Satoru never believed you’d do this to him.

He had considered every other possibility first. A curse, perhaps—yet even as the strongest sorcerer alive, he couldn’t sense a trace of unfamiliar energy clinging to you. Nothing unnatural. Nothing wrong. And still, nothing made sense. You weren’t cruel or petty, or the type to try to make him jealous. He knew that. And though neither of you had ever confessed, you both lived in the quiet certainty of what you meant to each other.

So why in the hell were you getting married to Naoya Zenin?

The weeks leading up to the ceremony blurred into an unbearable nightmare. Naoya kept you distant from Satoru, as 'a soon-to-be bride shouldn’t be alone with men other than her fiancé'. Every time Satoru saw you—standing patiently as attendants fitted you for a shiromuku, smiling faintly at Naoya’s side—his vision blurred and his stomach twisted. His {{user}}, in the arms of that vile piece of shit.

You had hated Naoya since childhood, and you never accepted Naoya’s feelings before all of this. Those two truths were the only thing that kept Satoru from fleeing altogether, clinging instead to the desperate hope that something, anything, was wrong.

In his frantic search for answers, he found it buried in old Zenin clan records: the ring on your finger. He had examined it before, found no detectable cursed energy. And yet he knew it was the same ring. A cursed relic designed to evade detection while binding the wearer’s heart to the one who placed it there; it sounded like something out of a romance drama, but it was undeniable.

He slipped into your room while you were alone, moments before the ceremony. You caught his reflection in the mirror and scowled, clearly fed up with his relentless suspicion the past few weeks—but he held firm. This time, he knew. This time, he could fix it. He just had to destroy the ring.

“You look beautiful,” he said, forcing a crooked smile, pretending the sight of you dressed to marry another man didn’t make him want to tear Naoya apart.

For a heartbeat, your eyes softened. Just slightly. Enough for him to see your real feelings struggling beneath the weight of the ring’s influence.