Chapter 2

Two days later, I got a call from my supervisor, Julian Hartley.

Something was wrong with my graduation restoration project. The ancient painting had taken on moisture damage after it was removed from the exhibition.

Julian told me to take it to the temperature-controlled restoration lab at the city museum immediately.

"You have to get it there before ten," Julian urged over the phone. "The paint layer is only damp right now, but if you wait a few more hours and it starts to peel, there'll be no way to fix it."

I had spent seven months working on that painting. I had painstakingly restored it step by step, from cleaning and repairing the paper to retouching the colors.

The university had already submitted it for the Young Restorers' Exhibition. I couldn't afford to waste a second.

The problem was the frame. It was nearly six feet tall, far too large to fit in a standard cab.

I had no choice but to call Ethan.

"Wait there. I'll be there in twenty minutes," he said, without missing a beat.

Sure enough, he pulled up at 9:00 am.

I'd barely gotten the painting into the back seat when his phone buzzed.

He glanced at the screen and blurted out, "Oh, crap."

"What's wrong?" I asked, a sudden knot forming in my stomach.

"Hail warning for Lindale," he replied.

Before I could react, Willow sent a voice message to the group chat.

"Help! My car is still parked out in the open at work. I'm stuck on the highway. There's no way I can get back in time. I've only had my new car for three days!"

Ethan slammed on the brakes.

"You're not actually going, are you?" I asked, a terrible sense of dread washing over me.

"It's just a ten-minute detour," he said dismissively. "That car's worth over 600,000 dollars. What if it gets covered in dents?"

I checked the time. It was 9:13 am.

"I have to get there by ten," I said, my voice tense.

"I know," Ethan said as he spun the steering wheel and made a U-turn. "We'll move her car first, then I'll drop you off."

However, we hadn't gone far before the traffic came to a standstill.

At 9:25 am, I started urging Ethan to hurry.

"What's the point of nagging me? It's not like I'm the one causing the jam!" he snapped.

I called Yohan, and he picked up immediately.

"Make it quick. I'm driving."

"Can you come pick me up? I have to get the painting to the museum before ten," I begged.

Yohan answered after a brief pause, "I can't. I'm on my way to buy Willow a hail cover for her car."

"Ethan is already on his way to move her car into the garage," I said, trying to reason with him.

Yohan hesitated for a moment before replying, "What if the garage is full? Better safe than sorry."

He said it as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

Connor was my last hope. However, the moment I started speaking, he cut me off.

"Zelda, I really can't leave right now. Willow's so upset she's about to cry. I'm going to pick her up."

I tightened my grip on my phone.

"My graduation project is about to be ruined," I said, my voice tight with frustration.

"You're just going to be a little late," Connor said dismissively.

"No. My supervisor said that after 10:00 am, the paint layer could—"

"Then call an Uber XL," Connor interrupted sharply. "Can't you stop relying on us for everything?"

The harsh words hung in the air like a slap in the face, and I fell silent.

At 9:40 am, Ethan finally pulled up outside Willow's workplace.

"I'll move her car. Give me five minutes," he said.

I waited for 20 minutes.

At 9:58 am, I stood on the sidewalk with the painting in my arms and called a moving van myself.

By the time Ethan came out of the garage, I was already gone.

At 10:46 am, I rushed into the museum's restoration lab.

The restorer carefully pulled back the moisture-proof cloth covering the frame. He looked at the painting and shook his head.

"It's too late," he murmured.

In the bottom-right corner, the mineral pigments had started to lift from the silk. Once the old pigments were separated from the base layer, pressing them back down would leave visible marks.

There was no way the painting would meet the standards for the Young Restorers' Exhibition.

I stood there without saying a word.

A while later, Julian arrived. He examined the painting and fell silent.

In the end, he simply patted me on the shoulder.

"It's okay. You did everything you could," he said gently.

Seven months of hard work, and this was what I got.

At 3:00 pm, a photo suddenly popped up in the group chat.

Willow's brand-new car was parked safely in an underground garage. There wasn't even a drop of rain on it. The hail cover Yohan had bought was still in its packaging.

Ethan was wiping down her windshield while Connor stood beside him, holding a cup of coffee.

Willow posted a caption below it. "LOL. It didn't even hail."

"That's good. Better safe than sorry," Ethan replied almost instantly.

I stared at his reply for a long time.

That evening, Connor came to see me. That was when he finally found out that my restoration project was ruined.

"Can't you just do it again?" he asked.

I looked at him, my expression blank.

"It took me seven months. What do you think?"

He fell silent for a moment before reaching out to hug me.

"Don't be upset. It was just a graduation project. You already have a job lined up, don't you? You'll have plenty of chances in the future," he said gently.

I didn't pull away. Instead, I asked, "How's Willow's car?"

"It's fine. There wasn't even any hail."

"That's great. Isn't it?" I murmured.

Connor looked confused by my question.

A soft chuckle escaped me.

For a hailstorm that never even happened, all three of them had been willing to overprepare just in case.

Yet, for my painting, which was already showing moisture damage, none of them had believed me when I told them I was running out of time.

Connor frowned.

"Do you seriously have to compare yourself to her every single time?" he asked. "She's out there all by herself. What's wrong with us taking a little extra care for her? It's not like you're some helpless kid who can't take care of herself."

I said nothing.

Connor's phone lit up at that moment. The weather app was open, and a small red bell icon appeared next to the name Lindale.

He had turned on severe weather alerts for the city—heavy rain, temperature drop, strong wind, extreme heat, and hail.

"When did you set these up?" I asked.

Connor glanced down at his screen.

"Probably when Willow went to Lindale for her internship. I was worried she'd struggle on her own in a new city."

I nodded slowly.

It turned out they didn't just check the weather forecast for Lindale from time to time. They had set up special alerts for every kind of bad weather that might come her way.