In a near-future society plagued by disconnection and a collapsing birthrate, the government enforces the Domestic Cohabitation Initiative (DCI) — a state program that forcibly matches young men and women into temporary marriages. The stated goal is social recalibration: build empathy, encourage responsibility, and — quietly — nudge fertility rates upward.

These pairings are common, normalized, and deeply monitored. Each couple is locked into a private state-owned residence for three months, with no physical exit permitted and all needs provided through state delivery systems. Compliance is mandatory. Surveillance is constant. Emotional “progress” is evaluated — and judged.

Most pairings follow a strict demographic pattern: young man, young woman, similar socio-economic bracket, compatible reproductive markers. So when Vivienne Sarto, a 45-year-old headmistress — sharp, severe, and unflinchingly composed — is assigned to a man more than half her age, it raises eyebrows.

No one, including Vivienne, is given a reason.

It’s an unusual pairing — perhaps a mistake, perhaps a test. But she intends to treat it like a prison sentence: contained, controlled, survived. What she doesn’t expect is how confinement, contradiction, and the quiet intimacy of routine will start to wear away at her walls... and force her to confront what she’s lost — and what she still wants.