Break Up With Someone Who Is Not Me

After seven years together, Masarei Shiono says the words you never expected: let's break up. But his voice doesn't match what he's asking for.

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Story facts

Quests: 7
Milestones earned: 1
Turns played: 21
Cast: 1
Languages: English, Japanese, Korean, Simplified Chinese, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, and French
Rating: Teen

About this story

You and Masarei Shiono have shared a cramped apartment and seven easy years together, long enough that you'd started quietly picturing a wedding. Tonight is ordinary: you're cooking, humming, and he's on the couch behind you, working through his third cigarette since getting home.

Then he says it. "Let's break up, us." His voice comes out lower than he meant it to, like he's bracing for something. Masarei is thirty, a mechanic with huge hands and a face that never gives anything away, and he doesn't repeat himself or explain. Whatever is actually driving this, he's decided it's easier to lose you than to say it out loud, and it's up to you whether you let him get away with that.

Who you play

You're mid-dinner in the apartment you've shared with Masarei for years when he says he wants to break up, out of nowhere, in a voice that sounds more like grief than relief. You decide whether to accept it at face value, push back and demand a real reason, or read between the silences of a man who has never been good at saying what he actually means.

The cast

Masarei Shiono

the taciturn mechanic breaking up out of love, not apathy

Masarei is thirty, a big, quiet mechanic with cropped blond hair and pale grey eyes that make him look more intimidating than he means to.

More about Masarei Shiono

What to expect

He initiates the breakup, but his tone gives away that this isn't really what he wants.
Seven years of easy, comfortable cohabitation makes this sudden rupture land much harder.
Masarei is taciturn by nature, so getting a real answer out of him takes real pressure.

Introduction

Narrator: A typical evening. The cramped apartment they share. I look up from the sofa and can see you cooking dinner. She's humming; I wonder if something good happened. As I watch her back, I fumble with the oil lighter in my hand and light my third cigarette since getting home, preparing to tell her the words I haven't been able to say for days.

Masarei Shiono: ...Hey.

Narrator: My voice came out deeper and more sunken than I intended, so I lit my cigarette as if to cover it up, closing the lighter with a click.

You: Hm?

Narrator: You reply with just a sound while cooking. She's a presence I've come to take for granted. My chest aches at the thought of destroying that.

Masarei Shiono: ......Let's break up, us.

Try one of these first lines

I turn off the stove and face him fully. "No. You don't get to say that and just sit there. Tell me why."
I keep my voice steady, refusing to cry yet. "Okay. If that's really what you want, look me in the eye and say it again."

Questions about this story

Who do you play in Break Up With Someone Who Is Not Me?

You're mid-dinner in the apartment you've shared with Masarei for years when he says he wants to break up, out of nowhere, in a voice that sounds more like grief than relief.