My fiancé, his brother

The sweet morning song mingled with the first rays of sunlight filtering through the light curtains of Léa's apartment. A stream of light caressed the white sheets, warming the still cool air of dawn. Léa slowly emerged from her sleep, her eyelids still heavy with vague and fleeting dreams. The bedroom, decorated in a minimalist style, reflected her taste for simplicity: white walls, a shelf filled with carefully organized architecture books, and a green plant, the only touch of life, that seemed strangely to thrive despite the little light.Beside her, Thomas, her fiancé, slept peacefully. His chest rose and fell at a steady, almost hypnotic rhythm. Léa watched him for a moment. His relaxed features could have moved her, once upon a time. Now, she felt little. Or rather, she felt too much, but nothing of what she would have wished: weariness, a vague feeling of suffocation, silent melancholy. She looked away.She got out of bed carefully, making sure not to creak the floorboards. As

The day passed in a blur of meetings and repetitive tasks. Léa struggled to focus on her projects, on the straight lines and curves she was drawing, on the plans she was adjusting to the millimeter… but her mind wandered endlessly. It escaped as soon as she let her guard down, projecting her into unknown landscapes, vibrant cities full of life, where she could get lost and be reborn. She dreamed of wandering through the alleys of a foreign city, the taste of the unknown, the warmth of a new gaze. She dreamed of freedom, of a fresh breath that would sweep away the suffocating monotony.As the hours passed, she felt herself drifting away from herself. The screen in front of her was just an opaque wall, and behind it, the blurry outlines of a woman tired of fighting against a life that was too narrow.When the end of the day arrived, Léa was exhausted. But it was not a physical fatigue. It was deeper. A dull, invisible exhaustion, the result of a constant struggle against her own thought

On the evening of the party, the apartment sparkled with a thousand little elegant touches: discreet string lights, candles lined up on the console, soft background music floating between budding conversations. There was a certain solemnity in the air, as if something important was about to happen.Thomas flitted from one corner to another of the room, clearly at the height of excitement. He wore a brand new, well-tailored midnight blue suit that highlighted his slender figure. On the coat rack by the entrance, another equally new suit awaited Ethan's arrival.Léa stood by the hallway mirror, adjusting a black dress she hadn't worn since a distant evening. A simple cut, slightly flared at the hips, that hugged her body without extravagance. She said nothing about Thomas's oversight, not a word about this lack of gesture, this glaring lack of attention. But she had felt it. Strongly. And she had swallowed it in silence.A sigh escaped her as she stared at her reflection. She was beauti