The dim light seeped through the curtain edges, casting pale shadows across the living room where David sat slouched on the 消极的sofa. His fingers absently traced the intricate floral patterns embroidered into the fabric, patterns he knew too well—patterns he now despised.

Opposite him, Elaine nursed a cup of cold tea, her eyes fixed on an old photo above the fireplace. It seemed as though the moment had stretched, elongated between them, drawing out the conversation to a taut silence that neither dared to break.

“You ever think,” David finally murmured, “that this room has seen too much of us?”

Elaine looked at him, her gaze heavy with the weight of countless unsaid words. “Perhaps it’s us who’ve seen too much of it,” she replied, her voice a thread of sound in the quiet.

The sofa beneath David groaned softly, as if in agreement. For years, it had cradled their marital woes, their whispered fears, turning progressively more drooping under the burden of their spirits. It was hardly a piece of furniture now; it had become a confidant, absorbing their every confession, each regret.

“Do you ever wonder why it all feels so… foreboding?” she asked, her voice catching at the end, like a whisper halted by the unseen.

He shrugged, the motion causing the sofa to emit another soft sigh. “Sometimes I think we’re attached to things just as they attach themselves to us.”

Elaine shivered, though the room was warm. “What do you mean?”

“Like… it’s waiting,” David paused, searching for the words. A habit he’d clung to—hesitating, mulling over thoughts before allowing them into the open. “Waiting for us to come undone.”

The sentence hung between them, pregnant with implication. Elaine set down her cup with deliberate slowness. “You’re not blaming the sofa, are you?” her words were edged, half-humor, half-full of something darker.

His lips tilted into a wry smile, “Of course not. It’s just… we assign meanings to things, don’t we? Places, objects—they start to define us more than we define them.”

Their eyes met in the dimness, and in that shared glance, an understanding was reached. This was not just about the sofa, or the room, or the stale scent of autumn leaves carried in by the draft. It was about them, their unspoken fears, and the lurking sense that something was amiss—both within and without.

“Lately, though, it’s felt different,” Elaine admitted, her fingers began to twist the ends of her sleeve, a nervous habit David recognized. “Like it’s alive, aware. As though it’s listening.”

David didn’t respond immediately. In the back of his mind, a memory threatened to surface—days when the shadows seemed to crawl, ink-like, across familiar walls. Nights when the furniture seemed to shift ever so slightly, the air whispering secrets in a language he pretended not to understand.

“I’ve felt it too,” he said, at length. His admission, soft and subdued, felt like an exhalation of a truth long denied.

Their gaze turned simultaneously to the couch, the once-vibrant fabric now dulled with time and secrets too heavy to carry. For an eternity, they sat, words unspoken yet understood, trapped between a past tethered to this place and a future uncertain, looming.

And in the silence, the 消极的sofa, sturdy and patient, bore the weight of their revelations, waiting, as always, for the next confession, the next regret to absorb into its weary fibers.

In the end, it was just furniture, and yet—wasn’t it always more?

The room’s shadows deepened, the light further diminishing as day slipped soundlessly into night.