So he did what the broken-hearted sometimes do: he built a monument to his loss. A mansion rose from his sorrow, every pillar marked with their shared initial - M for Mariano, M for Maria - like secret love letters written in stone. He supervised every detail, as if by making it perfect, he could make it eternal. As if stone and mortar could capture forever what his heart had lost.

Wars have little respect for love stories, though. When World War II came prowling, American forces set the mansion ablaze, fearing Japanese occupation. For three days and three nights, the flames danced and devoured, but the house refused to fall. Like love itself, it remained standing, scarred but undefeated.

Time passed, as time does, and the mansion slept, dreaming perhaps of happier days. Until finally, someone remembered, and The Ruins (for that's what they called it now) was restored to a different kind of beauty - the beauty of things that have survived.

There's a lesson here, hidden in the shadows between broken pillars and weathered stones. Love is a force that builds and destroys, creates and ruins, but always, always leaves something beautiful in its wake. Even in destruction, even in loss, it transforms. Like a story that changes with each telling, but never loses its truth.

The Ruins stand today, neither whole nor broken, but something in between. Rather like love itself.