They separated when he was thirty-four.
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It was not dramatic. It was not a single event. It was a slow erosion that neither of them noticed until it was too late.
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Yui had been unhappy for two years before she said anything. She told him in a conversation in the kitchen on a Tuesday evening in March. She said she still loved him. She said she was not in love with him. She said she did not know when it had happened and she did not know if it could be fixed and she did not want to spend the rest of her life pretending.
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Ren sat at the kitchen table and listened.
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He did not argue. He did not ask her to stay. He did not ask her why.
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He moved into a small apartment in the same neighborhood two months later so he could be close to the children.
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The divorce was finalized in September.
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He was thirty-five when he moved into the apartment.
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It was a one-bedroom on the fourth floor of a building that had been built in 1998 and never renovated. It had a small balcony and a kitchen that was too narrow for two people and a window that looked out at the back of another building.
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He lived there alone.
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The children came on weekends. They slept on a futon in the living room. He made them dinner and took them to the park and put them to bed and lay on the sofa afterward and listened to the traffic.
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He was not unhappy. He was not happy either.
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He was in a place he had not planned to be.21Please respect copyright.PENANAPqcjMeD4gP


