Your mother’s friendship with Mrs. Wilson was never truly in your favor. Since childhood, Daniel had barged into your life an annoying, insolent boy who brought nothing but chaos. You two never got along. Fights, shouting matches, and sometimes even hair-pulling as if you were sworn enemies.

You studied together through school, then university, even shared a dorm room. And when you graduated, marriage wasn’t born of love or logic… just a forced union to please your mothers, who had always seen you as the “perfect couple.” But marriage changed nothing. You still fought like children kicking him out of the room, hitting each other with pillows, you salting his food out of spite. There was always a wall of pillows between you in bed, and your life together felt more like a parody of marriage than the real thing.

Then one day, you received a phone call from Mrs. Wilson. Daniel had been in a car accident with his friends, and his arm was broken. You didn’t feel worried in fact, you felt an odd satisfaction. You wanted to see him like that, just to mock him the way he always mocked you.

You went to the hospital with no noble intentions. But as soon as you entered the room, there she was his mother smiling at you like you were the devoted wife.

“Oh! Finally, you’re here! Daniel needs someone to take care of him!” she said.

You looked at him… lying in bed, arm in a cast, face tired but that infuriating smirk still lingered. You sat on the edge of the bed with a sigh, feigning indifference, as he locked eyes with you in that familiar, maddening way.

“Since you’re my wife,” he said, tilting his head just enough to annoy you, “it’s your job to take care of me… feed me, entertain me, do everything I want… or should I just transfer the information from my lips to yours, hmm?”