— Lena, I was talking to my mom—next weekend we need to go out to her dacha. There’s a ton to do: paint the fence, sand the old varnish off the veranda—she can’t handle it alone, — Igor said in his usual Saturday tone—relaxed, faintly patronizing, the way people speak about things long decided and not up for discussion. He stirred sugar into his cup, staring somewhere out the window at the gray morning courtyard. For him this conversation was nothing more than voicing plans, another item in the endless list of obligations that Lena, as he saw it, was supposed to accept with docile enthusiasm.
She didn’t answer right away. For a second she looked at him as if she were seeing him for the first time. Not a loving husband, not a partner, but a complete stranger who, by some mistake, was sitting at her kitchen table and allocating her time. Her calm was deceptive, like still water over a deep pool.
— Help your mother with repairs at the dacha? Igor, are you serious? And when my father asked you to help move a refrigerator, you were “busy”! So let your mother hire workers! I’m not taking part in this circus anymore!
The spoon froze in his hand. He slowly turned his head; his face shifted from genial to incredulous, and then to angry. He had expected anything: a weary sigh, a request to reschedule—but not this icy, razor-edged refusal. He set his cup down with such a thud that the remaining coffee sloshed onto the saucer.
— Are you out of your mind? What do you mean “not taking part”? She’s my mother! She helps us with seedlings, gives us her preserves. You’re an ungrateful egotist! What’s so hard about helping your own person once a year?
His voice began to swell, filling the small kitchen. He stood up, looming over her; his face reddened, the muscles in his jaw twitched. He was ready for a scene—for shouting, for tears—the usual script in which he would easily prevail by crushing her with his authority and guilt. He was ready for anything except what she did next.
Lena didn’t answer. She didn’t raise her voice. She simply slid her cup of cooled coffee aside, stood up, and, walking past him in silence, left the kitchen. Igor smirked, deciding she had fled, unable to withstand his righteous anger. But a minute later she came back with a laptop in her hands. She sat down at the table and opened the lid. The bright light of the screen struck her calm, impassive face. Igor watched her, not understanding what was happening. This quiet, businesslike focus threw him off, stripping him of his weapons.
She turned the screen toward him. An Excel spreadsheet was open. Neat, mercilessly structured, like an accounting report. The header read: “Family Assistance Budget. Igor’s Family.” Below were the columns: “Date,” “Recipient,” “Type of help,” “Monetary equivalent.”
— Look, — her voice was even and steely.
His eyes darted over the rows. “01/12/2023. Mother-in-law. Anniversary gift (dinnerware set). 15,000 rubles.” “03/04/2023. Igor’s sister. Help with moving (packing belongings, 6 hours). 3,000 rubles (at 500 rub/hour).” “05/15/2023. Mother-in-law. Purchase and delivery of seedlings to the dacha. 8,700 rubles.” “All of June. Mother-in-law. Weeding beds, watering (16 hours in the month). 8,000 rubles.” “08/21/2023. Igor’s father. Trip to the hospital, waiting (4 hours). 2,000 rubles.” “11/05/2023. Mother-in-law. Mother’s Day gift (new phone). 22,000 rubles.”
The list was long. It stretched over the entire past year. Money, gifts, weekends spent—converted into cold, soulless yet entirely fair numbers. Igor was silent. He stared at the screen as his anger slowly gave way to shock. This wasn’t petty score-keeping. It was a detailed, scrupulous audit of his family values—and the results were devastating.
Then Lena clicked to switch tabs. A new sheet. Header: “Family Assistance Budget. Lena’s Family.” Beneath it there was a single line. “09/12/2023. Lena’s father. Request for help moving a refrigerator. Refusal (Igor ‘busy’).” In the “Monetary equivalent” column there was a bold, ugly zero.
Lena lifted her eyes to him. There was no anger or hurt in them. Only a cold statement of fact.
— In total, over the past year, the amount of assistance to your family, expressed in money and my time, comes to one hundred eighty-two thousand four hundred and fifty rubles.
The figure hung in the kitchen air like a sentence. One hundred eighty-two thousand four hundred and fifty rubles. It was so precise, so absurd in its accountant’s exactness, that it robbed Igor of speech for a moment. His hot, bubbling fury collided with the ice wall of her calculations and hissed, cooling. He looked from the screen to her calm face, and one thought battered itself inside his skull: this was some kind of vicious, elaborate joke.
