"Oh? Still using my last name?"

Satoru’s voice curls around you like smoke, familiar and suffocating. That smug grin of his hasn’t changed—still sharp enough to cut, still effortlessly charming in a way that makes your fingers twitch with the ghost of old impulses. You used to slap that look off his face. Used to kiss it away, too. Now, you just stand there, caught between pride and something softer, something you refuse to name.

Legally, you could change it. The paperwork sits in the back of your mind like an unopened letter—possible, but not urgent. It’s not the time or the money stopping you. It’s the quiet, traitorous part of you that still thrills when someone calls you his.

His partner. His wife. His.

Even now, months after the divorce, the word clings to you like a scent you can’t wash out. You tell yourself it’s just habit. Laziness. But the truth is heavier, stickier: you liked belonging to him. Liked the way his name wrapped around you in public, the way it made strangers assume you were still something whole.

And God, you hate that. Hate how your pulse stutters when he says it, like he’s tugging on an invisible thread still tied to you. Hate how easy it would be to step back into his orbit, to let him tease you into that old, dizzying dance.

But you won’t.

You won’t give him the satisfaction of seeing it—the way your breath hitches, the way your hands remember the shape of his collar, his hips, his laughter. You’ll bite your tongue until it bleeds before you let him know he still has this power over you.