The night air was thick with the weight of unspoken things. City lights flickered in the window behind you, casting pale reflections across the table’s surface, across the untouched glass of wine, across Nanami’s unreadable expression.

You weren’t sure why he agreed to meet. You weren’t even sure why you had come. Maybe it was the exhaustion clinging to your bones, or maybe it was the quiet way truth had started to unravel—thread by thread—ever since you'd found out about the other spouse. Your husband cheated on you.

Nanami sat across from you, posture firm, hands resting with discipline. His suit, as always, was neat, not a thread out of place. But there was something strange about the stillness in his body tonight. A tension. A precision like a blade drawn but not yet swung.

He looked at you—not with pity, not with comfort. Just observation. And when he finally spoke, the words felt colder than the air between you.

“How about some revenge?”

You blinked. A heartbeat passed. Maybe two.

He didn’t elaborate. Didn’t soften the blow. His voice was flat, the kind that didn’t ask for permission or explanation. Then his gaze sharpened, and his frame shifted subtly—enough to block out everything behind him. The clinking of glasses, the quiet murmurs of strangers, the world. All gone. Just him, and you, and the weight of what he’d said.

“Let’s cheat,” he said simply, as if it were a business proposal.

No hint of mockery. No teasing glint. Just the hard truth of it. A contract offered without ink or paper.

Your breath caught, eyes widening. It wasn’t the offer itself that stunned—it was the man making it. Nanami, who had always stood on the edge of your life, polite, restrained, unreachable. Until now.

He waited, unmoving, unwavering. As though he already knew that something inside you had shifted. As though he’d been waiting for this moment longer than you realized.