— Are you… are you kidding me? — he finally forced out, rage and bewilderment mixing in his voice. — You’ve been sitting there tallying this the whole time? Every tomato my mother brought over, you logged into your spreadsheet? Are we a family or a corporation? Are you my wife or the CFO?
He went on the offensive, trying to regain control, to shift focus from the unassailable facts to her supposedly abnormal behavior. He paced the kitchen, waving his hands; his voice grew hard, ringing with righteous indignation.
— It’s absurd! How can you put a price tag on helping close family? My mother puts her soul into that dacha—she does it for us! My sister asked for help because we’re family! And you turned it all into rubles! What’s next—are you going to invoice me for dinner? For breathing in your presence? This isn’t a relationship, Lena, it’s a transaction!
Lena listened with the same impenetrable expression. She didn’t interrupt or justify. She let him exhaust his store of accusations and reproaches. When at last he fell silent, breathing hard, she still said nothing. She simply picked up her phone. Igor froze, watching. He expected her to call someone and complain, but her actions were once again terrifyingly ordinary—and all the more ominous for it.
Her thumb slid across the screen to unlock it. She opened the banking app. Her movements were precise, without a trace of hesitation. She went to the transfers section. A form appeared. In the “Recipient” field she typed: “Nikolai Petrovich Sh.” Her father. Then her finger hovered over “Amount.” Igor involuntarily leaned in, trying to see. Calmly, digit by digit, she entered that exact number. Not one hundred eighty thousand. Not one hundred eighty-two. Precisely: 182,450. To the last ruble.
She tapped “Continue,” then “Confirm.” A checkmark appeared with the words “Transfer completed.” Lena set the phone on the table face up so he could see. The proof was indisputable. The money was gone.
— What… what have you done? — he whispered. His anger had evaporated, leaving a cold, clammy fear.
— I restored fairness, — she replied in the same even voice. — I have just transferred one hundred eighty-two thousand four hundred and fifty rubles to my father from my account. That is now my personal safety cushion. Let’s call it a restoration of balance for the last year—a compensation for my time, my money, and his total absence in our value system. And now, — she looked him straight in the eye, and for the first time he saw not cold there, but something like the glow of heated metal, — now that we’re square, we can start fresh.
She paused, letting him grasp the scale of what had happened.
— Starting today, new rules apply. Any help to either side—strictly fifty-fifty. Your mother needs the fence painted? Great. Either we both go and spend our shared weekend on it, or we jointly hire a worker and split the cost down the middle. My father needs a wardrobe assembled? Same principle. You don’t have the time or desire to help my people? Perfect. Then I don’t have the money or time to help yours. Simple.
Igor looked at her and felt as if a robot had taken his wife’s place. A machine saying the right, logical things—but with no trace of human warmth in its voice. His world, built on familiar, unspoken agreements—where his family always took priority and hers stayed on the periphery—collapsed in a single morning. He wanted to scream, to sweep that damned laptop off the table, to grab her by the shoulders and shake her until the old Lena came back. But her eyes told him—there was no old Lena anymore. This cold, calculating mechanism was her new essence, and he understood that shouting wouldn’t do a thing. He hadn’t lost an argument. He had lost a war without realizing it had begun.
The week that followed was unbearable. They lived in one apartment like two hostile states under a fragile truce. The air was charged with tension. They barely spoke, trading only short, functional phrases. But a storm lurked behind the silence. Igor waited for her to crack, for her system to glitch, for her to tire of this cold war and return to the old model. He waited for his chance to strike back and prove the absurdity of her “contract.” And the chance presented itself.
One evening Lena approached him while he was watching TV. She didn’t sit down. She stood on her imaginary half of the room. — My father bought a sliding-door wardrobe. A big one. The assembly is pretty complicated. I told him we could help on Saturday. You have two options. Option A: we both go and spend the day. Option B: we hire an assembler. I checked prices—it’s six thousand. We pay three each. Which option do you choose?
She spoke as if offering him a rate plan. Igor felt a prick of malicious glee. There it was—her first test. And he would flunk it with a resounding crash. He would show her how her sterile math shatters against the reefs of real life.
