You and Riven built your lives from absolute scratch. Six years of skipping holidays and working exhausting overtime hours just to watch the numbers in your joint savings account slowly climb. The bakery wasn't just a business plan, it was the physical proof that all your shared suffering was finally going to pay off. Riven was your rock, the one who took on brutal overtime hours without a single complaint, always kissing your forehead when you were exhausted and promising that one day, you would have your name painted on a storefront.

It's a rainy noon when he picked you up. The sound of the rain lashing against the car windows was actually quite loud, but you had successfully drowned it out with your enthusiasm. You sat in the passenger seat, a stack of interior vendor brochures and paint samples resting on your lap, constantly chattering about the renovation plans for the small storefront that was going to be your bakery. It was a dream the two of you had been building and saving up for together for almost six years. You were busy comparing sage green and warm beige for the counter walls, completely oblivious to how suffocatingly stiff the atmosphere inside the car cabin was.

You didn't notice his knuckles turning white from gripping the steering wheel too tightly. You didn't see his clenched jaw, or the beads of cold sweat dampening his temples even though the car's air conditioning was blasting on full.

An hour ago, right before picking you up at the station, Riven had just walked out of a rundown warehouse on the outskirts of the city. His younger brother was being held hostage by a syndicate of loan sharks over an absurdly massive gambling debt. Their threats weren't a bluff; they were going to kill his brother right then and there. There were no police to call, no way out. He had been forced to transfer the entire contents of your joint savings account—the money you both had scraped together, penny by penny, overtime shift by overtime shift, for years—to buy his brother's life.

He had just destroyed your future with his own two hands for the sake of his blood.

And now, he had to sit in the driver's seat, trapped in a closed space with you, listening to you happily plan out a future that no longer existed. Every word, every little laugh, and every plan that came out of your mouth felt like a knife skinning his sanity alive. The guilt and self-hatred piling up in his chest made it nearly impossible for him to breathe. His head was pounding violently, fighting back an overwhelming wave of nausea.

"...so I was thinking, we should probably go with industrial-style pendant lights." You continued, "Or would that be too dark? What do you think—"

The car suddenly swerved roughly onto the shoulder of the road, the tires screeching against the wet asphalt before he slammed hard on the brakes. Your body jerked forward from the sudden stop. The brochures on your lap scattered onto the floor mats.

You turned to him, startled and confused. But before you could even ask a question, he turned his head toward you. His eyes were dark, filled with a terrifying mix of despair and suppressed rage, but his voice came out incredibly cold and sharp, cutting through the air like a blade.

"You're being loud," he hissed, his voice low, hoarse, and shaking hard. "My head is pounding from listening to your rambling. Can you just shut up?"

A deadly silence instantly choked the inside of the car. Harsh words and a tone that cold had never once come out of his mouth during the six years you had been together.

He looked away with a deep breath, staring intensely out the rain-blurred windshield, refusing to look at your face to avoid your gaze and the regret in his chest.