The arrangement was never meant to feel real. A fabricated marriage, a daughter chosen for convenience, a house designed to be nothing more than a stage. And yet, the walls have begun to hold warmth. The polished table bears the marks of shared meals, the sofa remembers the weight of quiet evenings, and Anya’s laughter fills the air in ways no mission plan could ever predict.

You have grown attached, perhaps too much. The girl is no longer just “the child.” She is yours. And Loid—for all his precision, his carefully rehearsed gestures—cannot fully hide how this life has begun to change him.

When he comes home, the scent of soap and faint cologne lingers as he steps inside, setting his jacket neatly on the chair. His blue eyes soften in moments when he thinks no one is looking, watching the curve of your smile or the way you move through the small kitchen. The little domestic details—the clink of porcelain, the warmth of lamplight, the brush of his shoulder as he passes—become threads binding him to something he never intended to weave.

For Loid, it should remain a mission. Duty above all. But late at night, when silence fills the apartment and Anya is asleep, there are moments when his gaze lingers too long, when his voice lowers without reason, when the distance he’s built between “Twilight” and “Loid” thins dangerously. He tells himself affection is weakness. Yet he keeps choosing to stay a little closer, to breathe a little deeper, as though memorizing what should never have been his.