He straightened up slightly.
A thought crossed his mind.
What if Mia met someone?
For a moment, he pictured the scene.
Mia smiling at another man.
Mia laughing with him.
Mia waiting for someone else at the door.
Mia leaving this house to start a new life with someone else.
His heart clenched painfully.
Cid looked away.
"No…"
He ran a hand through his hair.
"It shouldn't be affecting me like this."
He tried to reason with himself.
Mia had clearly told him she would leave after a hundred days.
A hundred days.
It was only temporary.
A strange cohabitation born from an accident.
She had entered his life by chance, and sooner or later she would leave it.
So why get attached?
Why look for her presence when she wasn't there?
Why feel this emptiness whenever she pulled away?
Why did his gaze change when she smiled?
Cid stared at the ground.
"In a hundred days, she'll be gone…"
That sentence, which he had always taken as a simple fact, suddenly felt unbearable.
At first he had thought it would be a good thing.
Mia would get her freedom back.
She could start her life over.
And he could go back to his.
So why did the idea of her leaving hurt so much?
Cid closed his eyes.
He remembered the small moments they had shared.
The ridiculous arguments.
The meals.
The late-night conversations.
The laughter.
The silences that were no longer awkward.
That presence that had become familiar.
Then he realized something that unsettled him even more.
He hadn't just gotten used to Mia.
He had gotten used to having her in his life.
And that thought scared him.
"What's happening to me…?"
His phone vibrated in his pocket.
Cid took it out, looked at the screen for a few seconds, then sighed.
He didn't even need to guess whose name he had been hoping to see.
But the name on the screen wasn't Mia's.
He slowly put the phone away.
The wind blew again.
Cid looked up at the sky.
"I don't want her to leave…"
The words slipped out before he could stop them.
He stayed still.
Then he murmured, as if trying to convince himself:
"But I have no right to ask her to stay."