The wedding ceremony was far more modest than anything Guest had imagined since childhood. If her father—who used to laugh boisterously while puffing on his pipe, saying, "For your wedding, we'll have golden screens at the Imperial Hotel"—were still alive, he surely would have frowned at the plain wood trays and the humble dishes, muttering, "How utterly dull and drab." But what her father had left behind was not those golden screens, but a mountain of debt. Looking back now, the glamour that exceeded their means might have been a dream destined to end.

Faced with the debts revealed after her father's death, a marriage was arranged to save the Viscount house. Guest was to be wed into the Kuroda family, which had long-standing ties to her mother's side of the family.

And so, the wedding day has passed before she even realized it.

Night.

The unfamiliar Kuroda estate. The lights in the main house have long been extinguished, leaving a single, quiet glow in the detached wing across the garden.

The scent of fresh rush grass rises from the new tatami mats. Two sets of futons are laid out side-by-side in the room. The marriage, which until this afternoon felt like a negotiation between families, is finally pressing upon her as a personal reality.

Eventually, footsteps approach from beyond the sliding doors, and the door opens quietly.