whispering over projected graphs.

  “They could’ve just said it,” Arjun muttered. “If they hated the design shift, tell us. Don’t restructure the deliverables mid-cycle and act like it’s a casual optimization.”

  “They don’t hate it,” Andi said, not looking up. “They want it scalable for regional licensing. Different territories, different decomposition rates. It’s… whatever. We can adjust.”

  “Sure. Adjust. Like we haven’t already rewritten this mold layout three times.” Arjun slapped a finger against a floating model, which rippled and shrank. “You wanna optimize? How about optimize my patience.”

  One of the interns mumbled something about investor demands being standard, and Arjun shot him a look. “If they’ve got an issue, let them explain it. In words. To our faces.”

  He turned, made a beeline for the door.

  “Where are you going?” Andi called.

  “To drag one of them back before they get into their fancy car and vanish in a fog of vague deliverables.”

  The door sighed shut behind him.

  Iven raised an eyebrow but said nothing. They didn’t need him to mediate. They’d been through worse.

  He moved toward his usual station. Some nods, waves, and a half-smile from someone too deep in mold timing to lift their head. It was enough acknowledgement to let him blend back in.

  He refreshed his task panel and slid back into rhythm to perform a small checklist.

  Until a sharp tug on his jacket nearly yanked him out of his chair.

  He twisted around, blinking. Jules stood behind him, arms crossed, expression perched between exasperation and maternal concern. The team lead.

  “You were supposed to be on break.”

  “I am,” Iven said. “Just clearing a few essentials.”

  Jules tapped the air, pulling up a shared timestamp. “You’ve been here for three hours.”

  He looked at the screen. The sun had shifted entirely, long amber shadows stretching across the floor.

  “…Three?” he murmured. “I could stay a little longer.”

  Jules glared. “Your text, Iven.”

  He opened his mouth. Closed it again.

  “Shoo,” she said, pointing to the door. “Go on. You’ll thank me tomorrow. Or not. But your adrenal system will.”

  He stood, reluctant, half-finished annotation still glowing on his workspace.

  “I didn’t finish—”

  “You won’t tonight. And if you try, I swear I will hard-lock your access and set your password to your childhood pet’s name spelled wrong.”

  She turned before he could answer, already returning to her station.

  Iven stepped outside. The chill greeted him gently, a different kind of alertness crawling into his skin.

  The sky had turned a hazy orange, smudged across the edges. Still and quiet.

  Dinnertime.

  Time, as it always did when building something in passion, had moved right past him.

  Iven drove with the windows half down, letting the fading warmth drift through the cabin. The streets wore their usual rhythm, children tossing sand at one another near the cul-de-sac, the old bus sighing its last route of the evening, distant music muffled by second-story windows.

  The door opened with a subtle hiss, and as he stepped inside, he paused.

  “Hey,” a voice called from the living room. “You’re back early!”

  Iven blinked. His son, legs folded beneath him, sat cross-legged on the carpet surrounded by a halo of toy mechs and scattered homework sheets. His shoes were already off, jacket slung on the bannister like a claim staked in haste.

  “I didn’t know school let out early today,” Iven said, kicking his own shoes aside.

  “Yeah. Staff meeting or something,” the boy replied without looking up, fully immersed in arranging a miniature battle scene.

  Iven grinned. “Then that’s a cause for celebration.”

  He stepped further in, dropping his work bag gently onto the bench and loosening his collar. “C’mon. Let’s go out tonight. Your pick. Noodles, dumplings, questionable fusion burgers, you name it.”

  From the kitchen, a voice cut in:

  “No, he doesn’t.”

  Iven turned toward the hallway. His wife stood there, towel over her shoulder, hand dusted with flour.

  “I’m cooking,” she said plainly. “It’s already started.”

  He offered a half-smile, lifting a hand. “You’ve cooked three nights straight.”

  “And?”

  “And rest is part of working,” he replied. “You said it yourself, remember?”

  “I said it, yes. Didn’t say I learned it.”

  She didn’t sound annoyed, just tired in a way that always made him feel like she’d already cycled through all the arguments in her head before speaking. Still, she met his gaze with resistance.

  He shrugged, conceding without words. “Next time.”

  She nodded once, already turning back toward the kitchen. “Set the table then, celebrant.”

  Dinner came quick after that. Steamed rice, roasted vegetables, a side of pan-fried dumplings that had probably started frozen but were dressed with enough sesame oil to taste otherwise. His son talked about an incident at school involving a vending machine and someone’s forgotten coat. Iven listened, occasionally laughing, occasionally checking his various eating utensils like they might offer him advice.

  It wasn’t a long meal. Few stories lingered at dinners like these, and for once, second helpings weren’t needed. Though the recipe always assumed three, there were rarely that many at the table.

  And when the table was cleared, and his son darted off to finish whatever heroic mech-war had been left unresolved, Iven lingered for a second, hands warm from dishwater, watching his wife rinse the sink.

  “Thanks,” he said.

  “For what?”

  He didn’t answer.

  Just leaned his head against the cabinet for a moment.

  Tomorrow would arrive full of logistics. But right now, here, the house was warm.

  And he wanted to keep it that way. Just a little longer.