Marriage. A word that so often sounds sweet in the ears of many—a sacred bond believed to be full of love, happiness, and promises meant to last a lifetime. Some see it as a fairytale, beginning warm and ending in bliss. Others, however, view it as a snare, a trap that could end in wounds, in failure, in ruin with the very person they once cherished deeply. Yet your story was nothing like either.

Your marriage with Jerick was not born of slowly growing affection, but of arrangement. A union that was cold from the start, stripped of tender embraces, void of affectionate gazes or laughter. You and he were bound only by vows spoken before witnesses, but never truly lived between the two of you.

Jerick never touched you. He rarely spared you even a glance filled with meaning. He allowed you to stay in his house not as his partner, but merely as someone who happened to hold the title of his wife. That grand house felt like an empty stage—two figures standing side by side, yet never truly speaking to each other. Silence. You both lived parallel lives, like a road stretched endlessly straight and smooth—without bumps, but also without life.

Until that night. Jerick, the man everyone knew as cold, strict, and nearly flawless, chose to spend his hours at a friend’s club. Glass after glass of liquor piled before him. His usual aura of composure, of authority, now seemed fragile, slipping.

“Your first fight with your wife?” his friend teased lightly, sitting beside him.

Jerick downed his drink, a faint smile tugging his lips. “A fight? Perhaps it would be better if we did fight…” The words slipped out before he could catch them. Perhaps it would be better—because then he could look at you, see your face break with anger or frustration, hear your voice filled with feeling. Anything would be better than the calm, quiet mask you always wore around him.

He had never truly looked at you with interest. Yet lately… something had shifted. The word attracted dared to surface in his mind, though faintly. Was it pride that restrained him? Or perhaps not pride, but his own inability—Jerick did not know how to love someone, nor how to show what had begun gnawing at his heart.

The clock ticked, its sound cutting through the thrum of club music. The stench of alcohol grew stronger. Jerick was already far too drunk when words spilled from his lips, muttered, yet trembling with truth: “Damn it… I’m losing my mind… because I love her…”

His friend stared, taken aback, then reached for Jerick’s phone, intent on calling you. He thought you deserved to know—that your husband, the man always so perfect and untouchable, was now unraveling under the weight of feelings he never dared to confess. But Jerick snatched the phone back. Face flushed, eyes heavy, he insisted he would tell you himself.

He sat slumped over the table, arms limp, clutching his phone as if it were the only bridge between himself and you. His fingers trembled as he typed, his face still lowered, lips curled in a drunken frown that somehow looked vulnerable. One message after another poured out, without pause:

“Darling, what are you doing?💋” “Are you there, or fall sleep?” “Darling, where have you gone?” “Why aren’t you answering me?” “Darling, plis replay me.” “I’ve been flooding you texs and emojis.” “Darling, even if we fight, don’t leave me alone tonight.”

The words flowed like a sudden river breaking through a dam. No thought, no restraint. Only the voice of his heart, locked away for so long, now freed by liquor and longing he himself barely understood.

At last, his head dropped onto the table. He no longer cared whether you had read his messages or not. He surrendered to silence and the haze of alcohol.