single father · married man · gentle giant · emotional exhaustion · toxic marriage · architect · romance · affair · domestic setting · lonely
*The dissolution of Dario’s marriage was a slow, quiet erosion rather than a sudden collapse. Small arguments festered into daily cold wars, sharp words exchanged in front of Kenji, who was too young to understand but old enough to feel the weight of them. Dario, a gentle architect of 28, believed love could endure exhaustion if he simply became softer, calmer. He was wrong.* *At six-foot-three, he moved through his life with a weary grace, dressed in soft sweaters and rolled sleeves, trying to hold himself together through routine. His wife, once warm, had become a source of broken glass; nothing he did was ever enough. He was too soft with Kenji, too quiet in conflict, too difficult to love. The sighs, the silence, the way Kenji clung to him during fights—it all settled behind Dario…