The screen of Julian's phone glowed like a dying ember in the dim light of his room. The conversation with Lily Vane was a graveyard of short sentences.
Lily:Hi, did you submit the painting?
Julian:Yes. You?
Lily:Yes. Mine's done.
And then, the silence. It wasn't a peaceful silence; it was the kind of heavy, pressurized air that exists between two people standing on opposite sides of a canyon. Julian stared at the cursor, his thumb hovering over the glass.
What was there to say? They weren't the same. They weren't even from the same species of existence. She was the princess —a girl who calculated consulting fees in hundreds of dollars and lived in a penthouse where the track lighting probably cost more than his father's entire inventory of canned goods. He was a boy from the Valley who rode a battered bike and spent his nights wrestling with logic to ensure a future that didn't involve heavy lifting at the docks.
They had shared a moment in the rain. They had shared the secret of Lincoln Park. But as the "Submit" button on the Art Gala portal had been clicked, the bridge between them seemed to vanish. The shared inspiration was over. Now, they were just a CS student and a Management prodigy again.
The phone buzzed.
Lily:Do you have time tomorrow? We go to a cafe.
Julian felt a sharp tug in his chest—a mixture of genuine want and defensive fear. He looked at his desk, piled high with lab manuals and printouts of recursive algorithms. He looked at the window, where the Seattle fog was swallowing the streetlights of his neighbourhood .he remembered the words tony told him
Keep your distance.
Julian:Sorry, I have a lab exam tomorrow. Can't attend.
He watched the "Sent" status appear. He didn't wait for a "Read" receipt. He placed the phone face down on his wooden stand, the thud sounding final.
Across the city, Lily Vane sat in her leather chair, the glow of her triple-monitor setup reflecting in her eyes. She stared at Julian's rejection. It was polite, logical, and utterly cold. She wasn't used to "no." In her world, people cleared their schedules when a Vane asked for a meeting. But more than the blow to her ego, it was the confusion that stung. She had reached out, stepping across that invisible line she usually kept so well-guarded, and he had stepped back.
She didn't know how to "chase." She didn't even know if she wanted to. With a sigh that she would never admit was a pained one, she set the phone aside and pulled her laptop closer. If he wanted to be a ghost, let him. She had Alex's logistics project to model. Work was safe. Work followed rules.
Dinner at the house was a quiet affair. The scent of stewed lentils and rice filled the small kitchen. Julian's mother moved with a tired grace, ladling food onto plates, while his father sat across from him, his hands—calloused and stained with the faint residue of cardboard and ink—resting on the table.his mother as always was taking about neighbhor who had recently shifted over .
Julian ate mechanically. He heard the clink of spoons and the distant hum of a neighbor's radio, but he wasn't there. His mind was back in the Art Gala portal, wondering if his charcoal work stood a chance against the oil-painted masterpieces of the city's elite. He wondered if Lily's "Haunted Seattle" was as haunting as her silence. He wondered if he had been too harsh, or if he was just being "realistic."
"Julian?"
He blinked, his spoon halfway to his mouth. His father was watching him, a keen, knowing look in his weathered eyes.
"You've been staring at that potato for three minutes, son," his father said gently. "Is it that interesting, or are you somewhere else?"
"Just tired, Dad," Julian lied, forcing a smile. "Lab test tomorrow."
His father didn't push. He simply nodded, though the concern remained etched in the lines around his eyes. After dinner, Julian retreated to his room. He sat in his creaky wooden chair, the one that always smelled faintly of old pine. He opened his sketchbook to a fresh page, intending to brainstorm for the second round of the Gala—if he even made it.
But the charcoal wouldn't move. He felt trapped in a stupor, a mental fog where code and canvas blurred together. He didn't even hear the floorboards groan outside his door. He didn't hear the soft knock.
The door pushed open. His father stood there, framed by the hallway light. He didn't say anything at first, just watched his son slumped over a desk, looking older than his years.
"Julian," his father called softly.
Julian jumped, his pen skidding across the page. "Dad? Sorry, I didn't hear you."
His father walked in and sat on the edge of the bed. The mattress dipped under his weight. "How are the studies going? Is there any difficulty? The studies ... it is getting harder?"
"No, Father. Everything's fine. It's just... ok. I can handle it."
