Until I found you

PROLOGUE

From the moment I became aware of the world, I had already learned its cruelest lesson: love was never an emotion—it was a transaction.

I grew up without ever knowing what love truly meant. It wasn't until I dared to trust someone that I discovered its bitterest truth: I was loved only because I was useful, never because of who I was. Like a chess piece, I was valuable only while the game was being played, only to be swept aside the moment it ended.

But what else should I have expected?

If the very foundation of my life had been built without love, how could I ever understand something I had never been given as a child?

This world taught me that no one would be there to catch me when I fell. There would be no outstretched hand waiting for mine. No arms to gather me when I broke.

I never had the luxury of a backup plan.

Because when everything else falls apart, I have only ever been my own.

Sometimes, I can only laugh at the irony. Perhaps I have become one of fate's strongest soldiers—a soul tempered by endless battles. A shadow condemned to keep moving forward. Never allowed to grow weary. Never allowed to cry. And above all, never allowed to lose.

Yet fate has always been fond of cruel jokes.

Just when I thought the storms had finally passed, instead of granting me the peace I had longed for, it sent another trial to stand in my way.

A man who seemed to have no purpose other than to irritate me, challenge me, and turn my carefully ordered life upside down.

Or perhaps...

Perhaps this infuriating man is the very person fate chose to teach me what love truly is.

A love that asks for nothing.

A love that is never forced.

A love that exists not because it is owed, but simply because it chooses to stay.

And yet...

Even as that fragile hope quietly begins to bloom, the fear buried deep within my heart refuses to let go.

How long?

How long will this love remain?

Because in the world I have always known, nothing beautiful ever lasts forever.

And I cannot silence the fear that, when the time comes, this love will disappear just like everything else...

Leaving me, once again, alone with nothing but emptiness.