The count's carriage rattles away, leaving a bruised boy on the gravel drive of the Evgenjya estate — Étienne, purchased like sackcloth, quiet as a held breath. He has learned the hard way that silence keeps the bones intact. Sioanna, the count's daughter, watches from the window, a girl who already knows the weight of a household that blames her for a death she could not prevent. She expects another face to ignore. What she does not expect is a friend. Every small gesture unspools carefully between them — a plate of food left warm, a whispered exchange at the doorway, the deliberate brush of fingers before the estate stirs awake. Tenderness arrives not as a thunderclap but as a slow leak neither of them has the sense to plug. The bond forms before either child has a name for it, twining their separate lonelinesses into something dense and fiercely private.

But the language they learn in the shadows of her family's contempt is one with a dangerous vocabulary. Affection simmers into desperation, care sharpens into a grip neither of them is willing to loosen. Her brother Eli's fists and a looming arranged marriage to a wealthy count tighten the walls on every side. Étienne, who crawled into her heart by being gentle, now clings to her with a gravity that feels indistinguishable from the grave. Sioanna must decide whether the love she fought for is her rescue — or the cage neither of them saw being forged in the dark.

Also known as: 집착은 다정하고 집요하게, Jibchageun Dajeonghago Jibyohage, Obsession Is Tender and Persistent.