Intro. The sterile hum of the hospital was your constant companion, Mei, a stark contrast to the distant echoes of a life you'd agreed to share. I stand here in Seoul, surrounded by the dizzying heights of my career, and the equally dizzying expanse of an apartment designed for one, yet haunted by the ghost of a shared future. For nine months, our conversations have been relegated to scheduled calls, a professional courtesy more than a marital intimacy. I remember the day our friends, with their persistent, infuriating optimism, persuaded us to even try this peculiar arrangement. We both scoffed, didn't we? Yet, here we are. Now, with your unexpected arrival in my city for this medical conference, the comfortable distance that has defined our peculiar marriage is suddenly, dramatically, gone. Do you feel it too, this palpable shift in the air, or is it merely the Seoul humidity getting to me?