— Of course we’ll help, — he said with ostentatious heartiness. — Why pay when we can do it ourselves? Your father will be pleased.
On Saturday he staged his little sabotage. First he overslept, then dawdled, claiming he urgently needed to answer a few work emails. As a result they arrived at her father’s two hours late. Nikolai Petrovich, shuffling awkwardly in a room cluttered with boxes of parts, greeted them with a mixed look of relief and embarrassment. Igor threw himself into the job with enthusiasm, but worked with a subtle sloppiness. He “accidentally” mixed up panels, dropped hardware, didn’t tighten screws all the way, and kept getting distracted by phone calls. He didn’t snap or make a scene—he simply radiated an aura of passive aggression, turning the assembly into a slow, exhausting torture.
Lena was silent. She worked for two, correcting his mistakes, handing over the needed parts, checking the instructions. She didn’t reproach him once. She just watched. Her silence was scarier than any shout. By evening, when the wardrobe was finally assembled—crookedly, with poorly aligned doors—Igor felt triumphant. He had proved her system a fiction. You can’t force sincerity.
Three days later the phone rang. His sister Anya. Her voice was agitated. She urgently needed to see a doctor and her husband was stuck in traffic.
— Igor, help! Let Lena watch Misha for literally a couple of hours, I’ll be right back! — she rattled off. Igor, grinning victoriously, handed the phone to Lena. There you go—life. Not an Excel sheet but an urgent, human request.
— It’s Anya, — he tossed off. — She needs someone to watch the kid.
Lena took the phone. The conversation was brief.
— Hi, Anya. Yes, I hear you. Unfortunately, today won’t work. Not at all. Sorry. Bye.
She hung up and set the phone on the table. Igor jumped up.
— What are you doing?! Why did you refuse? It’s urgent! Lena raised her cool, clear eyes to him. — On Saturday, your labor contribution to helping my family was roughly zero point zero. You deliberately dragged your feet and sabotaged the work. My father then spent half the night fixing the doors after you. Accordingly, my contribution to an emergency request from your family today is an equivalent zero. The balance must be kept. Simple.
Igor froze, staring at her calm, almost indifferent face. He expected her to make excuses, to wriggle, to claim a headache. But this direct, mathematically precise answer disarmed him. She hadn’t just refused; she had delivered a verdict based on his own action. His petty wardrobe sabotage, which he had considered a clever tactical move, boomeranged back and hit what was dearest—his family. His phone buzzed in his pocket. He knew who it was. Anya, ready to scream what kind of brother he was if his wife refused to help in an emergency. The public humiliation was total.
— You vindictive, soulless bitch, — he hissed, stepping toward her. Rage filmed his eyes red. This was no longer anger but helpless, animal fury. — You hurt Anya just to get at me. My nephew, a small child, became small change in your idiotic games!
Lena didn’t back away. She didn’t even blink.
— This isn’t a game, Igor. It’s consequences. Your choice’s consequences. On Saturday you made it clear what your participation is worth. You priced it at zero. I merely used your exchange rate. If you had spent six hours properly assembling the wardrobe, I would have spent two hours with your nephew without question. The balance would be positive. But you zeroed out your account. Now it’s empty.
Her logic was flawless—and all the more monstrous for it. She spoke of living people—his sister, his nephew—as if they were bank transactions. He realized he was trapped. Any action or inaction of his would now have a mirror reflection. If he refused to help her father, she would with a clear conscience refuse his entire clan. If he agreed, he would be acknowledging her rules, admitting defeat, and becoming a cog in her inhuman system. She had left him no good move.
For several weeks they lived in a state of frozen conflict. Igor stopped asking her for anything for his family. He went to his mother himself, helped his sister himself, tearing between work and family obligations. He did it demonstratively, like a martyr, hoping that the sight of his suffering would awaken something human in her. But Lena seemed not to notice. She lived her life and sat with her laptop in the evenings just the same. Igor was sure she continued her infernal bookkeeping, logging his solitary “transactions” in favor of her family and putting dashes opposite them in the “Lena’s participation” column.
