“No.” Emmy lowered her lashes, her voice calm and a little distant. “Do you really need a reason to change?”
Juan studied her, picking up on that cool, almost untouchable vibe. There was a hint of curiosity behind his gentle smile.
“The way you were in that meeting—I almost didn’t recognize you,” he said.
“Hard to believe you graduated from such an ordinary college.”
“Dean’s been holding you back for way too long.”
Emmy didn’t answer. Her eyes were back on the file in her hands, acting like she didn’t even hear him.
But then, her eyes suddenly narrowed.
She’d flipped to a résumé—Evelina’s. Achievements filled the page, neat and impressive.
Her finger paused over a single line.
Winner, AI International Competition: Multimodal Perception and Fusion for Autonomous Driving Systems
Emmy’s mind exploded. That technical term—she knew it by heart.
It was her own project, the one she’d lost sleep over night after night, her thesis that was almost finished two years ago.
The memory hit her like a punch. That rainy day, rushing to her driving test, her laptop suddenly crashing. Blue screen. Total panic.
Dean had offered to fix it for her.
But when he brought it back, everything was gone. The computer had been completely wiped—every file, every bit of research, all of it.
A year’s worth of hard work, the project that could have launched her career in AI, disappeared just like that.
Now, a wild suspicion started to grow inside her.
Her fingers trembled as she pulled Evelina’s résumé from the folder.
Juan noticed her staring at the page in silence and leaned over.
“She’s amazing, isn’t she?” he said, thinking she was just blown away by Evelina’s background. There was real admiration in his voice.
“I met her last year at the AI International Competition. She showed off this tech that made everyone believe in the future of self-driving cars.”
“I decided right then—we had to have her at Starlight.”

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