The apartment Ethan rented was on the fifth floor. There was no elevator.
On moving day, Aiden was out of breath by the time he carried a box of design books up to the third floor. Ryan passed him from behind with two bags of stationery and glanced back. “Do you even exercise?”
“I’m a thinker.” Aiden leaned against the wall, sweat covering his forehead.
“Thinkers need legs too.”
Ethan was waiting for them outside the fifth-floor door. It stood open, revealing an old apartment of about 700 square feet. The living room was small, the floor covered in old wood-grain tile, and the walls marked by several fine cracks. Through the open windows, they could see the rooftop additions and a few antennas on the building across the street.
“This is our office?” Ryan stood in the doorway, looking around.
“For now,” Ethan said.
“Very much for now,” Ryan emphasized.
Aiden set down the box of books and walked a lap around the living room. He ran his fingers over the walls, studied the light outside, then crouched to examine the color of the floor.
“What are you doing?” Ryan asked.
“Getting a feel for the space.”
“Feel it yet?”
“The space is telling me it needs a better table.”
Ethan carried a folding table out of one of the rooms. It had metal legs and a plastic tabletop, and it squeaked when he unfolded it. He placed it in the middle of the living room, then brought out three chairs.
The three of them sat down. The folding table was small enough that their elbows nearly touched.
“Islandlight Design,” Ryan said, tapping the tabletop. “Officially open for business.”
During their first week, each of them did what he was best at.
Ethan took care of registering the company, taxes, the bank account, and basic contract templates. He taped a sheet of white paper to the living room wall and wrote the company’s financial situation on it with a marker: the three of them had enough savings to survive five months and twelve days after rent and basic expenses were deducted.
Aiden claimed the other half of the wall. He covered it with design references, color swatches, sketches, and pages torn from magazines. He spent three days designing the company logo—a simple outline of a small island, with a faint glow radiating from its edges. He made nine versions and ultimately chose the third.
“Why not the ninth?” Ethan asked.
“Because the third one is the most honest. Everything after that was me overthinking it.”
Ryan, meanwhile, started building a client list. He organized all the connections he had accumulated over the past few years into three categories: people who might need design work, people who knew someone who might need design work, and people who simply owed him a favor.
“How many are in the third category?” Aiden asked.
“Plenty. A salesperson’s greatest asset is favors.”
Every morning at nine, he left the apartment in the only suit he owned that was still reasonably presentable, carrying the portfolio Aiden had made, and visited businesses one by one.
On the first day, he was rejected four times. On the second day, six times. On the third day, someone agreed to hear him out, but ultimately said, “We already work with a design firm.”
When Ryan returned to the apartment, Aiden was drawing and Ethan was organizing documents. He hung his suit jacket over the back of a chair, sat down, and took a sip of water.
“How’d it go?” Ethan asked.
“Still putting in the work.”
He didn’t say how many times he’d been rejected. Ethan didn’t ask.
At the end of the first month, they had zero projects.
Ethan updated the numbers on the sheet of white paper on the wall: their remaining funds would last four months and three days.
Aiden began to feel anxious. He had revised his portfolio three times, and each version was better than the last, but no one was seeing it. He started wondering if his style was too niche, and whether he should make something more commercial, something safer.
One night, he sat at the folding table, staring blankly at the design on his screen. Ethan came out of the bedroom to get some water, saw him, and sat down beside him.
“What are you thinking about?”
“I’m wondering if I should change my style. Make something more… mainstream.”
Ethan didn’t answer right away. He poured two glasses of water and pushed one toward Aiden.
“Do you remember the graduation project you made in college?”
Aiden paused. “Yeah.”
“What award did it win?”
“First place at school.”
“What did the judges say?”
Aiden was silent for a few seconds. “They said… it was the most distinctive piece they’d ever seen.”
“So you think if you throw away your best work and make what everyone else is making, clients will come?”
Aiden looked at Ethan. Ethan’s expression was calm, as if he were stating something simple.
“We didn’t start this company to become another identical company,” Ethan said. “Your style is our greatest weapon. If you don’t believe in it, why should the clients?”
Aiden lowered his head. After a moment, he let out a soft laugh.
“You’ve always been good at saying things like that.”
“What things?”
“Things no one can argue with.”
Ethan stood and patted him on the shoulder. “Keep drawing. Draw what you want to draw.”
Things weren’t going well for Ryan either, but he didn’t talk about it.
Before leaving each morning, he straightened his tie in the bathroom mirror and smiled at himself. It was a habit he’d developed on his first day in sales: no matter what was going on inside, his face had to show some light.
But one night, he came home especially late. Ethan and Aiden had already eaten dinner and were each busy in the living room. When Ryan came in, he hadn’t even taken off his shoes properly; they were crooked by the entryway.
He sat down at the folding table, buried his head in his arms, and didn’t move for a long time.
Aiden glanced at Ethan. Ethan gave a slight shake of his head, meaning they shouldn’t ask yet.
About ten minutes later, Ryan lifted his head. His eyes were a little red, but his voice was steady.
“There was a client today. We had a great conversation. We talked for two hours. He really liked our philosophy, and he looked through the portfolio. He said Aiden’s designs were very thoughtful.”
“And then?” Aiden asked.
“And then he said our company was too small. He didn’t feel comfortable handing the project to a company with only three people.”
The living room fell silent. Outside, they could hear a street food vendor downstairs closing up for the night, the clatter of the metal shutter being pulled down.
“He’s right,” Ryan said. “We are too small.”
Ethan stood and walked to the wall, where he wrote a line on the white paper.
Ryan and Aiden both looked over.
It read: “Too small—for now.”
Ryan stared at those two words for a long time, then exhaled, as if he were breathing out something that had been pressing down on his chest.
“Okay,” he said. “For now.”
He stood and went into the bathroom to wash his face. When he came back out, he was Ryan again, smiling.
“We have three more visits tomorrow,” he said. “Who’s going to iron my shirt?”
“You iron it yourself,” Aiden said.
“I’m bad at ironing.”
“Then go in wrinkled.”
“A salesperson in a wrinkled shirt makes clients think our company is about to go under.”
“Our company is about to go under.”
Ethan brought an iron out of the bedroom and set it on the table.
“I’ll do it,” he said.
Ryan and Aiden looked at him at the same time, then burst out laughing together.
That night, Ethan ironed the shirt, Aiden worked on designs, and Ryan organized the information on the next day’s clients. The folding table was tiny, their things piled together, and their elbows bumped from time to time.
Outside, the city slowly grew quiet, leaving only the occasional sound of cars passing in the distance.
The old apartment’s lights were still on. It was the last home on the street to turn them off.