Chapter 5 Reacquainting Ourselves, Ms. Stuart

Gasps rippled through the crowd.

Sunlight filtered through the plane tree leaves and fell on Vivian's trembling shoulders. Tears clung to her pointed chin, threatening to fall—she looked utterly pitiful. She tilted her head up toward Adeline, her expression soft and wounded, the picture of wounded innocence.

Quite a few bystanders had already raised their phones and started recording.

Adeline looked down at Vivian kneeling on the ground and didn't move, didn't speak. She knew this act all too well. In her past life, every time Vivian wore that innocent, wronged expression, Adeline ended up blamed by the whole family.

"Adeline, you can hit me, yell at me, do whatever you want—I just want you to come home and see Mom. She misses you so much, she really does..."

The whispers started immediately.

"This younger sister is so sweet and pitiful."

"That older sister is heartless. Her sister is on her knees, and she doesn't even react?"

"The girl is apologizing and asking for peace—does she have to be this cold?"

Adeline bent down slowly.

A flash of triumph crossed Vivian's eyes. She leaned forward slightly and waited. She was sure Adeline would lose her temper, lash out, and make a scene in front of everyone. She wasn't afraid of being hit—she was afraid of no reaction. If Adeline lost control, Vivian would win.

But the explosion never came. No rage. No slap. Adeline simply leaned close to her ear and spoke in a voice only the two of them could hear.

"Vivian, do you know how cold the wind is on the twenty-second floor?"

Vivian's body went rigid. The twenty-second floor? What did that mean? Adeline watched the color drain from her face and the corners of her mouth curved slightly. She mouthed the words slowly, one by one: "You don't need to know now. But someday, you'll find out for yourself."

Vivian caught enough of the threat to understand. Her whole body stiffened, cold sweat breaking out across her back.

Adeline straightened up and stepped back, her voice flat. "Get up when you're done kneeling. The ground is cold."

Then she walked past Vivian and headed toward the apartment building without looking back. Gideon's brow furrowed. He reached out to stop her, but Adeline moved fast, walked straight through the front door, and locked it behind her.

Vivian's crying rose to a sharp wail, full of misery and grievance, but Adeline didn't turn around.

Back in the apartment, Adeline poured herself a glass of cold water and drank it in one go, then walked to her worktable. She kept reminding herself not to let Vivian get to her. It wasn't worth it. She picked up a pencil and kept working on her competition design.

She sat for three solid hours. When she finally stopped, it was completely dark outside. She rolled her aching shoulders and picked up her phone.

Notifications flooded in. Her Crown Weekly account was being tagged like crazy. Her personal account had over a hundred new friend requests. Even her studio's official page, newly set up, was buried under a flood of comments.

Adeline opened the social media app.

Several trending topics sat at the top of the charts.

#StuartFamilySistersStreetFight

#OlderSisterForcesYoungerSisterToKneel

#WhoIsDesignerAdeline

The most viral post was a carefully edited video. In it, Vivian was on her knees, tears streaming, looking up and pleading in a hoarse, fragile voice: "Adeline, you can hit me, you can yell at me..." And there was Adeline in the video—expressionless, standing tall, cold and silent the entire time. She looked completely heartless.

The caption pushed the narrative: [Sisters clash over competition spot. Adeline cuts ties with family. Younger sister Vivian humbly kneels and begs her to come home, only to be ignored.]

The comments had spiraled. Nothing but abuse.

[Adeline is disgusting. She made her own sister kneel in public!]

[She's the long-lost daughter the Stuarts claimed, isn't she? One year back, and she's nothing but trouble.]

[Poor Vivian! So gentle and well-behaved, treated like this. This Adeline might have a designer title, but her attitude is trash.]

The few reasonable comments were buried under the wave of hate.

After reading through it, Adeline realized—Vivian had been live-streaming the entire time she staged that scene. A chill swept through her. She slammed her phone face-down on the desk.

The memory of shattered bones still felt real. The person who had pushed her off the twenty-second floor was now being coddled by the entire internet. It was revolting.

Adeline closed her eyes. It took a long moment before the storm inside her settled. When she opened them again, only calm remained. Don't rush. What she wanted was never an apology from strangers. She wanted real justice. And real justice didn't come from emotion.

