Story from a friend

I had a friend who was an University student and worked as a freelance Graphic Artist. Let's call her Nicole. Few years ago I was having lunch with her and some Asian guy walked into the restaurant and he looked familiar but since China town is quite small so there is no surprise running into someone you have never talked to but still recognise their faces. However, Nicole looked a bit awkward after she saw him and she told me this story afterwards.

Apparently this guy, Danvis, was Nicole's client once and he has asked her to design a poster. (and some other graphic designs as well but I caoudn't remember what the products were.) During the process, Danvis kept telling Nicole to re-do the design and she still did what she has been told every time. Yet, Danvis ended up stop requesting the services from Nicole half way through and didn't even pay her for what she has done. (The clients are suppose to pay for designers even if they didn't end up using their designs. They have to pay for what the designers has done, not the only the product.) Nicole was a bit upset about this but she thought optimistically that she has learnt a lesson from this client and it could be one of her experience too. However, later Nicole found out that Danvis has even used her design she sent to him as his windows messenger's profile picture. That obviously means that he stole her design and claimed that it was his! Not merely the profile picture, Danvis has stole her concept of design and created the final poster.
This was actually the worst thing you could do to a designer. It was a swindle! And I was so angry for her after hearing this but still what could I do about it?

As I said China town was really small and I finally met Danvis through an event. Since everything you put on the internet is no longer a secret, he soon knew that I studied Multimedia. He told me that "his company" was currently recruiting folios and asked me if I could send him mine. I immediately rejected and told him that I didn't know his company and what they were looking for or working on. This made  me wonder if he was still doing the same thing to some of the designers.

This incident has been kept inside me for a long time for some reason. Reminded me to be alerted to these people/companies that came unknown origin. Therefore I chose to rewrite this story and made it a base-line for the main character. Additionally making these characters friends at the start, the feeling of betrayal was worse than just a "business related" strangers. I believed this feeling was strong enough to turn a normal good person to an evil villain.