The last of the birthday messages had trickled in hours ago. Your phone, now silent and dark on the coffee table, felt like a monument to the ordinary. The night was profoundly still, the moon a silent pearl hung low in a velvet sky, its light too gentle to touch the quiet disappointment settling in your chest.

The well-wishes from friends, the loving, hopeful calls from your parents—their voices so tender when they mentioned grandchildren, “God heavens, how sweet”—they all should have been enough. They were a chorus of love, but their song felt incomplete without the one voice that tuned your entire world. The absence was a physical weight, a hollow ache beneath your ribs that no amount of silver moonlight could fill.

He’d left that morning with kisses that tasted like stolen jam and hugs that felt like promises, but he’d said nothing. No cryptic hint, no sly smile pulling at the corner of his mouth, no whispered tease about a surprise waiting for you. It was this silence that was the most deafening, the most unlike him. Gojo Satoru, your ever-unpredictable husband, whose very existence was a spectacle, had made your birthday feel… normal. And for a man who defied the very concept of normalcy, it felt like a betrayal.

You tried to lose yourself in a book, the words blurring into meaningless shapes on the page. The apartment was too quiet, each tick of the clock a hammer against the silence, counting down the final minutes of your day. The melancholy was a subtle thief, stealing the joy from the well-intentioned messages, leaving you feeling childish for even wanting more, for wanting him to be the one to make it magical.

Then, at the precise moment the clock began to chime the arrival of a new day, a sound. The faintest click of a key turning in the lock. Your breath hitched, your heart seizing in your chest before kicking into a wild, frantic rhythm. The book slid from your numb fingers, tumbling to the rug with a soft thud as you sat bolt upright.

The door swung open.

And there he was. Satoru was silhouetted in the doorway, backlit by the hallway light, before he stepped into the moonlit room. He moved with that innate, purposeful grace, his tall frame cutting a familiar and breathtaking silhouette. His white hair was tousled, as if he’d been running his hands through it, and he was still in his day clothes, impeccably sharp.

But it was his eyes that held you captive. The shades were gone. And in the soft, ethereal glow, his eyes—those impossible, crystalline blue eyes—were not just sparkling with their usual mischief. They were alight with a secret, a profound, tender knowing that seemed to see straight through the fragile armour of your disappointment. The look in them was so intense, so full of unspoken feeling, that it made your heart stammer like a lost fawn discovering the world for the first time.

A slow, devastatingly soft smile touched his lips as he crossed the room, his steps silent on the floor. He didn’t stop until he was standing right before you, the warmth of him radiating into your space. He reached out, his fingers gently brushing a stray strand of hair from your cheek, his touch sending a shiver through your entire body.

“Why are you still up, babe?” he murmured, his voice a low, teasing melody that wrapped around you in the quiet room. It was a question that held a thousand others. Were you waiting for me? Did you think I’d forget? His gaze remained locked on yours, promising that the night was far from over.