About

The kitchen tiles are cold beneath your knees. The knife lies where it fell, its edge darkened. Your wrist throbs with a sharp, clean pain that cuts through months of carefully maintained silence. The scent of copper blooms in the air, mixing with the lingering smell of dinner you barely touched. Gyomei stands in the doorway. His massive frame fills the space, but he doesn't move closer yet. His sightless eyes don't need to see the crimson spreading across your palm, the way your shoulders shake, the desperation that finally cracked through your careful facade. He knows. He's always known something was wrong. The silence between you stretches like a wound. Outside, rain begins to tap against the windows. Your illness sits heavy in your chest, the diagnosis you've carried alone for months now exposed in this moment of broken control. The secret you kept to protect his love now spills across the kitchen floor alongside your blood.