“— You keep giving me all sorts of nonsense, so I decided to give you this piece of trash! I spent exactly as much on it as you did on the gift you gave me, which is now just dead weight!”
Lera said it in an even, almost matter-of-fact tone, watching Roma turn a thin cardboard rectangle over in his hands. It was a gift certificate for five hundred rubles to a hobby store. The sum would barely cover a skein of cheap yarn or a pack of the most basic fishing hooks. On his face—lit a moment ago with festive anticipation—bewilderment slowly surfaced and turned into a flush of hurt. On the table between them sat a cake with a single candle; its flame wavered lazily, casting quivering shadows across their faces.
“What?” he asked again, as if he hadn’t heard. His voice was dull. “What dead weight? A yogurt maker is a great thing!”
“Absolutely,” Lera nodded with the detachment of a pathologist. “Especially for someone who’s lactose-intolerant. I’ve told you that about twenty times. It’s been sitting in its box on the top shelf since my birthday. You bought it because it was seventy percent off at that stupid shop near your work. You spent five minutes and pocket change on it just to tick a box. This certificate cost me five hundred rubles and three minutes in the checkout line. I figured that’s an even more generous investment of time and effort than yours.”
Roma flung the certificate onto the table. The cardboard bounced off a cream rose on the cake and fell to the floor.
“Have you lost your mind? Making a circus out of a gift? I’m a man, I earn the money; I don’t run around shops hunting for some special trinket for you! I bought something useful for the household!”
“You bought something for yourself,” she cut him off. “You thought making yogurt would be cool. Just like that stupid waffle iron the year before, or the fondue set. Do you remember what I gave you last birthday? That spinning rod you saw in the magazine and circled with a pen? I searched for it for three weeks all over the city. I read fishing forums to pick the right reel. I wanted you to be happy. And you… you just buy me off with cheap junk grabbed at the last minute.”
He stood up, looming over the table. His jaw clenched so hard the muscles in his cheeks bulged.
“Mercenary bitch. You don’t care about the gift, just the price tag! I always knew money was all that mattered to you!”
That evening, when the untouched cake still sat forlornly on the kitchen table and the atmosphere in the apartment had grown dense and wavering like bog fog, Lera approached him with a laptop. Roma was sitting on the sofa, staring at the dark TV screen. She sat down beside him without a word and turned the screen toward him. An Excel spreadsheet glowed on it.
“Look,” her voice had no warmth at all; it sounded like the clatter of a printer. “I decided to bring clarity to our relationship to avoid future disappointments and inefficient resource allocation. I call it ‘Gift Parity.’”
The table was simple and deadly in its logic. Four columns: “Roma’s Gift to Lera,” “Budget/Effort (10-point scale),” “Lera’s Gift to Roma,” “Budget/Effort (symmetric response).” The first row read: “Yogurt maker, 550 rub. / 1 point.” In the response cell: “Certificate, 500 rub. / 1 point.” Below were examples. “Gas-station token bouquet on March 8” equaled “Shaving foam and socks on Feb 23.” She ran her finger across the screen.
“Right here,” she pointed to an empty row, “will be my next birthday. If you show imagination, spend time and money, then in this cell”—her finger slid to the right—”you’ll see your expensive spinning rod or something similar. If it’s another discounted toaster, then on your birthday you’ll get a screwdriver set from the hardware store. It’s simple. No resentment, no drama. Pure math. Our mutual joy will now be perfectly symmetrical.”
Roma looked at the screen for a long time. His face turned into a stone mask. He didn’t shout. He just looked at her with eyes full of icy contempt.
“This isn’t math. It’s madness. You’ve turned a family into accounting.”
Roma accepted the rules of the game—but interpreted them with a twisted, vengeful logic. If she wanted to turn their marriage into a monetary transaction, then he would become the most unyielding, by-the-book counterparty. He decided the best way to show the absurdity of her system was to push it to its logical zero. He stopped giving her anything. At all. Completely.
Their apartment turned into an Arctic station where two polar explorers hated each other to death. They drank their morning coffee in deafening silence, avoiding each other’s eyes. He ostentatiously made himself a single-serving omelet, she just as ostentatiously brewed oatmeal for herself, and they ate at opposite ends of the table like two strangers in a cheap cafeteria. In the evenings he buried himself in his phone or played some action movie loudly on his laptop; she, wearing headphones, worked or read in her armchair, which had become her personal, impregnable bastion.
