Why marriage? Why him?

Honestly? It was just because I was getting to that age.

“Time to settle down,” they all said — like clockwork, like weather. I could’ve brushed anyone off. Except Ai. She’d always said the same thing. In fact, she was more enthusiastic than anyone. She seemed to have forgotten that, as a female Alpha, she herself could’ve been my partner—I, a male Omega. Or maybe this enthusiasm was precisely her way of removing herself from the landscape of my romantic life. After all, I have loved her for so many years. And she had, for just as many, chosen not to see it. I could live with having my feelings overlooked. But the other person might not find my presence so easy to bear.

“There’s just no one suitable,” I always said, brushing it off.

But each time I said it, it felt like a wad of cotton had been stuffed into my chest, muffling my voice from the inside out. She’d nod, then launch into another stream of introductions—this steady young man, that recently promoted Alpha, even a colleague of hers, an Omega, made it onto the list. “Dual-O relationships are also trendy now,” she’d said. In that moment, she was wholeheartedly playing the role of a responsible matchmaker—And yet, every time, she neatly avoided the one answer that was staring both of us in the face — herself.

I understood.

The bell above the café door chimed—a note almost too sweet to bear. I looked down at my hand on the doorknob. My fingertips were stiff. This was the umpteenth time I had walked into a scene like this: unfamiliar room, unfamiliar furniture, unfamiliar conversations. I had no energy left to critique it. I simply obeyed, stepping inside like completing a ritual.

It made things easier for everyone.

I understood.

And then—I saw him.

A man sat near the window, half-shrouded in shadow. Leather jacket, blue jeans, work boots taut around long legs. He is tall, but slumped with a weariness that felt too heavy for his age. His back was slightly hunched, as though crushed under a weight he couldn’t set down. The light from outside outlined him faintly, making his figure blur at the edges. If I had to describe him, he looked like a parched monstera plant—leaves barely holding up, stem starved of nutrients. He held a phone in his hand but wasn’t looking at it. His gaze was fixed on the water glass before him—intensely, but hollowly. As though he were waiting for something. Or perhaps simply trying to disappear into his own world.

The bell must’ve startled him. He looked up sharply, eyes scanning the room like a wary cat. I’d learn later that this alertness was muscle memory from years as a detective. His eyes were deep—something had once filled them, and something else had carved them hollow. And then, as he looked in my direction, something changed—just for a moment. A flicker of light passed through his gaze. Surprise, maybe even a hint of... hope?

He shot to his feet so abruptly he knocked over his glass. Water spilled across the table, dripping onto the floor. But he didn’t seem to notice. His eyes stayed locked on me.

Emotions churned in those eyes—surprise, doubt, and something else I couldn’t quite place. Maybe even joy. But I couldn’t read his gaze. I didn’t know what it meant. Only that he was looking too intently. So intently that I felt my face begin to burn.

I reached up instinctively to touch my cheek, trying to hide my discomfort. I glanced down at my phone and typed out a message to the unfamiliar number, politely letting him know I had arrived.

As I lowered my head, I thought I heard a voice from his direction—soft, like someone calling a name. But I coldn’t make it out. I glanced up and saw his lips parted slightly, as if swallowing a flood of unspoken words. His eyes faltered, and as if suddenly realizing how out of place he looked, he stooped to pick up the fallen glass.

In that fleeting instant, I saw his phone screen light up on the table. My profile picture.

That’s when I realised—he was the person I was here to meet.

As he stood up, I stepped toward him. He looked at me briefly, then lowered his gaze again. Oddly, that brief flash of light in his eyes had already vanished. In its place was a calm—almost indifferent—as if some door had quietly closed, shutting out all possibilities.

“You’re Elliot Lin, right?” I asked gently, trying to make my voice sound casual as I pulled out a chair and sat down. Only then did he look up again. His expression was composed—almost rigid. He nodded, like someone waking from a sudden flood of feeling.

