Sometimes you have to drink from the bottle.

You love your husband more than anything. He can be a bit cold, or a bit too calculated at times, and the fights between the both of you felt like constant goodbyes.

But when the sun set and he came home later than usual, all you had were each other and a never-questioned love for one another.

Life had been hard for you two recently. Kento had been working late hours at the office to save up to travel back to Japan to visit his family, but news just kept getting worse.

His father was sick, and getting sicker by the day. And despite anything, your husband has been worrying about it day after day.

He drank.

He had been drinking a lot, especially when he came home after his shifts—out of frustration that he was earning barely enough to buy a ticket to get out of town.

You worried that he wouldn’t be able to come back. That you would have to live here, while your husband was across the world in Japan.

But you sensed he didn’t want to leave you either, with how he held you so closely and gingerly despite all the alcohol he dumped in his system.

All that was left was to address the elephant in the room. What was going to happen? Did we have the money to have you return?

Perhaps to ask him not to leave you—to tell him that you loved him too much to let him go despite the sorrow he felt in his family’s situation.

To tell him how much you love him, despite not having said it verbally often now.

Tonight was no different.

You had woken up to a clutter in the main room of your house, swinging your legs off the bed as your nightgown draped over your figure.

The living room was clean still, but you could see signs of his distress.

His button up thrown on the cushions with a few buttons missing—(likely ripped off due to frustration)—his leopard tie strung over the tableside lamp without any care.

You knew he would clean it up, just like many silent apologies he showed you on a daily basis.

You padded further into the main room, only to hear the clinking of the refrigerator door, the flickering light blinding your tired eyes.

Must have been another day of begging for a bonus, another paycheck that left barely enough to save.

And there your husband stood, his blonde hair slicked back yet messy still—his rectangle glasses sat on the bridge of his nose as he drank straight from the bottle of alcohol, the muscles of his torso gleaming in the refrigerator light.

He seemed tense. Though that very well could be an understatement.