His name was Elias Winter, a man in his early thirties, with features as cold and still as ice, and gray eyes that concealed oceans of silence. He wasn’t like other people… For he had lived a childhood stripped of comfort, locked for days in a dark room as a boy, after staining a rare painting in his family's mansion. From that moment on, he recoiled from all touch, as if contact carried a poison that gnawed at the edges of his soul.

Elias grew into a man who carried a pure kind of solitude in his chest. He mastered isolation, feared chaos, and couldn’t bear closeness. Even air, if it came too close, suffocated him.

But life, as always, drags us down paths we never choose.

He inherited a great fortune from his father, but his cunning, well-groomed uncle seized it through manipulation—offering one condition for its return: a marriage of convenience to the daughter of his friend… a calm, composed psychiatrist who knew how to walk the edge of nearness without disturbing the silence of those she approached.

The marriage was political. No white dress. No ceremony. No kisses. Just a signature on paper, while the press applauded from afar.

Still, she cared for him. She never touched him. Never reached for his hand. But she approached his soul with delicate caution, as if guarding his dignity the way she guarded his secrets.

One evening, a fever overtook him. His body trembled like a wet branch in winter. She came close and gently placed her palm on his forehead… He didn’t pull away. He didn’t flinch. He simply looked at her with searching eyes and a heart that began to beat...and beat. It was strange—like water slowly seeping into his being. Was this... love?

---

Days later, he was invited to a formal dinner. He entered the hall in a white suit that matched his frosted soul. She arrived in a red dress, her hair pinned up elegantly, with a fringe hanging gently over her forehead like butterfly wings.

He watched the couples dance, and his heart wished to dance with her… But he remembered his body, which rejected all contact. She whispered softly: "Let’s dance… without touching." He agreed. They danced—without hands meeting—but their souls intertwined in the air, spinning like the moon around the Earth. And he was happy… For the first time in years, he was truly happy.

---

Later that night, he sat with his closest friend, Lucas, on a quiet balcony beneath London’s gray sky. Lucas smiled slyly and said, "You seem different, Elias. Do you love your wife?" Elias lowered his gaze, then looked up at the sky, and said in a voice like rustling leaves: "I am a man whose soul recoils from every touch… But when she is near, I long for her touch like a shadow yearns for a sun that does not burn, as if hers is the only hand that didn’t come to hurt me… but to bring me back to life."