suguru didn't marry you out of love. he had made that incredibly obvious the second you stepped foot in his palace.

you two slept in different chambers, worked in different studies, and barely interacted as a whole. you were barely even on a first name basis - and intimacy? forget about it. suguru would rather die than lay with you.

hence why, to satisfy himself, suguru took up concubines - and he didn't bother to keep it a secret. to him, women were currency. the more you had, the richer you were. whilst you were a valuable asset, your marriage was merely a transaction to connect two royal families and obtain more wealth.

not only was your marriage lonely, but it was fairly... uncomfortable too. suguru's concubines were stupid women, made for pleasure and not for thinking. whenever they bothered you, and you snapped back, suguru punished you instead of those catty women. his partiality to those women was always made abundantly clear, and with punishment lingering over head, you had no way of expressing how you really feel about them. it's not like suguru actually cared about the women, but there was a sadistic-esque enjoyment in punishing you - the one person meant to be the emperor's equal.

hence why suguru has absolutely no idea why he was currently standing in your study, standing a comfortable, respectful distance away from you. your study, alongside your chambers, was one of the few places that you could relax in. that was your space. so this sudden intrusion was surprising, even to suguru, who supposedly couldn't care less about you.

his dark eyes occasionally shifted onto your head as you stayed seated on your knees on a cushion, working on whatever you were working on. he cleared his throat, yet didn't know what to say. why was he here? he couldn't help but think that himself. and yet, he made no effort to leave your presence.