The city of Suzhou didn't move; it exhaled. While Busan was a riot of crashing waves and shouting fishermen, Suzhou was a city of soft shadows and stagnant water that held a thousand years of secrets. In a minimalist apartment on the edge of the Pingjiang Road district, Li Yan-chen lived in a world of perfect right angles.
He was twenty-one, but he carried the stillness of someone much older. His apartment was an extension of himself: cold, functional, and devoid of anything "extra." There were no photos on the walls, no stray clothes on the floor. Only a long, sleek drafting table that sat under a single, industrial pendant light.
Yan-chen tapped a 0.5mm mechanical pencil against his thumb. On the table before him lay the "Canal Bridge Project"—his mid-term assignment for Hanshan University of Arts & Design. The brief was simple for others, but a nightmare for a perfectionist: Design a modern pedestrian bridge that connects the old district to the new, without disturbing the "Old Beauty" of the ancient stone.
He stared at the vellum paper. To most, "Old Beauty" meant nostalgia. To Yan-chen, it was a structural problem. How do you add something new to a world that is already complete?
You don't, he thought, his eyes narrowing. You just try to be invisible.
He began to draw. His movements were precise, almost surgical. He didn't use a ruler yet; he didn't need one. His hand knew exactly where the line should end. But as he sketched the sleek, steel arc that would sit beside the moss-covered limestone of the Qing dynasty walls, he felt a familiar, hollow ache in his chest.
He pushed the bridge assignment to the side and reached for the leather-bound sketchbook hidden under a stack of architectural journals. This was the only "messy" thing he owned.
He flipped to the middle, to a drawing he had worked on for three years. It wasn't a bridge. It wasn't a museum. It was a house.
It was a small, two-story residence designed to sit on a cliffside—ironically, a cliff much like the ones in Busan, though he didn't know that yet. The house was a masterpiece of glass and light. It had a balcony that jutted out over the "ocean," designed so that whoever lived there would feel like they were floating. It was a home for someone who wanted to be seen, built by a man who spent his life hiding.
Yan-chen traced the line of the glass roof. This was his dream—to build a space where someone could actually feel safe. But as he looked at it, his mother's voice drifted into his head, cold and sharp as a razor.
"Architecture is about prestige, Yan-chen. It is about monuments. Why do you waste your genius on a house? No one cares about a home. They care about the name on the skyscraper."
With a sudden, quiet violence, he slammed the sketchbook shut.
The dream felt useless. In his world, there was no room for "homes," only structures. He lived alone because it was easier than explaining why his windows were always closed, or why he never cooked, or why the silence in his apartment felt like a physical weight.
He stood up and walked to the window, looking out over the Suzhou canals. The moon was a pale sliet in the sky. Somewhere, thousands of miles away across the same sea, a girl was clicking 'Submit' on an application that would change his life.
But for now, Yan-chen was just a man in a dark room, surrounded by beautiful drawings that he believed would never mean anything to anyone. He picked up the mechanical pencil again, returning to the bridge.
Connect the old to the new, he told himself. But don't let them touch. Never let them touch.