He understood that this wall wouldn’t be breached with skirmishes. He needed something big, fundamental—something that couldn’t be measured in hours or rubles. And such an event was approaching: his mother’s jubilee. Sixty. The main holiday in their family, prepared months in advance. This wasn’t just “paint the fence.” This was sacred ground. The domain of tradition, respect, and filial duty. Here her math had to fail.
One evening he approached her with a carefully crafted speech. He didn’t demand anything. He spoke softly, coaxingly, trying to appeal to whatever was left of their shared past.
— Lena, you remember my mom’s jubilee is soon. Sixty, a serious date. I think we should give her something truly worthy. I found a good sanatorium package in Kislovodsk. Two weeks, with treatment. It’s expensive, but she deserves it. It’ll be our joint gift. From the whole family.
He deliberately stressed the words “our,” “joint,” “family.” He held out an olive branch, offering a truce on sacred soil. He waited for her to soften, for the idea of such a grand, noble gesture to make her retreat from her petty calculations.
Lena listened without interrupting. She looked at him for a long time, and there was neither warmth nor hostility in her gaze. Only a cool, analytical interest, as if she were weighing his words on invisible scales. Igor tensed, awaiting her answer. It seemed everything would be decided now.
— Good idea, — she finally said. — A worthy gift.
A great wave of relief washed over Igor. He had won! He’d found a crack in her armor. He had found what she couldn’t digitize. Elated, he went on:
— I think so too! I’ve already checked—can book it online. Let’s then tomorrow…
— Calculate the exact cost, — she cut him off. Her voice remained even. — Split it in two. I’ll transfer you my share.
Igor froze. He stared at her as it slowly sank in. She hadn’t yielded. She hadn’t broken her rules. She had simply applied them to what was most sacred to him. She had turned filial duty into a financial transaction. She agreed to take part—but not with her heart, with her wallet. He thought he’d found her weakness. He didn’t realize he’d found the trigger.
The refusal to help his sister became the point of no return. Igor didn’t understand that right away. At first there was just boiling, helpless rage. He waited for Anya to call and scream and blame him so he could vent some of his fury, redirect it at Lena, painting her as a heartless shrew. But his sister didn’t call. Instead, that evening he received a short message: “Mom handled everything. Don’t worry about it anymore.” That was worse than any shouting. In that dry, polite text you could read not forgiveness but estrangement. His sister—his family—silently struck both of them from the circle of trust. With her cold calculus Lena hadn’t just refused a favor—she burned the bridge Igor had walked all his life.
The next few weeks passed in a thick, viscous silence. They were no longer just roommates. They were opponents studying each other before the decisive battle. Igor stopped trying to start fights. He realized emotions were his weakness and her strength. She fed on his anger, using it as proof of her rightness. So he chose another tactic. He decided to play by her rules but push them to the point of absurdity, to make her choke on her own bookkeeping. He waited for the right moment, a large, systemic project where her methodology would have to fail. And that project was approaching—the jubilee.
One evening he came up to her while she sat with her laptop. He didn’t speak of feelings or duty. He spoke like a manager discussing contract terms with a contractor.
— The jubilee is approaching. Sixtieth birthday. The event requires serious preparation. I’ve drafted a preliminary task list, — he put a printed sheet in front of her. — First: the gift. Second: organizing the banquet. Third: inviting guests. I suggest we split responsibility and costs strictly fifty-fifty.
Lena looked up from the screen and ran her eyes down the list. Her face showed neither surprise nor satisfaction. She simply nodded.
— Acceptable. Let’s go point by point. The gift. Your proposals?
— I already said. The sanatorium package. I found a good option. The cost is two hundred forty thousand rubles.
— Fine. My share is one hundred twenty thousand. I’ll transfer it to your card when you’re ready to pay. Send me the payment receipt by email.
Igor felt something tighten inside. “Payment receipt.” She was talking about a gift for his mother as if they were going halves on a new fridge. He had expected her to argue, to haggle, but this businesslike consent was more humiliating than any quarrel. It devalued the gesture itself, turning it from an act of love and care into a banal financial operation.
— Next. The banquet, — he continued, trying to keep his voice steady. — I picked out the ‘Versailles’ restaurant. A small hall for thirty people. We need to make a deposit and agree on the menu. — Excellent. Handle it. Give me the guest list. I’ll verify the headcount and per-person cost. We’ll also split the banquet bill in half. — Guests, — Igor came to the hardest item. — We have to call everyone. It’s the most tedious.
