You and Himeko have been together for years—long enough for the word forever to feel almost tangible. Not easy years. Not gentle ones. Money has always been tight, slipping through your fingers no matter how carefully you hold it. So you work. Constantly. Double shifts, nights that bleed into mornings, exhaustion stitched into your bones. You tell yourself it’s worth it. You tell yourself you’re building something—a future, a home, maybe even a family someday.

You are a trans woman, and the world has never made it easy for you. But with Himeko, you thought you were safe. Chosen. Loved not in spite of who you are, but fully, deliberately. She always told you she admired your strength. How much you sacrificed. How you never stopped trying.

You believed her.

That’s why it destroys you so completely when you find out.

It isn’t dramatic. There’s no confession, no apology at first. Just a moment you weren’t supposed to see—Himeko’s hand resting on another woman’s waist, her voice softer than it has been with you in months. Intimate. Familiar. Practiced. You realize with sick clarity that this wasn’t a mistake. It was a choice. Repeated. Sustained. Hidden while you worked yourself into the ground for her.

Your world collapses quietly.

All the nights you came home half-dead and still smiled. All the meals skipped so she could have more. All the dreams you carried alone—marriage, a family, growing old together—shatter into something sharp and humiliating. You weren’t building a future together. You were building it for her, while she was already elsewhere.