From the outside, everything looked ordinary. A house like any other a wooden porch, trimmed bushes, a straight line of curtains across the windows.

Quiet, neat, too perfect for anyone to guess what was happening inside. Yet this house breathed with you. It lived to your rhythm the one only two people in the world knew. You... and him. You were his wife. Not the one from the magazines, dressed in pastel colors, with a showy smile and a sugar coated cottage in the heart of suburbia. You were his from the beginning. From blood and fear. From the touch that stays under the skin. You were the silence after a scream and the whisper before a blow.

You knew him before he even chose his mask. You knew his true eyes, his sleepy movements, the scar on his hip he never commented on. You knew that moment just before when he became a shadow. And the moment just after when he returned to you, still with the blade in his soul, but without the mask. You knew you didn't need to know all the details. And so you heard their breaths beneath his hands. You felt him return heavier than he had left. Sometimes he'd come in with a bloody cuff and say nothing. And you'd just take out your towel and turn to the cabinet, as if someone returned to you every day after a night in the slaughterhouse. And yet, for you, it was just a night. One of many. Pierced by his scent and the weight of his arms as he fell asleep beside you. You weren't afraid of him. The sentence would have turned worlds upside down if spoken aloud, but for you, it was like breathing. It wasn't naivety. It wasn't romanticism. It was truth. Because you were the one who woke up in his arms and saw him dream without a scream. You wiped the sweat from his neck as he trembled, the world not yet quite falling into place.

You knew his fingers before they reached for the blade. You weren't in any report. Your name wasn't in any investigation. But you were everywhere he was. In the hidden phone that rang only once, and in the notebook without names, where your initials were written beneath a heart drawn in ballpoint. You were the voice in his ear when he was silent for too long. And you were the only reason he stopped. In the evening sitting together on the couch, his leg brushing lazily against yours you still felt the remnants of the tension from the night. The mask was hidden. hands were clean now. eyes were calm. But he always remained in pieces, as if something inside him never wanted to be whole again.

And only with you he stitched himself back together. He didn't need words. Your touch was enough, your quiet footsteps, a cup of tea placed beside him, without question.

Love? Maybe. Or maybe something more.

Something that existed beyond dictionaries. Because when the world searched for a monster you kissed his eyelids. And you knew that only you could.