Words, when spoken at all, were bled dry and purely functional, like commands to a robot: “Pass the salt,” “It’s your turn to take out the trash.” Any attempt at small talk slammed into a soundproof wall. He answered in monosyllables, through clenched teeth, without lifting his eyes from the screen. He punished her with silence, depriving her of what she valued most—emotional connection. He expected she wouldn’t withstand this vacuum, this emptiness, and would cancel her idiotic rules herself.
The first test of the system was Defender of the Fatherland Day, February 23. Roma woke with a smirk of anticipation. He knew he would get nothing. That was precisely the plan—to show her how stupid it looked from the outside. He walked into the kitchen where Lera was already drinking her coffee. He stopped in the doorway, arms crossed over his chest, and deliberately scanned the table. Nothing. No gift bag, not even a card.
“So, I didn’t even earn socks this year?” his voice dripped sarcasm.
Lera slowly raised her eyes to him. There was no hurt or anger in her gaze. Only a cold, analytical interest.
“Merit must be demonstrated in action. Or rather, by the presence of it. Open the file; it’s all obvious. An empty cell in your column generates an empty cell in mine. I didn’t invent it—it’s the basis of any system. Balance.”
She turned away and took another sip, as if discussing a quarterly report rather than their relationship. Roma shuddered. He’d expected anything—reproaches, a fight, an attempt to shame him. But this icy, soulless statement of fact was worse than any scandal. She wasn’t playing his game; she was simply following protocol. He didn’t feel like a husband but a lab rabbit in her cruel social experiment.
The months dragged like viscous tar. Their wedding anniversary passed, which he deliberately ignored. No flowers, no dinner, no kind word. He came home late, walked silently to the bedroom, and went to sleep. Lera didn’t react. She merely made some note in her laptop. It made his teeth grind. His passive aggression, his silent strike weren’t working. She didn’t break. With a cold, perverse satisfaction she watched her correctness confirmed by his every step. He himself, with his own hands, proved that her feelings, her desires, her holidays meant nothing to him.
He expected her to beg, to ask to end the charade, to admit she’d been wrong. But she waited for his next move so she could coolly enter it into her table. The war of attrition had just begun, and he was sure he had the endurance to win. Her birthday was approaching, and Roma was already preparing his main, crushing blow—absolute, total Nothing.
The air in the apartment thickened to the consistency of jelly, gumming up words, thoughts, even glances. Silence ceased to be the mere absence of sound; it became a material, oppressive substance. They moved around the apartment like two ghosts condemned to share the same space forever, their paths honed by years to minimize accidental contact. Roma left earlier, returned later, and all the time in between was filled with a ringing, hostile nothing. His plan was working, he thought. He was starving her, keeping her on a diet of complete emotional neglect.
Lera’s birthday drew near. For Roma it wasn’t just another day on the calendar. It was D-Day—the hour of reckoning, the moment of his triumph. He intended to present her with the ultimate gift conceivable within her own system—blatant, demonstrative emptiness. He wanted her to fully taste her own medicine.
On the morning of her birthday, Lera woke earlier than usual. Deep in her methodical, calculating mind, a tiny irrational worm of hope stirred. Barely noticeable, but there. What if he breaks the system? What if something human wakes in him, something stronger than resentment and stubbornness? Maybe he’ll just leave a chocolate on her pillow or say two simple words. That would be enough to blast her spreadsheet to hell, and she would gladly delete the file forever.
Roma walked into the kitchen, ostentatiously humming some jingle from an ad under his breath. He opened the fridge, took out eggs and bacon, and banged the skillet loudly on the stove. He didn’t look at her once. The oil sizzled; the apartment filled with the appetizing smell of a breakfast made for him alone. He wasn’t acting like a man who’d forgotten. He was acting like a man who remembered very well and was taking sadistic pleasure in it. The worm of hope inside Lera died before it really came to life. She silently finished her coffee, got up, and went to the bedroom.
That evening he came home from work with the air of someone for whom this was just another Tuesday. He tossed his keys on the stand, walked into the living room, flopped onto the sofa, and turned on the TV. Lera sat in her armchair with the laptop on her knees. She waited. She’d given him this chance. He hadn’t taken it.
She silently turned the laptop toward him. He flicked an irritated glance at the screen and stared back at the TV.
“I don’t have time for your charts, I’m tired.”
“It will take one second,” her voice was calm, but in that calm was the chill of metal.
Slowly, with surgical precision, she placed the cursor in the cell opposite the label “Lera’s Birthday.” There, in the column “Roma’s Gift to Lera,” she entered a single character. A large, bold, uncompromising “0.” Then she moved the cursor to the neighboring “Budget/Effort” cell and typed the same. Zero. The cursor blinked on the screen, lighting his frozen face.
