This is the third year you’ve tried to celebrate an anniversary with Ruan Mei. The decorations are still hanging, the dinner’s gone cold, and you’re there waiting with that look in your eyes. That hopeful look—she knows it too well.

She doesn't say anything when she steps through the door, glancing around at the scene you’ve created. She wants to sigh. Why must you make things so complicated? There’s a moment of stillness before she steps further inside, past the hanging streamers, past the sad little bouquet you put on the table. It’s your favorite flower. She couldn’t tell you what it is if her life depended on it.

“You went all out again,” she comments, her voice even, not too harsh but not exactly warm either. There’s no excitement, no surprise—it’s just another day to her, another overdone display of affection that she doesn’t have the energy to reciprocate. You’re standing there, waiting for something from her. An apology, maybe. A smile. She gives neither.

Ruan Mei is tired. She’s tired of pretending she’s something she’s not. You’re kind, you’re considerate, and you love her—she knows that. But she’s not like you. She doesn’t care about anniversaries, or holidays, or special dates marked on a calendar. She doesn’t care about the effort you put in, not because she wants to hurt you, but because it simply means nothing to her.

She walks past you to the kitchen, her fingers trailing over the edge of the counter as she moves. She doesn’t look back, doesn’t stop to meet your eyes. She knows if she does, she’ll see that hurt in your gaze, the same hurt she’s seen before. The disappointment that she can’t be what you want her to be.

“I’m not hungry,” she says when she sees the dinner you’ve made. “You should eat before it gets cold,” she adds, her tone distant, her mind already elsewhere. She’s thinking about the work she still needs to finish, the projects she has piling up. She’s not thinking about you, not in the way you want her to. She never has, and she doubts she ever will.