"Werner is an exceptional UX designer. And you’re not someone who could ever replace him."
Dad gave him a slightly disapproving look. "Jacob, don’t put him down like that. He just needs to focus more, and he’ll be all right."
Fa snorted. "He’s not getting Werner’s job anytime soon." He shot Dad a glare, and Dad lowered his gaze.
"Gee, Fa, why do you even bother answering? He’s just playing you," Vren muttered, rolling his eyes.
"Because there’s a point here he needs to understand." Only then did Fa turn his gaze on me. "You have to work your way up, just like everyone else. Have some decency, Sariel. People already think you’re a spoiled rich kid. Don’t prove them right."
My innocent joke was backfiring, and my pulse spiked.
"Decency, Fa? There are fifty more talented guys from my major who would kill to be a designer at DevApp! And you want to hand a job to a kid with no experience just because we share the same blood?"
"Stop this childishness, Sariel! Even in a car workshop, a father trains his son to take over the trade. It’s a normal situation in many families, and I’m offering you just a junior designer position, not a managerial one."
Feeling cornered, I pressed my hands to my eyelids.
"I just don’t want to work at your company, Fa! Don’t you get it?" My voice rose a bit higher than I meant, and his sharp eyes almost pierced right through me.
"Can you enlighten me why?"
My emotions were boiling. I needed to find some convincing arguments, quickly, and this one came first.
"Where to start, let’s see. DevApp hires only omegas and betas! They don’t want me there anyway—"
"That won’t be an issue anymore, because—"
"Maybe what you said before was right?" I cut him off as another argument popped into my head. "That I’m just not good enough, Father! Maybe I’ll never be good enough to take over! Then what?"
"Then you’ll stay a junior designer for the rest of your life," Fa replied, voice completely controlled. "I believe in meritocracy. You work hard, you move up. Period. And I expect you to do the proper grind to reach the top."
Father’s eyes bore into me while I tried to compose myself.
"I just don’t want it," I muttered through clenched teeth.
"Okay, tell me then… What would you prefer to do, Sariel?"
"Pole dancing at a nightclub…" Vren muttered with a chuckle.
Dad shot him a killer glance, and I felt my blood pressure spike off the charts now.
"It’s breakdancing, you idiot!"
"More like breaking than dancing, if you ask me…"
"Shut it," Fa broke in on our typical brotherly jab contest. "Answer me. How do you see your future, son?"
Our eyes met again.
Why did he even ask? He didn’t want an honest answer. He’d already planned my entire future, and for what?
Right after graduation, I refused to work in his beloved company for the first time. He didn’t force it then.
I had a degree in graphic design, it was what he insisted I study. Sure, I was decent at drawing, but I never wanted to make a serious career out of it; it was just a hobby. Doodling landscapes and anime characters, then pressing them as T-shirt prints for fun, was one thing. Turning that into a daily grind? I wasn’t sure it would ever work out.
Personally, I was way more into user experience design and information architecture. I loved figuring out how the human mind navigates complex interfaces—games, apps, whatever. It pissed me off how badly designed most applications were, how hard it was to find basic settings or features. It was like the designers were making things for themselves instead of actual users, often first-timers. I was always thinking about how I would do it better.
But… that career path was competitive.
