1. The Announcement

The key turned in the lock with its usual squeak, and Lena, who was sitting in the living room untangling a pile of yarn that her cat had vandalized, didn’t even look up.
Her husband’s voice burst into the apartment like a winter draft.

“Lena! We need to have a serious talk!”

Something in the tone made her freeze, hands still midair, holding a stubborn knot of blue thread.
It wasn’t just the words—it was the way they crashed out of him. Urgent, trembling, the kind of tone that promises trouble.

Before she could turn around, he added, almost shouting, his voice now trembling not with anger, but with something feverish and ecstatic:

“I’m in love!”

He said it so fast, so suddenly, that the words seemed to ricochet off the walls before finally lodging somewhere in Lena’s chest.

She blinked. Once. Twice.
Then she took in the sight of him—still in his heavy coat, boots covered in slush, the earflaps of his hat slightly askew, eyes wide as two moons—and her first thought was:

“Well. So it’s happened. The midlife crisis. It’s come knocking on our door, suitcase in hand. Hello there, old friend.”

But she didn’t say that out loud. She simply folded her hands in her lap, looked at him carefully, and—for the first time in years—really looked.

She hadn’t done that in… five, maybe six years? No—probably eight.
It startled her a little to realize that.

2. Rewinding Twelve Years

They say your whole life flashes before your eyes before you die.
Well, Lena’s whole married life began to flash before hers.

They’d met online, which in those days was considered either brave or pathetic, depending on who you asked.
She’d shaved three years off her age in her profile—thirty-three sounded more marketable than thirty-six.
He, ever practical, added three centimeters to his height.
That’s how they barely squeezed into each other’s search criteria—and thus, fate in its digital disguise did its work.

Lena no longer remembered who messaged whom first.
But she remembered his first message: no vulgar jokes, no “hey beautiful.” Just a few clumsy but intelligent sentences and a streak of self-irony that instantly disarmed her.

At thirty-three (technically), Lena was not delusional about her place on the romantic stock exchange.
She wasn’t on the bargain shelf yet, but she knew she was in the second-to-last row.
So she decided to prepare. For the first date, she armed herself like a soldier:
A polite smile, ears perked, rose-tinted glasses, and under her coat—a matching set of lace lingerie that gave her confidence.
For good measure, she slipped a bag of homemade cookies and a volume of Turgenev into her purse. Just in case the conversation needed a prop.

The date went—shockingly—well.
Words flowed. Laughter came easily. By dessert, she’d stopped pretending to be fascinated and was fascinated.
By month six, after countless coffee dates, Sunday walks, and mutual parental nagging (“When will we get grandchildren before we die?”), he proposed.

The wedding was small and fast—just parents, a few friends, and two slightly nervous newlyweds who kept waiting for someone to change their mind.

They moved into a small apartment with brown furniture from his bachelor years and a few pink decorative touches from hers.
Their first months together were like warm tea—nothing fiery, but steady, soothing.

To Lena, it seemed like happiness.
“After all,” she’d thought then, “life doesn’t have to be a fairy tale. Sometimes it’s just… comfortable slippers.”

3. Marriage Without the Masks

Her husband, like most men, quickly shed his courtship camouflage.
The tender, poetic teetotaler who could talk about “the music of silence” transformed within weeks into a practical man in stretched sweatpants, snoring gently on the couch after work.

Lena, of course, was not far behind.
Her own performance—the quiet, clever, ever-patient homemaker who quoted Tolstoy while baking—began to crumble even faster once she found herself pregnant within months.

By the time their second baby arrived, the “perfect couple” masks had been tossed away like wrapping paper.
She traded silk robes for a housecoat, he traded cologne for the smell of motor oil.

And somehow, that was love.
Not movie love—real, sticky, sleepless, burnt-soup, lullaby love.
They argued, they made up, they forgot anniversaries, they laughed at absurd things, and through it all—never once did either leave.

Lena thought: “If this isn’t happiness, what is?”

4. The Steady Years

Time blurred.
The kids grew; grandparents hovered with casseroles and unsolicited advice.
Both Lena and her husband climbed their small, steady career ladders—slowly but surely.

They traveled a little, bought a decent car, had hobbies that didn’t annoy each other.
Their life was—by all measurable standards—fine.

Not grand. Not tragic. Just fine.

And in twelve years of marriage, Lena had never once caught him cheating.
He wasn’t even the type to flirt clumsily at an office party.
She sometimes imagined what that might even look like, and it made her laugh—because the man’s idea of “flirting” was… well, complicated.

You see, early on, after a few disastrous attempts to compliment her (“You look almost like my mother in that dress”), he’d decided that words weren’t his strength.

Instead, he developed his own system: the Tarsier Look.

When he found her attractive—or shocked, or confused, or impressed—his eyes would pop wide open.
At first, Lena had found it hilarious. Then, oddly endearing.
After a decade, she could read his moods entirely by the level of ocular expansion:

Round 1: Mild interest.
Round 2: Moderate admiration.
Round 3: Bewildered confusion.
Round 4: Existential terror.

It was an efficient, wordless language between them.

5. The Revelation

And now—those same eyes were rounder than she had ever seen them.
It was almost comical, if not for the icy twinge creeping down her spine.

He stood in the hallway, snow melting off his boots, hands twitching at his sides.
“I’m in love!” he repeated, as if afraid she hadn’t heard.

Lena’s throat went dry.
Still, she managed a brittle smile and said, almost teasingly,
“So… what’s her name? The rat?”

He froze. Then his eyes, impossibly, grew wider.
He patted his pockets, jacket, muttering, “What—what?! How did you… how could you possibly know?”

And then, with the reverence of a magician revealing his trick, he pulled something from inside his coat.

A small, gray creature peeked out—soft fur, translucent pink ears, twitching whiskers, tiny black eyes glimmering like polished beads.

Lena blinked once, twice.

“Yes, Lena!” he burst out. “You understand? I couldn’t just walk by her cage! I was blown away when I saw her. Look at her—so soft, so beautiful, so gentle… she even looks like you!”

He beamed. The rat sniffed the air.

And Lena—Lena didn’t hear a word after that.

She just stared at her husband, at the little pink-eared creature he cradled as tenderly as their first child, at the ridiculous tenderness in his face—and something inside her cracked open, releasing not anger, not jealousy, but laughter.

A helpless, bubbling laughter that spilled out of her chest and echoed through the hallway.

Because it was so absurd, so perfectly, tragically them.

He had, in fact, fallen in love.
Just not with another woman.

With a rat.
A fluffy, pink-nosed rat who looked, as he’d proudly declared, just like her.

6. The Quiet After

That evening, after the excitement had calmed and the new “family member” had been installed in a spotless cage by the window, Lena sat in the kitchen, sipping tea and watching her husband feed the rat sunflower seeds with a goofy grin.

And for the first time in a long time, she really looked at him again—not as the man of her youth, not as the father of her children, but as this endearingly odd, loyal creature who had spent twelve years beside her without once breaking her trust.

He was ridiculous.
He was hers.

And the rat, apparently, was too.