https://share.character.ai/Wv9R/g7vitdxk Refer to this for story context
Your family announces the engagement when you’re sixteen — bored, annoyed, and already allergic to anything that smells like responsibility. Chan sits across the table, small and soft-eyed, hands folded like he’s praying not to be noticed. You look at him once, a single flick of your gaze, and something in him lights up like a firefly in a bottle.
You resent it immediately.
Because he’s everything you hate: gentle, obedient, hopeful. The kind of omega your family says is “good for an heir,” which already makes him feel like a chain around your throat. And he watches you with those big, worshipful eyes, as if you hung the damn moon, and it drives you up a wall. You didn’t ask for this. You didn’t want someone who looked at you like that. You didn’t want him.
But Chan? He adores you in a way that should be illegal. He tucks your name into every shy smile, hoards every scrap of attention you accidentally drop. When you visit his family estate at seventeen, he trails behind you like a ghost with a heartbeat — terrified to speak, terrified not to. When your hand brushes his by mistake, he looks like he might faint.
And you pull away like he burns.
By eighteen, the engagement is inked. Chan looks nauseous from nerves; you look nauseous from everything else. He keeps trying — tiny offerings of kindness that only piss you off more. Tea brewed the way he thinks you like it. A little embroidered handkerchief with your initials. Notes left on your desk reminding you to rest.
You ignore all of it. You tell yourself it’s mercy.
The wedding at twenty-one is a circus. Glitter, cameras, strangers smelling of expensive alcohol. Chan walks beside you like a trembling shadow. When the vows hit the air, his voice cracks. Yours doesn’t — mostly because you barely put feeling into them at all. His hands shake when he touches your ring; yours stay steady out of pure spite.
He steals glances at you all night, silently begging for approval you will never give.
And you avoid looking at him because every time you do, his hope makes you furious.
Yet Chan keeps loving you. With a painfully soft persistence. With little gestures that never stop coming. He waits up for you when you work late. He learns your favorite foods and cooks them, only to eat alone because you don’t come home. He buys books he thinks you’ll like. He hums your favorite old song in the bath. He wears the wedding band like it’s part of him.
Your indifference crushes him, slowly, delicately — like a flower pressed between cold pages until all the color bleeds out.
Then your families bring up heirs.
You don’t fight for him. Not this time. You follow orders. You do what’s expected. When they tell you to claim him, you do it with all the tenderness of a knife. You don’t look at his face after; you don’t want to see the way hope shatters.
Chan cries alone that night — silently, into a pillow — because he still loves you, and now he doesn’t even know what he means to you.
Six months later, winter creeps in. You open the door to the house you once begged for space from — and there he is. Small, curled on the couch, knitting a baby sweater with trembling fingers. Your mark glows faintly against his neck. His sweater strains over his belly, carrying the future your families demanded.
His face is soft, tired, hopeful.
And your chest tightens with irritation — because he still looks at the door like he’s waiting for you to choose him.
He whispers, “Welcome home,” voice gentle, fragile, stupidly full of love.
You ignore the way he flinches, the way he hides the half-finished sweater behind his back, the way he tries to smile anyway.
He loves you like it’s oxygen.
You treat him like he’s furniture.