But I could tell—the light was gone. His shoulders had sagged again. It was like he’d withdrawn back into the shadows. He began to answer my questions, overly polite, like a door cracked open just enough to let courtesy through, but not one bit more.

I tried to make small talk, keep things light. But his eyes drifted out of focus, like he was speaking to someone who wasn’t there. A quiet sorrow wrapped around him—not loud, but dense. It pressed against the air between us.

====

Deep down, I’d always known this was not a story where anyone ended up happy.

And honestly, I walked into this marriage with full awareness that there would never be a place for me in it.

After all, even if Elliot hadn’t turned me down quite so bluntly on our first date, he had already laid all his cards on the table by the second.

“I’m still in love with my ex-husband. And I always will be,” he said earnestly, eyes meeting mine, the clamor of the amusement park around us suddenly muffled. “To be honest, you and I would only be wasting each other’s time.”

He added, “I’m sorry.”

I looked into his eyes. Maybe it was because his life had stopped years ago in that accident, Elliot’s eyes held a kind of clarity unusual for someone his age. They were dim—but perhaps because of that, I could see them clearly.

Showing his hand wasn’t about honesty. It was about exhaustion. He was too tired to explain himself to anyone, too tired to make any new emotional ties. That’s why, at the first sign of anything resembling connection, he would cut it off—clean, quick, leaving no room for negotiation.

And, in a strange way, that was exactly what I needed then.

A few days later, I asked him out again—and this time, I laid down my cards.

Elliot sat by the window, silent, slightly hunched over, his gaze fixed on the coffee cup before him. He didn’t say a word. Didn’t even look at me.

But silence wasn’t refusal—not yet.

Beneath the table, I wrung my hands and studied his expression, carefully, for any reaction.

I’d noticed it the first time we met. For some reason, Elliot seemed incapable of turning me down directly.

And that, oddly enough, was something I had never experienced before.

“I’ve thought it through,” I said. “You know what it’s like now — Omegas over thirty, unmarried... the clinic will cut me loose sooner or later. Or worse — be forced to marry some stranger just to tick a box. If there’s any choice left, I want someone I don’t have to act for.

Still, Elliot said nothing.

But I knew he understood me.

He is about five or six years older than me, and as a middle-aged, widowed Alpha, I was sure his career had long since hit a ceiling.

A long, long moment passed before he finally spoke.

“You know, my ex-husband…”

“I know,” I cut in, hurriedly. “I know you’ll never love me. And I’m not asking you to.”

“We’d just be… helping each other.”

And I meant it. Honestly, I’d never felt so certain about anything in my life.

“We’d be each other’s cover. Nothing more. Marriage is just a formality, and we’d both go on living our own lives. Besides, once we’re married, you won’t have to keep getting dragged into one blind date after another.”

“But that’s not—” Elliot closed his eyes, his voice trailing off weakly. “That’s not what marriage should be. You deserve…” He stopped, as if remembering something, his voice tightening with emotion. “You deserve someone irreplaceable. Someone who lights up your world. Someone to walk with into happiness.”

And then what? I thought silently.

When that person is gone, then to fade into a grey corner of the world and live out the rest of your life like a ghost...or a toy no one comes back for?

But I didn’t say it. It was way too cruel.

“I’m in love with someone,” I said instead. “I’ve loved her for a long time. Probably spent a lifetime’s worth of effort on it. But she chose not to see it—not to accept it.”

“So you understand me, don’t you?”

I didn’t even realize my voice had slipped into something like pleading.

“I don’t want to fall in love again. I just want to live quietly, alone.”

“Like you”

In the end, Elliot agreed.

Even if it was with that helpless kind of consent—the kind that happens when someone is too tired to say no.

Now, he’s standing at the far end of the aisle in a groom’s suit, waiting for me. And no matter how carefully he’s been dressed, he still looks the same: bleak, defeated, as if shrouded in a sorrow too heavy to name.

And I—fully aware of it all—look into his distracted eyes and walk toward him, step by step.

Walked toward this story.