“Oleg, the payment is due tomorrow,” Vera’s voice was even, stripped of emotion — just a statement of fact, like reminding someone it would rain in the morning. She laid a neat stack of bills on the kitchen table. They landed next to his elbow like a silent reproach to his complete inaction.
He sat hunched over his phone, the bright screen casting cold, lifeless reflections across his face. His thumb lazily scrolled through an endless stream of short, meaningless videos. The sound was muted, but Vera could almost physically feel that torrent of other people’s shallow lives pouring into him every evening. She set two steaming cups of tea on the table, the bergamot aroma briefly masking the stale scent of their silent night.
“Half is yours,” she added, sitting down across from him.
Oleg lazily tore his gaze from the screen. He didn’t look at the bills. He didn’t look at her. His eyes, empty and slightly annoyed at being interrupted, drifted somewhere past her shoulder. Then a crooked smirk tugged at his lips, so smug that Vera felt a chill inside long before he uttered a word.
“And why would I?” he said lightly, almost cheerfully, as if responding to the dumbest joke in the world. “This apartment’s yours — you pay. What’s it got to do with me?”
The words didn’t hit the kitchen like a stone — more like dust. The fine, acrid dust that clogs the lungs and makes it hard to breathe. Vera froze, holding her hot cup. For one brief, deafening moment, her world shrank to his face, to that smug smirk and the gaze that held nothing — no anger, no hurt, not even the faintest interest. Just absolute, ironclad certainty in his own righteousness.
She looked at him as if seeing him for the first time. Not the husband she had lived with for five years. Not the man she had once loved. But a complete stranger, someone who had mistakenly ended up at her kitchen table and was now laying down the rules of life on his planet — a planet where he was the center of the universe, and everyone else merely the service staff.
He said his piece and sank back into his phone, considering the matter closed. To him it was an axiom needing no proof. He expected no argument, no resistance. He had simply stated what he believed was an obvious truth and returned to his cozy digital cocoon.
But Vera sat still. No rage boiled up inside her. No wave of hurt rose. Something else happened, something far more terrifying. With a deafening click, everything snapped into place. As if a harsh light had been switched on in a dark room, she saw it all: the shabby corners of their relationship, the web of lies she herself had spun to avoid the truth, and him — not a partner, not a support, but a dead, heavy weight she had been dragging along, convincing herself this was what family meant.
Slowly, with a strange new grace she didn’t recognize in herself, she set her cup on the table. The sound was faint, yet it made Oleg lift his eyes from his phone. The smirk hadn’t faded yet, but confusion flickered in his gaze. He sensed the shift in the air.
“You’re right,” her voice was calm, but a new metallic edge cut through it. She spoke slowly, stamping out each word. “This is my apartment.”
She paused, savoring his growing unease that slowly turned to dread. He didn’t understand where she was going, but like a predator sensing danger, he tensed.
“So get out of my apartment, since you won’t put in a single kopeck for shared expenses, darling. Or did you think this was some free hostel?”
“But—”
“You have one hour to find another place. The clock is ticking,” she cut him off.
The silence that followed didn’t last. It broke under his short, sharp laugh. Not laughter of amusement, but a dry, snapping sound of contempt, like a twig breaking. Oleg set his phone down with exaggerated slowness, as if granting her a favor. He leaned back in his chair, crossed his arms, and finally looked at her — really looked — like an entomologist inspecting a ridiculous little insect.
“Vera, Vera…” he drawled with condescending reproach, as if speaking to a spoiled child throwing a tantrum in a toy store. “Are you serious right now? Playing at drama, the strong and independent mistress of the house? Go on, this is almost cute.”
His smirk widened, flashing his neat white teeth. He was enjoying this, convinced her ultimatum was nothing more than a clumsy attempt at manipulation he would easily dismantle. Vera said nothing. She simply looked at him, her stillness and calm fueling his smugness even further. She denied him the tears, the shouting, the accusations he expected. That unnerved him, pushing him to raise the stakes.
“Let me explain something, since your memory’s failing,” he leaned forward, resting on his elbows, his voice dropping lower and harder. “Who fills that fridge every month? Not with buckwheat and pasta, but with the things you love — your yogurts, that stupid avocado, the fish I hate but buy because it’s ‘healthy.’ Who does that? The Holy Spirit?”
He didn’t wait for an answer — it was meant to humiliate.
“And who takes you out to restaurants when you ‘need to relax’? Who pays for taxis because you’re too lazy to take the subway after shopping? Those creams, serums, masks that cost half my salary — do they just materialize in the bathroom cabinet by magic? I don’t recall your grandmother leaving you a lifetime supply of cosmetics in her will.”
With every word, his confidence swelled. He painted himself as the provider, the generous patron showering her with comforts so she could live carefree. And she — ungrateful woman — dared demand money from him for something as trivial as utilities.
“I provide for this life. Completely. From the napkins on this table to the vacation we took last summer. I invest in you, in our home, in your good mood. And what do you give? Walls. Four walls you got for free. And you dare to bill me for them?”
His voice rang with righteous indignation. He truly believed it. To him, it was a fair trade: he gave life, she gave space for it.
Vera lifted her cup, took a slow sip. The hot tea burned her tongue — sharp, sobering. She set it back down without a sound. Her silence and composure pushed him over the edge.
“So drop the cheap tricks,” he hissed, losing the last of his fake calm. “I pay for life, you provide the roof. Fair deal. If you don’t like it, that’s your problem, not mine. Consider it rent — only not in money, but in food, fun, and your little luxuries. And believe me, that ‘rent’ is worth more than your square meters on the market. So sit back and be grateful you found such a fool. Now, if this play is over, I’ll get back to relaxing.”
