Her father, a sign-maker in a town that no longer had a main street, had built his business on Artcut 2009. It was a clunky, pirated piece of graphic design software from a Chinese forum—a glorified vinyl cutter interface. But it had a single, magical feature: an auto-trace tool that could turn a child’s crayon drawing into a perfect vector in three clicks.

Mira’s fingers hovered over the stack of CDs like a pianist deciding on a chord. Each slim jewel case held a decade of her life, but her eyes kept returning to one: Artcut 2009 . The label, written in faded Sharpie, was peeling at the corners.

She tucked the disc into a fireproof safe.