The ten-year mark was a different country.
They were no longer in the small apartment. Karlman's new company had taken off. Eunice was a partner in her own, small, shark-like consulting firm. They had a house now, a minimalist, glass-walled structure on a hill, overlooking the city that had once cast them out. They had won. They had proven every hater, every family member, every ex-friend wrong. They were a self-made dynasty of two.
And they were miserable.
The tenth year was the year the "quiet" became a "silence." It was the year "it'll happen" became "it's not happening." It was the year their "A-type" personalities, the very engines of their success, turned on them.
Because this was the one project they couldn't complete. This was the one goal they couldn't achieve. And for "A-types," a problem that cannot be solved by work ethic, strategy, or sheer force of will is not a problem. It's a personal failing.
The failure settled into their marriage like a fine, corrosive dust. It was in everything.
Intimacy, once their defiant refuge, became a chore. It was a scheduled, joyless task, timed to an ovulation app on Eunice's phone. There was no passion, only performance.
"Now?" Karlman would ask, his voice tired. He'd been coding for 16 hours.
"Now," Eunice would say from the bedroom, her voice flat. "The app says now."
They were no longer making love. They were attempting a merger. And it kept failing.
The failure had a voice. It was Eunice's.
"You were late," she said, not looking at him. They were at their vast, empty dining table. She was staring at a spreadsheet on her laptop. It wasn't a work project. It was her basal body temperature chart. The line had just dropped.
"What?" Karlman was scrolling through market data on his phone.
"You were late. Last night. From the meeting. By... 45 minutes."
He looked up, confused. "It was the server migration, Eunice. It couldn't be helped. We... we still... you know..."
"It was the peak window, Karlman," she said, her voice a low, hissing thing. "The window was between 8 p.m. and midnight. You got home at 8:45. You ate. You showered. You were 'too tired.' By the time we... tried... it was 10:30. The window was closing."
Karlman put his phone down. The blood drained from his face. "Are you... are you auditing this? Are you blaming me for a 45-minute delay in a server migration?"
"I'm blaming you for not prioritizing!" she snapped, slamming her laptop shut. "I am sick of being the only one who cares. I'm the one taking my temperature every morning before I even breathe. I'm the one who hasn't had a cup of real coffee in three years. I'm the one peeing on a stick every day. All you have to do is show up! And you can't even do that!"
"That's not fair!" he shouted, standing up. The first time he'd raised his voice in years. "I'm the one who has to perform on command! You think that's easy? You think it feels good to be looked at like I'm just... a 'delivery mechanism'?"
"I don't care how it feels, Karlman! I care about the result!"
There it was. The "A-type" creed.
He stared at her. The woman he had defied the world for. "That's what this is to you. A 'result.' A 'project.' It's not a baby, Eunice. It's a 'deliverable' you're failing to get. And now you're blaming your partner."
"It's the one thing they said we couldn't have," she whispered, the rage collapsing into a terrible, hollow sadness. "It's the one thing that would prove them wrong. That we're not... cursed."
"Eunice," he said, his own anger fading, "we're not cursed. We're just... unlucky."
"I'm 37," she said, looking out the glass wall at the city lights. "Luck has run out. Call Dr. Aris. It's time."