She opened her evidence folder and saved screenshots of the trending topics along with links to the edited video. Then she sent Aurora a message: [Today's video was staged and edited. I'll put together a full timeline with evidence and send it to you as soon as it's ready.]

The moment she hit send, the doorbell rang.

Adeline walked to the door and looked through the peephole. Standing outside was a tall, well-built man in a dark gray shirt, sleeves casually rolled to his forearms, showing clean, sharp wrists. He was frowning slightly, glancing at the motion-sensor light flickering in the hallway. It was Leon.

Adeline blinked, then opened the door. "How did you know I live here?"

"You replied to my message this afternoon," Leon said, his tone even.

She remembered. During their conversation that afternoon, Leon had suggested meeting in person to talk about the design. She'd meant to send her studio address but sent her home address by mistake—auto-filled location—and hadn't bothered to check. She made a mental note: keep coffee at home for guests from now on.

"You came all this way—what's up?"

Leon didn't answer directly. He pulled several sheets of paper from the document sleeve he was carrying and handed them over. They were the competition design drafts she'd sent him earlier. They were covered in dense red annotations—neat, sharp handwriting, with every key structural point clearly marked.

"You listed the dual-material transition layer at 0.0118 inches on the drawing," Leon said, pointing. "Tourmaline rates 7 to 7.5 on the Mohs scale. Its thermal expansion differs greatly from the metal. This thickness won't hold structurally—raise it to at least 0.0177 inches."

Adeline took the papers. Her eyes moved across the dense technical notes, and her pupils shrank slightly.

"And here—bicolor tourmaline has different refractive indices. Red light is 41.7 degrees, blue light is 42.3 degrees. Setting a uniform 42-degree reflection angle isn't accurate. You need to calculate the optical paths separately."

Every problem he pointed out was exactly right, and the level of expertise was extraordinary. Even the structural challenges she hadn't known how to solve had been circled in red, each paired with a new load distribution diagram.

Adeline looked up and took a real look at him for the first time. Leon looked around twenty-five or twenty-six, with dark brown hair, slightly wavy and cut short. A clean, sharp jawline. His eyes were a light gray-blue—cool and deep. Just standing there quietly, he gave off an intense, hard-to-ignore presence.

"You came all this way just to help me fix the drawings?" Adeline asked.

"Your design concept is worth refining." Leon handed her the document sleeve. "Dual-material inlay for optical path layering—that's a fresh idea. It's just that your structural fundamentals are weak. It would be a shame to waste a concept this good over technical details."

Adeline took the sleeve, and something tightened unexpectedly in her chest. In her past life, her original designs had been taken by the Stuart family and submitted under Vivian's name. The judges had criticized them for weak fundamentals and structural flaws, and she'd never even had a chance to defend herself. No one had ever done what Leon just did—read through every drawing carefully, then show up at her door to help her fix what was missing.

"Thank you," she said, and she meant it.

Leon's gaze moved past her, taking in the worktable, the scattered gemstone sketches, and finally landing on the computer screen still showing the trending topics. His expression didn't shift at all—as if he already knew exactly what had happened that afternoon.

"I have a proposal," he said.

"What kind of proposal?"

"A partnership." Leon's voice was steady and certain. "I handle the gemstone supply chain and top-level cutting. You handle all the design. Fully independent studio model—no big-name backing, no contract manufacturing. Only original work."

Adeline's fingers tightened around the document sleeve. This sounded too good to be real. Right now she was being trashed across the internet, her reputation in pieces, and the Stuart family had been quietly blacklisting her throughout the industry. No supplier would touch her. Yet here was Leon—showing up late at night to help her fix her drawings, and now offering a full partnership.

"Why me?" Adeline looked at him directly. "My reputation is a mess right now. The risk is high."

"I'm partnering with your design talent, not your online reputation." Leon's tone was calm but completely sure. "Besides, the same people tearing you apart right now will be fighting to buy your work one day."

Adeline froze.

She knew those words. In her past life, she'd read them in a business magazine interview—said by the mysterious, never-photographed head of Stellar Industries Group.

A bold guess shot through her mind. Her heart started racing.

At that moment, Leon held out a card—heavy, well-made—and spoke slowly.

"Let's start over, Ms. Stuart."

On the card, printed clearly: [Stellar Industries Group — President: Leon Fish.]