A/N: This website is on crack. The "number of words" I used keeps fluctuating. The first time I saved it here (Yes, without the AN), it said 193. Second time (no changes): 249. Third time (added proper dashes): 244. So, I'm basing it on Word. (Because it's too troublesome to count by hand.) At least its estimates don't change without reason.
to have loved
He doesn't love her.
Saena knows—she has always known, ever since the day she caught him staring at his childhood friend. As if she were the only person in the world.
He would never look at her that way.
His parents love neither him nor her; all they care for, simply, is Saena's dowry. A dowry, large in value, only for the fact that her own parents hate her.
It seems only right then, that she would hate her own child. Simply a matter of continuing family tradition.
Why, then, did she take that bastard's child with her?
His golden eyes are supposed to be—dead, dead, dead—filled with hatred for her existence. Not the loving adoration she receives.
Kyoko.
Kyo's child.
She is him, yet not him.
Every movement, every smile shows the him who had been with her, not Saena.
Saena doesn't know why it—that small, unidentifiable part of her—hurt. Saena doesn't know why—when she ran away to Kyoto, ran away from her old life—she took the child with her.
She doesn't love him. Saena repeats it over and over and over as she cradles Kyoko to sleep. She doesn't love him.