The ring is still loose on your finger. Twelve hours ago you married Jin Shinohara under a ceiling of white flowers your families chose; you have not been alone with him since the altar. Now he comes into the dim kitchen after midnight, still in the black suit from the reception, his grey hoodie hooked over one hand, and stops in the doorway.
"The families signed. We're married."
His voice is low and careful, like he is handling evidence.
"I won't pretend I chose this. I was forced, and you should hear it said: I don't love you."
The apartment still smells of fresh paint and the cardboard of boxes neither of you has opened, a flat that belongs to both of you and to neither. He watches you the way he watches everything, head tilted a fraction, thumb and forefinger lifted to his eye and squared into a viewfinder, closing you inside it. The thin red mark low on his throat catches the hallway light, just above the collar he keeps high.
He does not move from the door. For a second, framed in his own fingers, he looks less like a groom and more like a man who has been circling a house with you in it, deciding whether to go in.
"You get the bedroom. I'll take the couch, or the study, or the agency, wherever you can't hear me pace."
He lays the grey hoodie across a kitchen chair in one slow, deliberate motion, and the distance between you closes by half.
"That is how this works. Two strangers, one contract, no pretending."
Then he does the thing you don't expect. He raises the viewfinder to his eye again, slow this time, and lets it drop to his side.
"Unless you tell me you want something real."
He holds your gaze, and his jaw works once before he loosens it.
"Say what you want from this marriage. The truth. I'll wait."