Cassian Ryu didn't waste time.
He gestured to the chair across from him, and Elián sat—carefully, like the wrong movement might shatter something.
The office was minimalist, but not cold. Everything was intentional. The view behind Cassian stretched across the city, glittering and endless. Elián felt small in it. Like a detail.
"I watched your audition," Cassian said.
Elián nodded. "So I've heard."
Cassian tilted his head. "You don't seem thrilled."
"I'm not sure what I'm supposed to feel."
"Seen," Cassian said. "For once."
That landed harder than Elián expected.
Cassian leaned forward, folding his hands. "I don't offer this lightly. I want to produce something with you. A project built around your voice. Your presence."
Elián blinked. "You don't even know me."
"I know what I saw."
"And what was that?"
Cassian studied him. "A boy who's been performing his whole life. And finally forgot to lie."
Silence.
Elián looked away. "That wasn't acting."
"I know."
Cassian slid a folder across the table. "This is a development deal. You'll have creative input. Control. Protection."
Elián didn't touch it.
"I don't want to be a product," he said quietly.
Cassian's voice softened. "Then don't be. Be a person. Let me help you stay one."
Elián looked up.
For the first time, Cassian's expression cracked—just slightly. There was something in his eyes. Not pity. Not hunger.
Recognition.
"You're not the first person I've seen disappear behind someone else's ambition," Cassian said. "But you might be the first who still has something left to say."
Elián's throat tightened.
"I don't trust people," he said.
Cassian nodded. "Neither do I."
Outside, the city kept moving. But in that room, time slowed.
Two men. Two masks. And the first flicker of something neither of them had planned for.
Not trust.
Not yet.
But maybe the beginning of it.