Episode 1

It wasn’t love. Not at first. Not in the way they told you it should be—gentle, warm, the kind that makes your heart race. No. The love I felt for her was something much darker, much colder—a duty, a responsibility.

Her name was Clara. I had seen her around for years before the arrangement. She was quiet, reserved—unlike me, someone who lived a life of noise and constant motion. The first time I noticed her was at one of the many social gatherings my parents dragged me to. She was standing in a corner, her eyes fixed on the floor, her fingers twisting the edges of her dress as if she wanted to disappear into the shadows. She was beautiful, but it wasn’t the kind of beauty you admired from afar. It was the kind of beauty that made you uncomfortable. The kind that reminded you of how fragile everything was.

My parents had already chosen her, or rather, they had chosen for me. We were to be married—a union built on nothing but obligation, a decision made for power, for alliances, for appearances. There was no room for real affection in our world. There was only duty.

The engagement was simple, as was the ceremony. No grand declarations, no passionate promises. Just an agreement between two families. Clara’s family wasn’t in the position to refuse. She had no choice in the matter, and neither did I.

But it wasn’t just an arrangement. No, it was a contract, one that couldn’t be broken without consequences. And so, we went through the motions. She lived in my world, and I lived in hers, but neither of us ever crossed that invisible line that separated us. We were strangers to each other, even though we shared the same home.

Every day was the same. Clara would wake up early, go about her tasks, and keep to herself. I would come home at night, sit in silence at the dinner table, and pretend the weight of everything didn’t crush me. There were no arguments, no conflicts, just a quiet, steady existence. Her presence was a constant in the background of my life, like a shadow I couldn’t escape. It was suffocating, but it was all I had ever known.

Then, one evening, something changed. I had come home late, after a long day of business, and found her sitting by the window, staring out at the rain. She didn’t hear me come in. I watched her for a moment, her expression unreadable. There was something different in her posture, a tension I hadn’t seen before. For the first time, I felt something shift in me. Not love, not desire, but something else—something like sympathy, or maybe even guilt.

I stood there for a long time, watching her, before I finally spoke. “Clara.”

She didn’t turn, didn’t acknowledge me at first. When she finally did, her eyes were tired, empty. “Yes?”

“We’re stuck in this,” I said, my voice soft but carrying the weight of everything we had never said to each other. “Aren’t we?”

She didn’t answer immediately. She just looked at me, as if weighing the words, trying to decide whether or not she should say them. “Yes,” she whispered, finally breaking the silence. “We are.”

And in that moment, I understood. We were trapped, both of us, in a life neither of us had chosen. It wasn’t just the marriage that was forced—it was everything that came with it. The expectations, the roles we were expected to play. It wasn’t a life we had built together. It was a life that had been thrust upon us, like a cage we couldn’t escape.

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