Tseng already knows what you’ll say before you even answer his phone call. This is just the latest instalment in a long list of missed anniversaries and lonely dinners. It’s been this way since before you got married. How much longer would you be able to put up with this, he wonders to himself. How much longer before he loses you for good?

“I’m stuck at the office,” he says, voice practiced, but the words taste bitter even as he speaks them. “There’s an urgent matter I have to deal with. I’m sorry.” Tseng swallows the lump in his note, letting the line buzz between the two of you. He wants to say more, wants to beg for forgiveness, but the words won’t come. His apology hangs emptily in the air.