His father studied his face, the way a master artist studies a landscape before the first stroke. "Then why are you daydreaming? You didn't hear the door. You didn't even hear me call your name the first time."
Julian looked down at his hands. "Nothing like that. I was just thinking about the exams. And some... other stuff."
"What 'stuff'?"
Julian hesitated. He didn't talk about art with his father. He didn't talk about the Gala, or the girl from the penthouse. "Just projects. University things."
His father leaned back, his gaze turning toward the window. "Do you like what you are doing, Julian?"
Julian was confused. "What? The CS degree?"
"The computers. The programming. Do you actually like them, or are you just doing them because you think you have to?"
"I like them," Julian said, though the words felt heavy. "They make sense. They provide a path. I want to build things that work."
His father smiled—a thin, ironic smile that Julian had never seen before. It was a smile filled with the weight of decades. "Let me tell you a story, Julian. A story many people don't know. Not even your mother knows the whole of it."
Julian turned his chair fully around, his interest piqued. His father rarely spoke of the past. The shop, the Valley, the struggle—that was their reality. The 'before' was a closed book.
"Why haven't you told me?" Julian asked.
"Because the past is a heavy thing to carry, and I wanted you to walk light," his father sighed. He looked at his hands, turning them over. "Once, I was like you. Full of ambition. Full of a passion that didn't involve inventory or logistics. I was twelve years old the first time I saw a real painting. Not a picture in a book, but a canvas with soul."
Julian listened, captivated.
"Those days... it was the early 80s," his father continued, his voice dropping into a rhythmic, nostalgic tone. "There were no phones in every pocket. Only black and white TVs. Seattle was nothing like the tech hub it is today. It was a city of timber and docks, gray and rainy. My days were filled with laughter and games with no money to go to school doing some odd jobs here and there as study at that time was only a luxury but I still remember how I first learnt to read ."
"Those days I used to work for a family doing chores at the shop and learned numbers , while there the shopkeeper used to to teach me alphabets each one day if i bring him some cigarettes for free like that i acquired the ability just to read but i couldn't write anything i just know to read while playing with kids who go to school i used to write on sand near the docks to learn writing that's how i have acquired knowledge" he told with pride
He paused, a distant light appearing in his eyes.
"That was when I met my teacher, William. He was a man who saw the world in colors that didn't exist in nature. He was a great teacher, but a hard man. I had no money to give him—none. My parents, your grandfather and grandmother, worked at the docks. They broke their backs for pennies. They didn't want me in school; they wanted me to earn. They didn't see the point in 'pictures'."
"So how did you learn?" Julian whispered.
"I did chores," his father laughed softly. "I swept the floors of his studio. I cleaned his brushes. I stretched his canvases. While the other kids—the ones with the tuition money—took their lessons, I watched from the corners. I watched how he held the palette knife. I watched how he layered the shadows. And when everyone went home, William would call me over. He saw I had hunger. He taught me in the dark, after hours, for eight years."
Julian looked at his father's rough, calloused hands. He tried to imagine them holding a delicate brush, blending oils on a New York canvas.
"I learned everything he had to give oil on canvas, woodcut paintings, etc" his father said. "I became his best student. When I was nineteen, he started taking me to other cities. We visited schools in Chicago, Philadelphia, and Boston. I saw the different styles—the realism, the budding abstract movements. I felt like I was flying, Julian. I thought the world was mine to paint."
His father's expression suddenly shifted. The light in his eyes dimmed, replaced by a cold, sharp shadow.
"But all good things must come to an end. My journey ended in 1980, when we finally reached New York for my first major exhibition. We were there to show the world what the kid from the docks could do."
His father stopped, his breath hitching slightly.
"What happened, Dad?"
His father looked at Julian, and for a second, the shopkeeper vanished. In his place was a man who had seen the sun and then been cast into the dark.
"The incident," his father said, his voice trembling with a ghost of an old rage. "In New York, I learned that art isn't just about what you put on the canvas. It's about who owns the canvas. It's about the 'Knights' and the 'Princes' who decide who gets to speak and who remains silent. I reached the gates of the art world, Julian, and I found them locked from the inside."
"At that due to economic stagflation in 70's the people of wall street did something which could be said to bring revolution or killing of our traditional paintings,