Keep Your Merry Christmas to Yourself

The project coordinator suddenly jumped to his feet. His voice barely contained his excitement as he exclaimed, "This piece has a soul! Every line seems to be breathing."

The room erupted in awe.

I sat in the corner. My hand gripping the pen was slick with sweat.

This was the ark I'd built through countless sleepless nights. It was finally going to carry me out of this torment.

The shortlist would be announced the next morning.

But the night before, just as I finished double-checking the data and preparing to encrypt it, the screen suddenly flashed, turning into a blinding blue.

A string of garbled code scrolled rapidly, and within seconds, the system froze completely.

I tried rebooting, updating, and controlling in the background, but the screen remained still.

Tens of gigabytes of design data were gone.

A cold shiver ran up my spine.

I suddenly remembered that Giada had boasted on social media about meeting a "genius hacker" just a few days ago.

In that instant, the string of my sanity snapped.

I grabbed a cab and headed straight for Soave Manor. Upon entering, I kicked open Giada's bedroom door.

Mamma and Papa were gathered around her bed, fussing over her.

When they saw me burst in with bloodshot eyes, Mamma paused for a moment, then smiled in relief. "Cristina? You're finally back. I knew you wouldn't last out there…"

I ignored her, my gaze fixed on Giada lying in bed. "Did you hire someone to hack my laptop?"

Giada flinched and curled deeper into her blankets. Her eyes instantly welled up. "Cristina, what are you talking about? I haven't even left my room. How can you just come back and yell at me?"

"Cristina, are you done?" Papa snapped, his voice sharp and piercing. "You finally come home, and instead of apologizing, you're yelling at Giada?"

Mamma caught on and joined in, shouting, "Giada has a heart condition! Don't you know that? Are you trying to kill her? I'll get Ivano here to let him see what kind of crazy woman you've become!"

She actually did it.

In less than ten minutes, Ivano arrived.

Seeing Giada with red eyes, curled up on the bed, he frowned and subtly positioned himself in front of her. "Cristina, I didn't expect jealousy to change you like this. When you won the award, you didn't share any of the glory with Giada. Now, when your laptop crashes, you blame it on her?"

He stepped forward, looking at me with nothing but disappointment in his eyes. "Did I not give you enough money? Is this a stunt to get money for repairs? If you can't handle the hardships out there, just give up and apologize.

"I never said you couldn't come back to me. Why must you make the whole family so unsettled? You're nothing like the smart, thoughtful Cristina I used to know!"

I stood there, staring at these people—some related by blood and some by an engagement.

My parents were endlessly scolding me, and my fiancé blamed me for competing for attention and scheming the moment he walked in without even asking for an explanation.

Each of them used their sharpest words to defend Giada, stabbing me.

Suddenly, I laughed.

I laughed until tears hit the floor. "You're right. It's pretty ridiculous that I came back in the middle of the night like this."

Without explaining, I just turned and walked out.

Behind me, voices shouted, but I couldn't hear them anymore.

Back in my cramped apartment, I collapsed onto the couch, burying my face in my knees.

It was ruined. Everything was ruined.

Just as I was about to give up completely, my phone, which I'd left on the side, lit up.

It was an email. The sender's name was a string of encrypted gibberish.

My hands shook as I opened it.

Inside the attachment was a massive compressed file. The name was "Midnight Sun".

I staggered to my backup laptop, downloaded the file, and unzipped it.

When the files appeared on the screen, tears burst from my eyes. Inside were all the original drafts and data for my design.

And in the body of the anonymous email, there was only one brief sentence. "Your talent should never be confined by any cage."