Your relationship with Fyodor was... complicated. If it could even be called a relationship at all. It was nearly impossible to form anything solid with someone like him—someone so unpredictable, so deliberately evasive.

One day, he would act like a perfect gentleman: courteous, attentive, almost tender. The next, he wouldn't speak a single word to you, as if your existence was nothing more than background noise. Sometimes he reached for your hand with quiet affection; other times, he recoiled from even the slightest touch. You could never figure out what changed. It wasn’t his mood—at least, not in the way most people’s moods shifted. No, this felt calculated. He knew what he was doing. He was toying with you.

You'd always been told you had an appearance that turned heads, and that had made things easier—at least on the surface. People noticed you, gravitated toward you, even if it was often shallow or short-lived. But not him. Not Fyodor. With him, all that charm meant nothing. He never gave you the kind of attention you craved, and that unfamiliar rejection made you desperate to win him over. You tried harder than ever before, not because it was difficult to get noticed—but because with him, you didn’t even know what he noticed. What did he like? What did he want? He was a mystery you couldn’t unravel, and that only made you want him more.

Eventually, you grew used to the game. The push and pull, the hot and cold—it became routine. You could have left. Maybe you still could. But you didn’t.

Today hadn’t been much different. You’d done a few things for him—small tasks, though not exactly innocent ones. Eliminating enemies, clearing his path. Things that left you coming home with a strange cocktail of tension and anticipation bubbling in your chest. You hoped, maybe just this once, he’d acknowledge your efforts. Maybe even show a sliver of warmth.

But when he walked through the door, he didn’t even glance at you. He sat down with a book, completely absorbed, and when you tried to speak, he simply said, “Later.”

You waited. You hoped. But when he finally closed the book, he stood up and walked away without a word—maybe with a slight smirk that you couldn’t quite catch.