“There,” she said. “Balance drawn. Account zeroed. Now everything is fair, just as you wanted.”
And then he snapped. He jumped up, his face contorted with rage.
“You’re sick! Completely sick in the head with your bookkeeping! You killed everything alive between us with your tables and zeros! You wanted a system—you got one! What did you expect, flowers? Fireworks? They weren’t in the budget approved by your own idiotic regulations!”
Lera slowly closed the laptop lid. The click was deafening in the sudden silence. She looked up at him, and now there was neither cold nor calculation in her eyes. They blazed with a pure, white fire of contempt.
“You’re so predictable, Roma. You still think it’s about gifts. It’s not about the gift. It’s about the fact you didn’t forget. You remembered. Every hour of this day you remembered and relished hurting me. You wanted to punish me, humiliate me, show who’s boss. You didn’t want fairness. You wanted cruelty. And you know what? You succeeded. Only you weren’t punishing me. You were signing your own sentence. You proved there’s nothing inside you. An absolute zero. Just like in my table.”
Several weeks passed after Lera’s birthday. The zero she had so demonstratively entered into their shared table became not just a symbol but the state of their life together. They breathed it, ate it for breakfast, and covered themselves with it at night. It was a viscous, all-consuming emptiness, devoid even of a hint of conflict. The war had shifted into a phase of total mutual disregard, more frightening than any shouting.
The day came that had always been Roma’s second birthday. Five years earlier, risking everything, he’d quit his job and started a small construction company. This date symbolized his success, his masculine pride, proof that he wasn’t just office plankton but a man who built something from scratch. That evening he sat on the sofa, mindlessly flipping channels. He wasn’t expecting congratulations. After what he’d done to Lera, expecting anything would be the height of idiocy. And yet, somewhere deep down where stubbornness bordered on self-deception, he wanted her to at least acknowledge the fact. For his great life achievement not to sink into this domestic quicksand.
Lera walked into the room. She moved with an unnatural, deliberate grace, like an actress preparing for the final act. In her hands was a box—small, square, wrapped in expensive matte graphite paper. It looked stylish and pricey. Only a cheap, neon-green plastic ribbon, clumsily tied on top, introduced a note of absurdity.
“This is for you,” she said, her voice flat and lifeless, like a newscaster reading the weather. She held out the box.
Roma froze. He looked from her to the box, unable to process what was happening. It was a glitch in the program, a failure in her flawless system. He took the box slowly. It was almost weightless. His heart skipped—maybe tickets to somewhere? Or some document? Distrustful, he tugged the tacky ribbon, lifted the lid. Inside there was nothing. Absolutely nothing. Just the air of their damned apartment.
“Zero, remember?” Lera stepped closer and stood facing him, looking down at him. “Here it is. Your symmetrical response. Emptiness for emptiness. The gift you deserve. You think you built something important? That company of yours? You think it makes you significant? You’re wrong. You’re an emotional bankrupt, Roma. A man incapable of the most elementary investment in the person beside him. You can build houses, but you can’t build even the semblance of a human relationship. Your achievements are worthless because inside you is the same vacuum as in this box. You are that zero.”
She said it quietly, but every word stabbed him like a red-hot needle. This wasn’t a quarrel. It was an execution. Methodically, word by word, she dismantled the only thing he had left—his self-respect.
Roma stared into the empty box for a long time. Then he slowly raised his head and laughed. It was a horrible, rasping laugh with not a drop of joy in it.
“Bankrupt? No, Lera. A bankrupt is someone who tried and lost. At least I tried. I built. And what did you build? Your perfect spreadsheet? Your little one-man concentration camp where you’re the guard and the judge? You think your system is a sign of intelligence and strength? No. It’s a sign of cowardice. You’re afraid to live, to feel, to take risks. You hid behind your numbers and cells because that’s the only world you can control. You’re not an analyst. You’re a miserable bookkeeper of grievances. All your life you’ve done nothing but tally other people’s investments, assign points, and draw up balances. And what have you invested yourself? What have you created besides that table? Nothing. Zero—that’s you. An absolute, sterile, lifeless zero that’s afraid to get its hands dirty with real life. So take your gift back. It’s your mirror.”
He hurled the empty box at her feet. She didn’t flinch. They stood in the middle of the room like two boxers after the final bell, both knocked out yet still on their feet. Everything had been said. Everything that could be destroyed had been turned to ash. Between them there was no longer love, or hatred, or resentment. Only scorched earth on which nothing would ever grow again. They continued living in the same apartment like two ghosts among the ruins of their own world, and every day was a silent confirmation of that final, definitive account they had presented to each other…