“Fine,” Vera said into the silence. That one short, businesslike word hit louder than any scream. She didn’t argue his tirade. She didn’t defend herself. She accepted his rules. “Let’s calculate then. Since we’re talking in accounting terms.”
Oleg blinked in surprise. He had expected anything — a fight, reproaches, doors slamming — but not this icy, almost cheerful calm. He saw her, in his mind’s eye, putting on thick accountant glasses and opening a ledger of their shared life. Her gaze swept over the kitchen — but not at the walls. Through them. Into the past.
“This kitchen set,” she said flatly, nodding toward the glossy white cabinets. “I ordered it six months before you ever stepped foot in this apartment. Paid for it with money I saved from my salary. This oak table you’re sitting at was my grandmother’s, along with the chairs. The fridge you so proudly ‘stock with food’ — I bought it on sale two years before we met.”
Her words melted his smugness, slowly, like cheap margarine on a hot pan. He wanted to interrupt, but her tone was so detached, so factual, that anything he said would have sounded like a hysterical outburst.
“Let’s go on,” Vera continued like she was ticking items off a dull inventory. “The sofa in the living room, where you love to lounge with your phone — I bought it with my first bonus. The giant TV you treat like the center of the universe — mine. The coffee machine that makes your morning espresso — my birthday present to myself. When we met, the only things you brought here besides yourself were a toothbrush and a pair of socks.”
Her calm was more terrifying than any accusation. She wasn’t reproaching. She was dismantling him with facts, brick by brick, stripping away the foundation of his self-image.
“Now, about your ‘contributions,’” she went on, and a dangerous spark finally flashed in her eyes. “Groceries. Let’s be honest, Oleg. You buy what you eat. Your steaks, your weekend beer, your chips and sausage. Yes, I eat them sometimes. But my staples — grains, vegetables, cottage cheese — I buy myself on the way home from work. You don’t even notice. As for restaurants — you don’t take me out, you take yourself. I just happen to be there. You like playing the big man, paying the bill. That’s your leisure, not mine. I’m perfectly fine eating at home.”
His confidence cracked. The ground beneath him shifted. His carefully built identity as a generous provider crumbled before his eyes.
“And about my creams and ‘little luxuries’…” Vera made the final, cleanest cut. “Darling, the money for them comes from an account you don’t even know exists. Where my freelance translation fees go. I work from home, remember? While you watch your videos, I’m translating technical manuals and legal contracts. And I earn enough not only for my cosmetics but to cover those bills. Every last one of them.”
She stopped. Audit complete. The world he had so pompously painted was erased. In its place yawned emptiness, with him at the center — a man who truly believed buying groceries for himself was a great act of generosity. His confusion gave way to anger — dull, impotent anger at being exposed in his petty fraud.
“So, as you see,” Vera concluded with icy calm, “your ‘rent’ isn’t paying for my life. It’s just covering your own expenses — on food, entertainment, and your illusion of importance. You’re simply paying for yourself while living at my address. And this grand show of generosity ends tonight. You now have forty minutes left.”
The silence in the kitchen thickened, heavy like congealed fat. Oleg’s face flushed dark red, jaw clenched, muscles twitching. His breath rasped, and when he spoke, his voice was hoarse, dripping venom.
“Oh, I see now… The accountant wakes up,” he spat, pouring all his hatred into the word. “So you’ve been sitting there all this time, tallying every spoon, every cup, every kopeck? And I, fool that I am, thought we were a family, living together. Turns out you’ve just been renting me a bed space, by the hour, huh?”
He shoved back his chair with a screech and loomed over her, trying to crush her with his bulk. But Vera didn’t flinch. She sat tall, her gaze cold and detached, watching him like one watches a boil burst.
“You’re impossible to live with! You’re not a woman — you’re a calculator!” his voice cracked into a hoarse, impotent scream. “I tried to bring warmth, comfort, a normal life! I dragged in the best things I could so you’d smile, so we’d live like people! And all this time you were balancing the books!”
He raged around the small kitchen like a caged beast, flailing his arms, pointing to the living room, the bathroom, at her. He spewed years of resentment, wounded pride, the gnawing sense he lived in someone else’s life, someone else’s space. Now he had a scapegoat. Her. Cold, calculating, ungrateful.
“Any decent man would’ve run from you in a month! From a frigid block of ice who values her grandmother’s old table more than the living person beside her! You don’t want a husband, Vera. You want a tenant — obedient, punctual with rent, and not leaving dirty dishes!”
He stopped, panting, spent. He had fired every shot. Waiting. Waiting for her to explode, to scream, to fight back — something that would reset the cycle of quarrel and reconciliation.
But Vera was silent. She listened to him like one listens to the weather report on the radio — without weight, without meaning. His words were just noise, echoes of a life that had ended an hour ago. She rose slowly, deliberately, no wasted motion.
She walked to the table, took his teacup, still warm. Carried it to the sink, poured out the dregs. Water gushed, the only sound in the dead silence. She washed the cup carefully, rinsed it, placed it in the rack. Not just washing dishes — erasing the last physical trace of him from her kitchen.
Oleg watched, his anger giving way to something colder, stickier: fear. He suddenly understood. This wasn’t another fight. Not a game. This was the end. A verdict carried out without words.
Vera turned off the water, dried her hands on a towel. Then, just as silently, she left the kitchen. He heard her in the hallway, taking something from the coat rack. Seconds later, she returned, holding his jacket. The dark autumn jacket he wore every morning.
She didn’t throw it at him. She didn’t drop it on the floor. She simply stepped closer and held it out. Her face was expressionless. Her eyes looked through him. The gesture was more terrifying than any curse. It was final, irrevocable, humiliating in its simplicity. It meant: You don’t live here anymore. Your time is up. Leave.