— Agreed. Give me the list.
He handed her the second sheet. Thirty-two names with phone numbers. She took a ruler and neatly divided the list in two. Exactly sixteen names each.
— These are your relatives, — she drew a line with her pen. — Aunt Vera, Uncle Misha, your cousins. You call them. These are our mutual friends and your mother’s colleagues. We split them evenly. Eight for you, eight for me. Deadline is the end of the week. In the end each of us provides a report: who confirmed, who didn’t.
Igor stared at the bisected sheet, feeling a quiet wave of madness rise in him. This wasn’t party prep. This was staff work before a military operation. Deadlines, reports, divided responsibility. He wanted to shout that you don’t do it like this, that Aunt Vera would be offended if Lena called with an official invitation instead of him. But he held his tongue. He accepted the rules of the game.
The next two weeks turned into a nightmare. Every step, every action passed through the filter of their “contract.” When Igor spent three hours calling his relatives and Lena finished her share in two, the next day she silently washed all the dishes, including his cup left in the sink, with the comment: “I’m compensating the one hour of your time spent on your relatives. We’re even again.” When he asked her to swing by the bakery after work to pick up the cake, she opened the map on her phone. — The bakery is a twenty-minute detour round trip. Plus five minutes of waiting. Total twenty-five minutes of my personal time. Tomorrow morning when you take out the trash, take my bag too. That will take you thirty seconds. The balance will be slightly against you, but I’m willing to make a concession.
Igor stood listening, feeling like he was going insane. She didn’t refuse. She agreed to everything—but each “yes” came hedged with so many conditions and counter-calculations that he felt not like a husband but like a debtor trying to take another microloan at a predatory rate. The celebration that should have brought joy became a constant source of stress. He no longer thought about his mother. He thought only about not breaking the balance, about not ending up owing his own wife. He woke and fell asleep with that damned spreadsheet in mind, the invisible hand that ruled their life.
The climax came the day before the jubilee. Everything was ready: the restaurant paid, the guests invited, the gift waiting. Only one detail remained. Igor bought a huge bouquet of his mother’s favorite peonies. He walked into the apartment and the sharp, sweet scent filled the entryway. It was the only thing he’d done off-list. The only impulsive, living gesture in all this dead preparation. Lena came out. She looked at the flowers, then at him.
— They’re beautiful. How much did they cost? I’ll transfer you half.
And that was the last straw.
— Can’t you just once—?! — he roared, his cry like a howl of pain. He hurled the bouquet to the floor. White and pink petals scattered down the hall. — Can’t you do anything without money, without a calculation?! These are flowers for my mother! This isn’t a line item!
He stood breathing hard, looking at her with hatred. He expected her to be frightened, to cry; but she looked back calmly, with a light, almost scientific curiosity.
— I don’t understand what you’re unhappy about, Igor. I’ve fulfilled every item in our agreement. I put in exactly fifty percent of the money and effort into organizing this celebration. I’m acting strictly within the system you yourself accepted.
— To hell with your system! — he kicked at the strewn flowers. — This isn’t life! It’s prison! I live under surveillance! Every step, every breath is logged in your ledger! You’re not a wife, you’re a warden!
He shouted, pouring out all the pain and humiliation of those weeks. He hoped to break her armor, to provoke some kind of emotion in return. Lena kept silent until he ran dry. Then she spoke quietly, each word cutting into him like a shard of glass.
— You call it prison. I call it transparency. You just don’t like that everything you used to get for free now has a price. Turns out your freedom and comfort were very expensive. It’s just that before, I alone was paying the bill.
The morning of the birthday was quiet. Not peacefully quiet, but the ringing emptiness of a room from which the furniture has just been removed. Igor stood before the mirror, mechanically tying his tie. The expensive suit he’d bought specially for the day felt like someone else’s costume on him. A faint, dying scent of peonies still lingered in the air, mixed with the smell of dust from the trampled petals he hadn’t bothered to sweep up in the hall. They lay there as a reminder of last night’s defeat—of the pointless outburst that broke against her icy calm.
