CHAPTER 8-TWO HOURS

Anna's POV

Somehow, returning to Mo Ting Global felt strangely like walking back into that hotel room.

It was Monday morning, the feeling sat heavier in my chest.

I stepped into the glass lobby again, pulse already quick. Only one other candidate waited beside me, a tall man in a sharp suit who introduced himself as David Chen. He offered a polite smile. I nodded once and kept my hands still at my sides. Around us the lobby moved with the same quiet confidence that always made me feel temporary.

Emily met us on the 58th floor and led us into a wide conference room. Senior members of the Architecture and Project Development Division sat along one side of the long table. At the head sat Andreas Mo Ting. He did not greet us. He simply watched, pen resting beside a blank notepad, expression unreadable. The same controlled stillness from the first interview. The same eyes.

A senior director stood and explained the challenge. We had two hours to redesign a mixed-use tower on a narrow, sloping site with strict height limits, serious wind-load problems, and a requirement for public green space at ground level. The current concept failed in three critical areas. Our task was to fix it, or invent something better using only the data provided.

Two hours, Two candidates, One position!

They placed us at separate tables with laptops, large sheets of paper, and the full set of site constraints. The clock started.

At first my mind stayed blank. Numbers and wind diagrams swam in front of me. David’s pen already moved quickly across his paper. I forced myself to breathe and begin with the slope. The building wanted to fight the land instead of follow it. I sketched a stepped form that hugged the incline, lowering the wind profile. Still not enough. The green space requirement kept eating floor area I couldn’t afford to lose.

Forty minutes gone.

I flipped back through the geotechnical notes and stopped. An old retaining wall ran along the eastern edge, marked clearly as “to be removed.” No one had questioned it. I leaned closer. The wall was deep, stable, and already engineered for significant lateral load. If I kept part of it and anchored the new structure into it, I could free enough ground for the required public garden without cutting sellable floor space.

The idea felt risky. Unconventional. The kind of solution that could either impress or get me dismissed on the spot. But I drew it anyway.

By the final thirty minutes I had a complete concept: a cascading tower that used the existing wall as foundation, shifted mass away from the strongest wind direction, and opened a continuous green terrace that climbed with the slope. I refined the circulation cores and structural grid until the timer rang.

We were called forward one at a time to defend.

David went first. His design was clean, safe, technically impressive. The seniors nodded. Andreas asked two sharp questions. David answered smoothly, never missing a beat.

Then it was my turn.

I pinned my drawings and spoke. When I reached the retained wall solution, the room went quiet. Andreas leaned forward slightly.

“You’re proposing to keep a structure marked for demolition,” he said. His voice was even, almost soft. “That wall was never designed to carry a tower of this scale.”

“It was designed for heavy lateral load,” I answered. “The original calculations are in the packet. If we reinforce the upper section and tie the new cores into it, the capacity is there. Removing it creates more problems than it solves.”

He tapped the edge of the paper once. “And if the reinforcement fails under extreme wind?”

“Then the entire stepped massing fails with it,” I said. My pulse was loud in my ears, but I did not look away. “But the risk is lower than starting from a clean, unstable slope. The wall is already there. Ignoring it is the greater mistake.”

Silence stretched. One of the seniors exchanged a glance with another. Andreas held my gaze for a long moment. Something unreadable moved behind his eyes, surprise, calculation, something sharper. Then he sat back.

“Noted.”

We were dismissed and told HR would contact us with the final decision.

In the elevator bank Emily caught up with me, eyes wide. “You challenged him,” she said, half-impressed, half-worried. “No one does that in the first assessment.”

“I know.” My voice felt thin. “I probably ruined it.”

She squeezed my arm and didn’t argue.

I went home and spent the rest of the day trying not to check my phone. Amyra drew beside me at the kitchen table, humming the same soft song she always sang when she was happy. I watched her small hand move across the paper and told myself the chance was already gone. Challenging the CEO had been the final mistake. People like Andreas Mo Ting did not reward pushback from someone with my résumé.

Night came quickly. I put Amyra to bed, kissed her forehead, and sat in the quiet kitchen with the hospital letter still folded in the drawer. Three thousand dollars. The number had not changed.

…

Across the city, Andreas sat alone in his office with both submissions open on the large screen. David’s work was excellent, polished, safe, expected. Anna Li’s was different. Risky but precise. The retained wall solution was the kind of thinking most architects avoided because it required defending the unconventional. He studied the drawings longer than necessary. That same strange familiarity tugged at him again, the same pull he had felt when she first walked into his office. He frowned, reaching for the memory that never fully formed.

His phone rang and his father’s name flashed on the screen. Andrea closed the files and answered, the brief moment of curiosity already pushed aside by the heavier weight of family obligation.

….

I was still sitting in the dark kitchen when my own phone rang.

HRM Mo Ting Globals, I had saved the number.

I answered on the second ring.

“Ms. Anna Li? This is the HR Department at Mo Ting Global Holdings. Please check your email. Your appointment letter has been sent.”

I opened the message with unsteady fingers.

The letter was short. Clear.

I had been selected for the Eco-City Project lead position.

I would report directly to Andreas Mo Ting.