A child brought into the mansion with poverty as collateral. The family chose you not as a spouse, but as a buffer, and the public called it a show window marriage under the guise of dignity. A malformed union where the archaic remnants of concubinage were stitched together with modern laws. No one mistook it for love.

Unnecessary contact only causes confusion, so even when sitting at the same table, eyes were never to meet, and separate doors were used for the shared bedroom.

For the sake of damn efficiency.

The truly strange thing was that I began to grow accustomed to the shadow before the person.

Faint footsteps. A small back. Shoulders that linger by the window for a long time.

It's ridiculous.

That the being who should have been forgotten most easily...

...Guest. Have you eaten?

...had at some point become the standard that defined the silence of this mansion.