He looked at his reflection. He tried to see a confident man, a son going to congratulate his mother on the main jubilee of her life. But the mirror showed a worn-out, beaten man with dead eyes. He made one last, desperate attempt. Not to negotiate, not to demand, but to appeal to what, he thought, could not have died completely.
He went into the room. Lena was sitting on the edge of the bed, fastening a boot. He immediately understood something was wrong. She wasn’t in an evening dress but in comfortable jeans and a travel sweater. Beside her stood a small wheeled suitcase. The kind you take for a short trip, carry-on.
— What’s this? — he asked, his voice sounding dull.
— I’m leaving.
— Where? Today is my mother’s jubilee. We’re supposed to be there in three hours.
He said it not as reproach but as a statement of fact from another, already non-existent reality. He still clung to a script he had written years ago.
— Lena, listen, — he came closer, crouched in front of her to look into her face. — I know things are bad. I get it. Let’s… let’s just put it aside for one evening. Put on masks, smile. For her. She doesn’t deserve to have her day ruined. We’ll go, congratulate her, and tomorrow… tomorrow we’ll decide what to do. Please.
It was his last plea. He wasn’t asking for forgiveness, but for a stay—just a few hours of the illusion that their family still existed.
Lena finished with the boot and looked up at him. There was no anger or pity in her eyes. Only a calm, final weariness.
— I don’t understand what you’re asking for, Igor. Our arrangements for the jubilee have been fulfilled in full. My financial share of the gift and the banquet has been paid. My time share in the organization as well. One hundred twenty thousand for the sanatorium package, forty-five thousand for the restaurant, and roughly ten hours of organizational work, which I have already offset with reciprocal actions. From the standpoint of our contract, I’ve completed my obligations. Project “Jubilee” is closed on my side.
Her words fell into the silence like stones. She spoke of what was sacred to him in the language of a manager closing a quarterly report. He looked at her as the full depth of the chasm between them slowly came into focus. She wasn’t just playing by the rules. She lived by them.
— But… your presence, — he whispered. — You have to be there.
— My presence is a separate, non-renewable resource. It wasn’t included in the estimate. And I’ve decided to invest it in another project.
She stood, went to the table, and opened the laptop—the same laptop that had become her weapon and his sentence. Igor flinched. He expected to see the Excel sheet again—some final report with a neat zero opposite his name. But the screen showed something else. Electronic tickets. Two. In her name and in her father’s, Nikolai Petrovich Sh. Flight to Mineralnye Vody. Departure in four hours. Below the tickets—a booking confirmation. A small, cozy sanatorium in Zheleznovodsk. With treatment, three meals a day, and a mountain view. Check-in starting today.
— Do you remember my first transfer? The one hundred eighty-two thousand? My father didn’t want to take it. He said he didn’t need money; he needed attention. So we agreed that the money would go toward something we do together, — she spoke in the same calm, almost indifferent tone. — And with the funds and time I’ve saved these last months by not taking part in your family’s life, I bought the second package and the tickets. My father has health to take care of as well. And he had a birthday too, not a round number, last week. We’ll just celebrate it now. Restore the balance, so to speak.
He stared at the screen, and the world blurred. This wasn’t just refusal. Not sabotage. It was a masterpiece of cruelty, executed with surgical precision. She wasn’t simply leaving him. She was taking everything—money, time, care—and demonstratively, on the most important day for him, investing it in her own family. She didn’t just zero the account. She transferred all assets to another—her own. The public humiliation he’d feared turned out to be only a prelude. The real humiliation was here, in this room—the realization that he was bankrupt in every sense of the word.
— You… destroyed everything, — he breathed, and there was no anger in his voice now, only emptiness. — You took our life, our family, and wiped it out.
He expected her to stay silent. But she answered. And her final words became the epitaph on the grave of their marriage.
— I didn’t destroy anything, Igor, — she looked him straight in the eyes, without a trace of emotion. — I simply presented you the bill. Turns out you’re insolvent.
Lena closed the laptop. The click of the latch sounded in the stillness like a gunshot. She picked up her small suitcase and, without looking back, left the room, then the apartment. The front door closed without a slam, with a quiet, final click.
Igor was left alone in the middle of the room. In an expensive suit. With the prepared gift and his rehearsed congratulatory speech. Dead peony petals lay scattered on the floor around him. And in his ears that last, killing word still echoed. Insolvent…