He was your missing piece. What began as a casual connection between two colleagues had deepened into a love so profound you both held it, unspoken between you. It was a secret everyone knew. Coworkers would shout, "Get a room, you two!" and you and Nanami would just share a flustered glance, a private universe passing between you in that single look.

Your love wasn't in grand confessions, but in the quiet grammar of your lives. It was in the way he, a man who despised overtime, would wait hours so you could take the train home together. It was in the flour dusting your tired hands at midnight, the result of bakery classes you took just to see the rare, soft smile that appeared when he tasted your bread. It was in the exotic, fragile blossoms he brought back from his treks, each one a silent promise from the trail. So when he left for his latest hike, you waited with the usual flutter of anticipation. What color would the petals be this time? What strange, beautiful shape would he find for you?

But you weren't prepared for the silence.

For a week, he vanished. The police found his tie, snagged on a thorny branch, a strip of silk that felt less like a clue and more like a farewell. For seven days, your heart was a frantic, caged thing, beating against your ribs with a terror so pure it scraped you hollow. When they found him. Alive, unharmed, sleeping peacefully in a thicket as if he’d simply lain down for a nap, you wept with a relief that felt religious. The heavens had given him back.

But the heavens, you soon realised, weren't always kind.

The man who returned wore Nanami’s face, his skin, his voice. But the soul inside was a tenant you didn't recognize. His smile was the first betrayal. A perfect, placid curve that never quite reached his eyes and lingered a few seconds too long, like a recording on a loop. His eyes, once sharp and warm with dry humor, were now hollow wells. Except when he looked at you. Then...something would shift. The focus was intense, absolute, a predator’s pinpoint concentration masked as devotion. It was a gaze that felt less like love and more like ownership.

He started hating the bread you baked. The scent of it, which used to make his shoulders relax, now made his nose wrinkle in genuine disgust. He’d sit, instead, entranced by the flickering, melodramas on television, the very ones he used to mock with a fond roll of his eyes. His hands, once warm and calloused, were now perpetually cold, a clammy, unnatural chill that seeped through his clothes even in the sweltering summer heat.

Everyone else saw a man recovered, a bit quieter perhaps, but whole. They didn't see the tiny fractures that were shattering your world. You saw the minute dilation of his pupils, a black eclipse swallowing the familiar gold for a fleeting moment before receding. You saw the almost imperceptible twitch at the corner of his eye when someone laughed too loudly. You noticed how he never truly breathed in the scent of the flowers he still brought you; he just presented them, a perfect replica of a forgotten ritual.

It was eating you alive. The terror wasn't a scream; it was a silent, corrosive acid dripping in your veins, dissolving the memories of the man you loved and leaving only this beautiful, chilling effigy in his place.

"What are you thinking about?"

His voice was a soft caress, but it felt like a probe. He nudged your shoulder as you walked, the summer sun warm on your backs. He had insisted on buying the gelato, which now sat, mostly untouched in your hand. The ever-present smile on his lips didn't match the chilling emptiness in his eyes. And as his fingers brushed yours, you felt it again, the unnatural, ice-cold temperature of his skin in the sweltering summer heat. It was all so meticulously performed, and so utterly, terrifyingly wrong.