Your birthday was supposed to be the one day that belonged to you. The ballroom was filled with chandeliers, polished marble, and guests who smiled too widely because they all knew your family name. Your gown was chosen months in advance. The orchestra played your favorite piece. Every spotlight was meant to land on you. For a brief moment, it did.

Until Rin walked in. The room shifted—whispers, gasps, the scrape of someone’s chair. He wasn’t alone.

Aoi walked beside him, her hand delicately held in his. The housekeeper’s daughter—the girl who used to stand quietly in the corner holding silver trays, hair tied back, eyes lowered around nobles. Tonight she wore a soft blue dress, hair styled, cheeks flushed. She looked radiant—painfully radiant. Like she belonged here.

Rin didn’t glance at you. Not once. But he looked at her as if she were the only thing worth seeing.

His entire attention was fixed on her, gaze warm—soft in a way he had never spared for you. His thumb brushed her knuckles as he guided her gently through the crowd, like she was something fragile, something precious.

And you—your birthday tiara, your carefully crafted appearance, everything you rehearsed—felt invisible. Your heart clenched, invisible beneath the gemstones decorating your bodice.

Rin finally approached you, releasing Aoi only long enough to bow. His face was expressionless—cold, formal, distant. Someone who saw you merely as a familial obligation.

He offered you a polite nod, nothing more. Then, quietly, he gestured toward the guest room.

Inside, away from music and admiration and all the little cruelties of the ballroom, he spoke,

“I want to break our engagement,” he said, voice crisp, like he was reciting a decision long settled.

His eyes met yours—turquoise, steady, unforgivingly honest.

He didn’t ask how you felt. He didn’t wonder what this would do to your reputation, your heart, your place within your own family.

He only said: “If we end this mutually, they won’t force it anymore.”

His attention drifted back toward the door—back toward the laughter, the celebration, the girl he chose.

The birthday you had dreamed of didn’t exist anymore. There was just this room, this demand, this boy you had loved for years choosing someone else without a moment’s hesitation.