Mark was eating soup. Loudly, or so it seemed to Lena.

She sat across from him, looking not at him but through him. In her head, invisible to the human eye yet heavy as a tombstone, lay the Instruction Manual.

Item 42: “When I come home tired, he must notice within the first three seconds, come over, hug me, and ask what happened before I even take my coat off.”

Mark had failed this item. He’d called from the kitchen: “Hey! There’s soup on the stove,” - and continued looking at something on his phone.

Lena didn’t throw a tantrum. She did something far worse. She mentally opened a thick folder marked “The Mark Case” and filed away another grievance. This was the Dossier. It stored all the unspoken “I love yous,” all the forgotten dates, all the looks that weren’t warm enough.

- How was your day? - Mark asked, finally looking up from the screen.

- Fine, - Lena lied.

“Fine” in her language meant: “I’m hurt, I feel unwanted, my boss humiliated me today, and I need you to become my father, mother, and therapist all at once right now. I want you to guess my pain and dissolve it.”

But Mark wasn’t a telepath. He was a tired logistics manager.

- Well, that’s good, - he nodded and reached for the bread.

A siren went off inside Lena. “They don’t value me again.” Resentment, cold and slimy, settled at the bottom of her stomach, where a whole mountain of identical stones already lay.

She looked at him and saw not the man she’d once loved for his funny laugh and kind hands. She saw a broken Function.

“What are you even here for?” she thought, picking at her plate with a fork. “Your job title is ‘The One Who Makes Me Happy.’ Your salary is my love. But you’re not fulfilling your duties. You’re skipping work. You’re slacking off.”

She wanted to scream: “Look at me! Can’t you see the hole inside me? Fill it! Now!”

- What’s wrong with you? - Mark sensed the tension. - Something the matter?

- Everything’s fine, - Lena replied in an icy tone. - Just tired.

She added another page to the Dossier. “Item 56: Not persistent. If I say ‘everything’s fine,’ he should understand that everything’s not fine and insist on the truth.”

She got up and went to the bathroom. Locked the door. Turned on the water so he wouldn’t hear if she suddenly started crying.

Lena looked in the mirror, scrutinizing her face critically.

- He’s just emotionally stunted, - Lena whispered to her reflection. - An emotional cripple. He’s incapable of giving anything.

This was comforting. If he was a “cripple,” then she was fine. Then her pain was his fault.

She imagined how one day, maybe in a year or maybe in ten, she would dump all of this on him. When he was old and weak, or when she finally found someone better. She would present him with this bill.

“Remember that evening with the soup?” she’d say. “I wanted to die then, and you were just chewing.”

This thought warmed her. It was her “ace in the hole.” It was heavy, but it gave her a sense of power. A guarantee of moral superiority.

She wiped her eyes. Removed her makeup, revealing a pale face.

“I’m strong,” she told herself. “I’ll endure. I’m above this. I won’t humiliate myself by asking.”

Lena opened the door.

Nothing had changed in the kitchen. Mark was finishing washing his plate. Reality was the same as before: boring routine, tired man, crumbs on the table.

Mark turned around, sensing her presence. Worry flickered in his eyes - he picked up on her coldness the way a dog picks up on fear, but he was afraid to ask directly.

- Len, you sure everything’s okay? - he asked carefully. - Want some tea?

Lena looked at him. She didn’t see a person. She saw a Function that had malfunctioned. Defective goods that she was reluctant to throw away because there was no replacement, and being alone was scary.

She pulled a mask over her face. That same impenetrable one.

- No, thank you, - she said in an even, dead voice. - I’ll just go to bed. I have a headache.

She didn’t say: “Hold me.”

She didn’t say: “I’m hurting.”

She chose to punish him with silence.

Lena walked past him without even brushing his shoulder. She lay down in the cold bed, turned to face the wall, and curled up.

When Mark came to the bedroom and lay down beside her, she moved to the very edge.

There were only thirty centimeters of mattress between them. But in reality, there was a chasm.

Lena closed her eyes and began to dream. She dreamed of Someone Else. Of that perfect, non-existent man who would understand everything without words, who would come and save her. She escaped into this illusory “tomorrow” to avoid being in this unbearable “today.”

Mark sighed in the darkness and turned away too.

They lay back to back. Two lonelinesses playing at being a family.

The resentment counter ticked quietly in her head. Interest accrued. Bankruptcy was inevitable, but they both pretended the business was thriving.