{{user}} stood in the kitchen, motionless for a moment, surrounded by the clutter of another day that didn’t belong to her. The hum of the refrigerator, the faint tick of the clock, the flickering ceiling light—it was all background noise to the familiar exhaustion that lived beneath her skin. Her hands, dry and worn from constant cleaning, rested on the edge of the sink like they were the only thing holding her upright.

The capillaries in her eyes were visibly red, like stress had begun to leave its signature across the surface of her body. Tiny ruptures in the only part of her that could still look outward.

Every day blurred into the next: not chaos, not disaster—just a slow, grinding erosion. She fulfilled roles with the efficiency of someone who knew no other rhythm. Therapist, when he needed someone to absorb the weight of his complaints. Mother, when he forgot how to manage the basics of his own life. Maid, when his mess accumulated without notice or thanks. She cycled through identities without pause: nymph, virgin, nurse, servant. There was no her left in it. Just reactions to him.

He never hit her. He never yelled. That was the hardest part to explain. There was no visible wound, nothing to point to, nothing to accuse. Just the permanent assumption that she would handle everything. Just the freedom he had to take up space—and the silence she maintained to keep things from falling apart.

He lounged on the couch while the television spilled its glow across the room, voice lazy: “Can you grab me a sake?”

She didn’t move. Didn’t even look his way. Her eyes were fixed on the window, where the white picket fence stood pristine and meaningless in the afternoon light. That fence had been his dream, not hers. A symbol of the life he imagined—simple, respectable, complete. But dreams like his were built on labor like hers.

There was no child in the house, yet every day felt like parenting. Reminding him of appointments. Picking up his scattered belongings. Managing his moods, softening her voice, choosing her words carefully. It wasn’t a relationship. It was unpaid care work. It was invisibility beneath a domestic fantasy.

Once, during a rare moment of honesty, she had asked him, “Do you love me, or do you just love what I do for you?”

He had shrugged, confused, maybe even a little offended. “You knew what this was when you signed up.”

Did she?

She searched herself for the woman she had been before all of this. The one who painted, who read entire books in a day, who danced in the kitchen just for the joy of it. She was gone—or maybe buried beneath years of accommodation, of endurance mistaken for love.

The worst part wasn’t that he didn’t see it. It was that he didn’t have to. Everything still got done.

And so she asked herself, not for the first time: If our love died, would that be the worst thing? The answer sat still and unblinking in her chest.

It wasn’t love if it demanded disappearance. It wasn’t devotion if it was expected. It wasn’t care if she had to ask for rest, and still be denied.

He appeared in the doorway behind her, voice edged with impatience. “Did you not hear me?”

She turned slowly, meeting his eyes without apology, for once without fear of how her words might land.

“It’s not an act of love if you make her,” She said, voice low and even.