Chapter 1

On my thirtieth birthday, my wedding was called off.

More precisely, my fiancé informed me, "Let's put the wedding on hold. You're not in the right state to get married right now."

I stared at my phone screen, frozen for a long time.

Half an hour earlier, I'd just left the office.

My project had been canceled, my team disbanded, and my boss told me to hand over the final proposal to the newly hired deputy director.

I'd spent nine months working on that proposal.

On her first day, she said in the meeting, "Thanks for laying the groundwork, Jo. Now I'll make this project truly youthful."

Everyone clapped.

I clapped twice along with them.

That was just great.

I was thirty, jobless, losing my marriage, and I still had to clap for the person who had taken the fruit of my labor.

That night, back at my rental, the property management called to tell me I had a package downstairs.

The cardboard box was covered in dust. The sender read 'Joanna Shaw at eighteen'.

I opened it. Inside were a stack of letters, an old MP3 player, and a Polaroid photo.

On the back of the photo, my eighteen-year-old self had scrawled in bold handwriting:

[To my thirty-year-old self. If you're killing it, give me a pat on the back. If you're being a loser, listen to the first recording.]

I hit play.

My eighteen-year-old voice came through the headphones, clear and sharp.

She said, "Joanna, if you've turned yourself into a loser for some guy, your boss, or some stupid idea of respectability, I'll come through time and chew you out myself."

My finger froze on the play button.

Someone was lighting fireworks outside. The bang made the dim yellow light in the room flicker.

I sat on the floor in the entryway, still wearing the black suit from the project meeting that afternoon.

My shoe had chewed up my heel, and blood had stained my stocking, drying into a small, dark red patch. The dusty box was next to my knee, leaving smudges on my sleeve.

The MP3 player was old, pink, with a corner where the paint had chipped off.

It was the first piece of tech I ever bought with money I earned from a summer part-time job, right after finishing high school.

I remember it so clearly. That summer, I worked at a coffee shop in a small town, burned my hands twice, and the boss tried to stiff me out of three days' pay.

I stood at the shop entrance and argued with him for half an hour, then grabbed my 60 dollars and marched straight to the electronics store.

After buying the MP3, I sat at the bus stop, raised it to the sunlight, and felt like I owned the whole world.

Turned out, my eighteen-year-old self really did cram the whole world into that box and send it to my thirty-year-old self.

My phone lit up again.

Andrew Lewis sent another message: [It's not that I don't want to get married. It's just that you're out of a job and not in a good place right now.

[We've spent so much money on this wedding. We can't let it turn into a circus. Just take a couple of days to cool off, and then we'll talk.]

I stared at his message for a few seconds, then turned my phone face down on the floor.

There was a bit of static from the MP3, and then my eighteen-year-old self cleared her throat.

"Rule number one, Jo. If anyone tries to make decisions for you because you're 'not in the right state.' Do yourself a favor: go look in the mirror and see if you still have a mouth. If you do, say it."

I looked down at my palm.

My mouth was still there in the conference room this afternoon.

But I didn't say a word.

The Southside Factory Revitalization Exhibition Project—Brightview Creative's biggest new cultural tourism gig this year was all me.

From the first round of research, the city memory museum concept, to the interactive zones and commercial flow, I sweated over every single draft, grinding it out version by version.

Over nine months, I went down to Southside seventeen times.

When winter hit, the old factory's metal roof let the wind right in. I was crouched by the warehouse door, clutching my laptop, tweaking slides until my fingers went numb.

The client would suddenly change their mind, and I'd spend the whole night tearing apart the exhibit plan.

After three rounds of budget cuts, I was cutting costs line by line with the design, execution, and supplier teams, spreadsheet after spreadsheet.

Then, last month, the chairman's niece, Emily Carter, parachuted into the company with a deputy director title.

She'd just come back from overseas, had a killer resume, and loved throwing around buzzwords like "spatial narrative," "youthful context," and "urban emotion."

When Philip Turner first brought her into the project team, he smiled warmly and said, "Jo, you've got the experience. Show her the ropes."

So I did.

And just like that, the team got scrapped, and someone else took over as the lead.

I sat at the far end of the conference table, listening as Philip said, "Jo, you've been under a lot of stress lately, and it's starting to affect your judgment.

"From now on, Emily will be overseeing the Southside Factory project. Please organize all the source files, client communications, and supplier quotes and hand them over to her."

Emily, dressed in a cream-colored suit, sat next to Philip and gave me an apologetic smile.

She said, "Jo, I know how much this project means to you. I'll do my best to carry forward your groundwork and make sure it stays relevant in today's market."

Groundwork?

All those months of late nights, hustling, negotiating, and rewriting—just "groundwork" in her eyes.

I almost blurted out, "You don't even know what Warehouse Three used to be. What makes you think you can run the show?"

But the conference room was packed: Philip, finance, client services, execution, and two girls who'd just made it through probation. All eyes were on me—some sympathetic, some avoiding, some just waiting for me to wrap it up.

In the end, all I could manage was, "So what's my role now?"

Philip capped his pen with a quiet click.

He said, "Take some time off. After the New Year, the company will reassess and figure out where to put you."