My Roommate Is the Director of the Opposite House

My roommate is my sworn rival in workplace bidding. During the day, he dismissed my proposal as worthless at the conference table. At night, we were under the same roof, sharing silence, the refrigerator, and occasionally crossing eyes. We both wore masks—he was the cool, demanding copywriter, and I was the unyielding art director. Until the boss of Party A poured red wine on my face and exposed it with a sneer: "One of you is attacking on stage, and the other is passing a knife off stage. Who is performing this double act for?" That night, he knocked on my door for the first time, holding povidone iodine and a cotton swab. Under the light, his eyes were bottomless behind his lenses. "Cooperate," he said, "before we are eaten together." I know this is seeking skin from a tiger. But later I realized that the real trap had been laid the day we became roommates. ——And the person who pushed me to him in the first place was actually the person I trusted the most.