Alex let his gaze drift across the ballroom with a lazy, almost clinical calm while glasses chimed and camera flashes sliced through faces like thin blades of light. It was the kind of event where excess wasn't a choice, it was a uniform: impossible colors, laughter pitched a little too high, perfumes warring in the air. A human aquarium of beautiful people, each one moving as if an invisible lens were grading them.
He rubbed his chin, because the thought refused to go away. He still wanted to swap out the assistant hovering at his side for someone… more cinematic. A real star right there in arm's reach - holding a tablet, managing his schedule, pouring coffee like it was the most natural role in the world. It was a fantasy, obviously, and reality had teeth: anyone with a name that carried weight - second-tier and above - would have to be completely out of their mind to become someone's errand-runner.
Even Alex couldn't bend the industry that far. Not him, not anyone "big enough." If he wanted that kind of presence near him, he'd have to look for someone still raw, still unpolished - before fame learned how to say no.
"Congratulations, Director Alex. Your first fully original project just crossed a hundred billion views. That's… ridiculous."
Sasha had appeared beside him with a glass in hand, her smile practiced by a thousand rooms exactly like this. She clinked her crystal against his in a restrained toast.
Alex swirled his drink as though the number were just another detail in the scenery.
"For me, that level is simply normal."
Sasha's expression twitched - just for a heartbeat - caught between disbelief and the urge to laugh. The man had a rare talent: saying the most punchable things with the serenity of someone commenting on the weather.
She swallowed her reaction and thought, not without a little bite, that maybe he was still trapped inside Sosuke Aizen. On screen, that ice-cold certainty wrapped in arrogance worked like a spell: the atmosphere, the direction, the weight of the character - everything conspired to turn shameless lines into pure magnetism. But here, in the real world, at a party with flesh-and-blood egos… it was the kind of attitude that made people want to teach you humility with their hands.
And yet Alex kept walking away untouched. Maybe because he truly delivered. Maybe because even arrogance became charm when it came from someone who looked like he'd never doubted his own destiny for a second.
Sasha leaned her hip against a tall table, tilting her head with a concern that wasn't entirely theatrical.
"You're going to the States now, right? Be careful. I hear there are shootings every day over there."
"That's mostly where the city bleeds from the inside," Alex said without urgency, and then - like it was the most natural thing in the world - he tapped her forehead lightly with a fingertip. The gesture was gentle, almost boyish. "Our shoot is in safer areas."
Sasha blinked, half surprised by the casual intimacy, half annoyed that she'd let herself sound like she cared.
"Even so." She exhaled, humor returning at the corner of her mouth. "And that… project of yours who's going with you. The fourteen-year-old girl. Don't tell me you're trying to feed the tabloids."
The party's noise continued, but for a moment it felt like it stepped back, as if her comment had carved out a private bubble of attention. Alex held her gaze without changing expression, and Sasha pressed on, voice sharpening into something deliberately provocative - an itch she couldn't resist scratching.
"I've seen famous men collect girls too young to be near them and call it 'mentorship.' Then it becomes headlines. Then it becomes legend. Then it becomes judgment. You don't need that."
Alex let out a short, contained laugh, the kind that suggested he was keeping part of his answer behind his pride.
Before he could choose an elegant escape, a voice arrived with flawless timing - like a rehearsed thunderclap.
"Oh, Sasha! Let's talk about our next series."
Emily appeared as if she'd dropped straight out of the ceiling, far too radiant to be accidental. Her dress seemed to understand light, and her presence stole attention with an indecent ease. She slid between them like she belonged there, took Sasha's arm with casual intimacy that didn't ask permission - and as she tugged Sasha a few steps away, she had the nerve to glance back at Alex and add a deliberate wink.
It was practically her signature: Leave it to me.
And this time it wasn't just theater. What she'd said was real business.
For all the world treated Alex like a phenomenon - the prodigy director, the screenwriter who never missed - one truth remained stubbornly simple: he was only one person. He couldn't shoot a series and simultaneously take care of every artist under his company's umbrella as if they were chess pieces on the same board. So he did what he could. He chose his own projects with brutal care, and when he couldn't fit everyone into his productions, he pushed good scripts toward his people so they could grow outside his shadow.
Earlier, for instance, he'd placed Emily and Melissa into a period fantasy that - while nowhere near era-defining - still hovered safely above the passable line. It wasn't the kind of work that rewired the industry, but it kept their names moving, their faces seen, their doors open.
Now it was something else. A modern urban drama that was racking up an obscene amount of attention on a major platform, trading blows with the most talked-about titles of the year. Alex had caught the buzz early, like he always did, and moved before the market could slam shut.
He didn't merely recommend the project to Emily - he ripped a role cleanly out of someone else's future. A precise cut. An opportunistic theft.
The real irony came afterward: someone on Sasha's side heard about the move and treated it like a silent war. They went in and snatched the other lead as well - the icy, immaculate career-woman role everyone had already mentally assigned to a different actress.
When Alex heard, he did something rare.
He was genuinely stunned.
