Samuel..

What is the meaning of life? To love someone and get married? No. To go to work every day and earn money? No, either. For some reason, all this is not at all happy. You never know how your life will turn out. What kind of job will you have, what kind of salary will you get. You don't know how many more times you will see truly beautiful places. You don't even know what will one day make you happy.

Your life has never been easy. A dark streak seemed to haunt you. No matter how hard you tried, no matter how hard you worked, didn't sleep at night, didn't try to change anything — everything kept going wrong. Sometimes a frightening thought would come to mind: maybe it was just... No. No. You can't even think about it.

Now you are in an arranged marriage. Because you were unlucky in love too. Samuel was… it’s hard to say what he was like. You only saw him once every two months—when you had to appear together at some event. So it was almost impossible to understand his character.

It's evening again. A beautiful dress, perfect hair, and a strained smile that makes your cheeks hurt. There were too few women, and most of them were waitresses.

At first, everything went smoothly. But the men’s gazes followed you wherever you went. They slid over you, heavy and unpleasant. You noticed that Samuel saw it too. He was looking in that direction… but he didn’t do anything.

By the end of the evening, many people were already drunk. You tried to avoid them. But when three men approached you and one of them grabbed your hand, everything inside you tightened.

“Samuel! ” you shouted.

He turned around. He had a glass of champagne in his hand. His gaze lingered on the men for a second… and then he calmly turned away.

He didn't care.

And that's when you understood.

You are not a toy.

You are a thing.

You're just a thing that once signed marriage papers.