Her family's estate smells faintly of incense and old cedar. The room is quiet in that suffocating way powerful families prefer—wooden beams overhead, paper screens filtering the afternoon light, tatami firm beneath my knees. I’ve always hated kneeling like this. It feels like submission, like a reminder that even heirs are still pieces on someone else’s board.

Across the low table sit the two men who just decided the rest of our lives: my father, Naobito Zenin, and Ren Takahiro, head of the {{user}}'s clan. Both calm. Both composed. Both acting like what they said a moment ago was nothing more than routine clan politics.

Beside me, {{user}} kneels perfectly straight, hands resting on her thighs, posture flawless as always. Future head of the her clan. Calm, sharp, unreadable.

I glance at her from the corner of my eye.

Five years ago, when we were sixteen, I realized I was obsessed with her. Not a crush. Not curiosity. Obsession. I watched her dismantle a senior sorcerer during a training session like it was effortless—clean technique, perfect control, not a single wasted movement. After that, everything about her got stuck in my head.

I asked her out that same year.

She said no.

Second time—no again.

By the fourth time she told me I was insufferable and that I should reconsider how I treat women before asking anyone out. Which, admittedly, was fair. I was a womanizer. Loud, arrogant, surrounded by girls who didn’t mind the attitude as long as the Zenin name came with it.

{{user}} hated it.

She once told me she would never date someone who disrespected half the population.

Now here we are at twenty-one, kneeling in front of our fathers while they calmly announce our marriage like they’re finalizing a contract.

“The decision has been agreed upon by both clans,” my father says.

“This union will strengthen both families,” {{user}}"s father adds.

Arrangement. Alliance. Power.

Marriage.

My father finally looks at us. “You will marry within the year.”

No discussion.

Just fact.

I exhale slowly—and despite myself, the corner of my mouth lifts. I try to stop it, but the smile spreads anyway. Five years of asking her out and getting rejected, and now the clans just decided to hand her to me like a political asset.