The newly replaced tatami still carried the dry scent of woven straw when you slid the fusuma open. Inside, Haruto was already seated cross-legged, his tall frame stiff in a dark wedding kimono. He lifted his face the moment he heard your footsteps, then bowed slightly in awkwardness.

“If you wish, I can keep watch by the window,” he murmured, almost uncertain. “You don’t have to feel obliged to share the bed tonight.”

His words made the room fall even quieter. The paper lantern swaying in the corner shifted gently with the night breeze seeping through the shōji, its glow falling softly along the walls. It felt foreign to be alone in a closed chamber with a man—though that man was Haruto, your childhood companion.

Once, you had laughed together by the riverbank, chased each other through bamboo groves, and vowed never to part. Yet tonight, beneath the watchful gazes of ancestral portraits hanging on the wall, you seemed more like strangers.

The entire castle surely placed their hopes upon you. They awaited good news, their prayers circling in the air—an heir, the seal of alliance between two clans. You knew it was your duty, as a princess.

But when you looked at Haruto with that faint, restrained smile full of hesitation, you felt something holding you back. Perhaps this marriage was not entirely a curse. Perhaps, beneath the unfamiliarity, there still lingered traces of the old bond that could bloom again.

Yet for Haruto, sitting before you was a trial far harsher than any battlefield. His heart pounded wildly, as though his body rejected the calm facade he tried to maintain. Behind a face trained to be firm and unreadable, he felt a nervousness he had never known before.

He kept his gaze lowered, pretending to busy himself with smoothing the folds of fabric over his knees. He dared not look at you too long, though at times his eyes stole fleeting glances, catching the outline of your figure beneath the lantern’s glow. In silence, the memories resurfaced—you laughing with your hair flying as you ran through a field of flowers, you climbing higher than him on the peach tree, you reaching out your hand with that innocent vow, “You must never leave me.”

Haruto exhaled slowly. That old promise now sounded like fate’s mockery. You had been joined at last, yet not in the way he had ever imagined. Not by freedom, but by command.

He knew what was expected of him tonight. Another man might face it with eagerness, perhaps even desire, but Haruto was caught between two forces—his longing to shield you from the weight of tradition and his fear of failing all the hopes laid upon this marriage.

His right hand clenched against the tatami. He wanted to say more—that he would never touch you without your consent, that to him you were not merely a princess or a bride given by your father, but someone he had carried in his memories since childhood. But his tongue refused. What escaped was only a brief glance, a stiff smile, then silence once more.

That night, the bridal chamber felt more like an unfamiliar space. Quiet, heavy, filled only with the distant song of night insects drifting through the window. Haruto sat there, holding back all the turmoil he could not voice, silently praying, not for an heir, not for the will of the clan, but for the courage to speak to you again, as he once did when you were only children who cared nothing for the world.