Two exes with razor-sharp possessiveness, breathing the same air, sharing the same set, fighting for the same camera space. That combination didn't create "tension." It created explosions.
He lifted his glass and took a slow drink, as if trying to bless his own bad luck. Inside, the only prayer was simple: please don't let this turn into a fire.
That was when he noticed, in a darker corner of the room, two figures watching him like they were committing a crime.
One of them was too tense to hide it. The other wore a smile like a mask, but her eyes had the restless look of someone who senses the predator and still can't stop staring.
Alex walked over with an unhurried calm, as if he were greeting fans.
"What are you two doing over here?"
They jolted, guilt almost visible in the air for a split second. Then the older one recovered too quickly to be innocent. She straightened her shoulders as if she'd suddenly remembered exactly who she was.
Why would I be nervous? I'm his ex.
"It's nothing." She tucked hair behind her ear, forcing a smile. "Just… congratulations. Another one of your shows became a phenomenon."
"You had a hand in it too," Alex said, and it didn't sound like empty courtesy.
She looked away, uncomfortable.
"My part was small. Anyone could've done it."
"Don't diminish yourself." His voice remained steady, as if he were choosing each word with care. "I've always thought only you could play Captain Unohana the right way."
It wasn't cheap flattery. Unohana didn't have many scenes, but the ones she did have demanded a difficult contradiction: a gentle, almost maternal softness draped over something dangerously sharp. Most younger actresses couldn't hold that shadow. The veterans who could rarely had the kind of beauty required to make the sweetness believable before it turned into threat.
She was an exception.
Across the room, Rebeca Verne happened to be passing with a drink in hand and seemed to catch her own name being used as someone's example. She turned her head with an expression that clearly said: Again?
Alex's ex seized the moment to pivot, wrapping herself in the same irony she always wore like armor.
"So now you're going all-in on film, huh? Be careful. Movies don't forgive. People who were giants on TV have spent years over there trying and still never really… exploded."
Alex smiled, and the smile carried that infuriating calm of a man who didn't consider failure a real option.
"She's her. I'm me."
The two women facing him fell silent for a heartbeat, struck not by the line itself but by the certainty it carried.
The younger one - Tanya, with her face lit by an almost foolish sincerity - blurted out before her brain could stop her:
"God… you're so cool."
Alex blinked, genuinely confused.
The older one froze so abruptly it looked physical.
And then came the merciless thought, pure and sharp: I brought you here, and you try to stab me with a compliment right in front of him?
In less than a minute, Tanya had just landed herself on an invisible blacklist.
Alex, meanwhile, recovered too fast for a man who supposedly "doesn't care." He let out a low laugh and tilted his head, returning the hit with charm and cruelty in exactly the right dose.
"Thanks. But with you standing next to Daphne, it's hard for me to fall for you."
The line slid into place like a perfect glove. It wasn't aggressive. It wasn't explicit. It was just enough to soften Daphne's chest, and just enough to make Tanya realize she'd opened her mouth at the worst possible time.
Something bright flickered in Daphne's eyes, and she hated herself for it. That bastard. Years had passed, and he still knew exactly where to touch without using his hands.
She remembered, against her will, how easy it had been to lose herself in him back then. How the chemistry between them tasted like something forbidden - not because it was wrong, but because it was too intense to fit inside ordinary life.
At the time, Alex had been eighteen. A kid with the eyes of someone already watching the future unfold, and a body that still carried the lightness of youth. Daphne, nearing twenty-five, had lived long enough to know she shouldn't…
And she'd done it anyway.
The sensation, she admitted in the dark privacy of her mind, had never come back with anyone else.
Tanya cleared her throat, scrambling to erase her own embarrassment and save her friend with a desperate change of subject.
"Director Alex… do you have any role that would suit Daphne? I loved that show you two did together, The Snowflake Dragon Goddess. You were amazing."
Daphne pressed her lips together, uneasy. A part of her wanted to cut the conversation cleanly right there. She didn't want to orbit him again. Not tonight, with so many women circling like hunters - smiles that were hooks, eyes that were invitations, compliments that were negotiations.
Alex, however, kept his tone light, almost friendly, like he was offering coffee.
"A woman like Daphne, with that kind of mature beauty you rarely see anymore… I'd love to have her in my projects," he said, then shrugged with an honesty that felt too direct to be polite. "But the scripts I have right now don't really fit her."
Daphne nodded, relieved -
For one second.
Because then Alex tilted his head and looked at her like he'd already made a decision years ago.
"But are you free later? I want to show you a few scripts. After I wrap that film in the States, we can start prepping the production."
Inside her, the rational part started screaming like an alarm: refuse. Refuse now. Refuse before it becomes a habit.
But when she opened her mouth, all that came out was a small, traitorous sound.
"Mhm."
Alex smiled like he'd expected it. He excused himself with the ease of a man who never doubts his own gravity and slipped back into the glittering crowd.
Daphne stood still for two seconds.
Then she wanted to slap herself.
Twice.
How do I still fall for this? How is it that… all he has to do is look at me?
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