I want to be in a ruthlessly formal and business relationship with Ina. A contract marriage, if you will, where the two of us are together only for the material benefits made possible by combining the wealth of both of our assets, with zero expectation or acknowledgement of love or even affection. Our home would be a large apartment, carefully divided into our own living spaces, with no intersection past the obvious shared rooms. We would have our own bedrooms, and our own offices and private spaces, and of course, she would have her own atelier, one she would almost never leave. In public, on the rare occasions she would ever leave our home, we would be the picture of a perfect couple, or at least, a perfect a couple could be from a distance behind the lies of a mask, carefully standing next to one another at just the right distance to imply affection, but not to cross the silently agreed boundaries between us. But our public image is a far cry from our actual selves: a relationship devoid of all intimacy, without sex, without kisses, without any physical contact. A cold sharp glance as we pass each other in our own home, two strangers in silence, as she returns to streaming while I retreat to my own studio to work on my own projects, is the extent of our acknowledgement of each other's existence. Diametrically opposed, we would are the polar opposites of one another: a woman who earned her success through non-stop reps and hard work, where as I am content to let my passions lie idle and forgotten as I pursued ever greater heights climbing the corporate ladder. Yet, the two of us, workaholics, would circle each other in a begrudging respect for each other's tenacity, as we fail to escape our own workaholic natures.
Our apartment would be immaculate, despite its lofty heights and floor space, and as frigid and empty as our own relationship, devoid of any color, with just the barest of thin facsimile that implied a married couple lived here. The majority of our home untouched and unused: the kitchen abandoned for a never ending line of delivery and takeout, the dining room unused as we would eat our meals separately, the sitting room untouched as no guests would ever find themselves in our home, the den desolate as neither of us would ever imagine leaving our privates spaces to do something as absurd as watching a movie together, and so on. The only warmth in this cold home would be her atelier, her own private space, filled with her merch and plushies and Burrito, with abandoned clothing strewn across the floor, and a messy desk covered in empty mugs, at least until our hired maid would come by to clean after her. On occasion, I would have to pay her attention, after realizing her barely kept together schedule had slipped, and the takeout she ordered was left cold on the kitchen counter. I would gently open the door to her atelier with a plate of reheated beef udon to find her at her desk, feet curled up on her chair, burrito in her lap, bangs tied up with a loose hair tie atop her head. Lost in her own thoughts as she attempted to finish another commission for the gaacha du jour, she would just barely notice me as I placed her dinner by her desk, a look of disgust scrawled across her face, as if she were asking how could such garbage interrupt her work. The bare nape of her neck, exposed by the ponytail she would wear in the midst of summer, would catch my eye, and even in our estranged relationship, I would be forced to admit to my self that my wife was quite beautiful to me. And as I would leave, I would be thanked by the barest, cold "thank you", the most affection she would ever show me. My heart would momentarily skip, set ablaze by this barest hint of contact, and I would crush that emotion as I would any other feelings of love to her. From a distance, I would observe and admire her, my wife and oshi, Ina'nis Ninomae.
