We had been married three years, our love seemingly unshaken, when one evening my husband looked at me with unusual seriousness and said: “I want to sleep in a separate room for a while…”

His words felt like thunder splitting the sky. My heart dropped. For a wife, hearing such a request is like being stabbed without warning. I pleaded, I shouted, I wept—but no matter what I said, he remained firm, distant, unmovable.

In the end, powerless, I agreed. Yet inside me, storms raged. My mind spun with questions I didn’t dare voice. “Has he fallen for someone else? Am I no longer enough? Or has our marriage already rotted without me noticing?”

Nights grew long and cruel. I lay awake staring at the ceiling, my thoughts gnawing at me until I felt hollow inside.

Finally, driven by desperation, I did something reckless. One evening, while he was away, I hired a worker to carve the tiniest hole into the corner of his bedroom wall. My hands shook as I covered it up, waiting for nightfall, my heart a drumbeat of dread.

The next night, trembling, I pressed my eye against that secret hole.