My husband was an associate professor in the university’s mathematics department. He despised video games with a burning passion. Just last month, he physically cut our home’s internet cable because he caught our son playing a round of a mobile battle arena. Yet, while waiting for the clock to strike midnight on New Year’s Eve, I picked up the iPad he used for lesson planning. Sitting right there on the home screen was the max level icon for Sweet Crush, a colorful match three puzzle game. The account, operating under the username The Absolute Variable, had not only cleared every single stage with a perfect three star rating. At three in the morning, it had also gifted ninety nine energy refills to the top player on the leaderboard, a girl going by the name SweetStrawberry. I clicked on SweetStrawberry’s profile. She was a graduate student my husband was mentoring. Her latest status update read: “Professor says when you can’t solve a problem, just play Sweet Crush. He is my permanent max level cheat code.” I stared at that shiny max level badge and smiled. I took screenshots of her status, the game’s gifting leaderboard, and a very serious, professional headshot of my husband. I printed them all out. The next morning, a colorful photo report titled “On Associate Professor Arthur’s Extracurricular Tutoring” quietly appeared in the dead center of the math department’s main faculty bulletin board. 1 I was methodically spreading strawberry jam on a piece of toast when the department chair called. Arthur picked up his phone. His usually ruddy complexion instantly drained to a sickening pale gray. He mumbled a few frantic agreements, dropped the phone, and sprinted out the front door in his house slippers, completely forgetting his winter coat. I took a bite of my toast. The strawberry jam was cloyingly sweet. Right about now, that crisp sheet of printer paper displaying his max level gaming account and his inappropriate midnight flirting was likely the center of attention in the faculty lounge. At noon, the front door violently crashed open. Arthur stormed inside, hyperventilating with rage. His fist was clenched tight around a crumpled, torn piece of printer paper. “Evelyn! Have you completely lost your mind?!” He slammed the balled up paper onto the dining table so hard the soup bowls rattled. I calmly ladled a bowl of chicken broth for him, keeping my voice perfectly level. “What is wrong? Why are you throwing a tantrum?” “You have the nerve to ask me what is wrong?” Arthur pointed a trembling finger right at my nose. “Did you post this? Are you going through early menopause? Has your brain finally rotted? You cannot just plaster this garbage on campus!” I put down the ladle and met his bloodshot eyes. “The username and the profile picture on that paper. Are they not yours?” Arthur choked on his words. His eyes darted away for a fraction of a second before he overcompensated, cranking his volume even higher. “I was hacked! It is photoshopped! Someone is jealous that I am up for full tenure this semester, so they are trying to destroy my reputation!” He ripped his tie off, pacing the living room like a caged animal. “Do you have any idea how many people are laughing at me right now? The Dean called me into his office! My entire academic career was almost ruined because of you!” I let out a cold, sharp laugh. “Where there is smoke, there is fire.” “Shut your mouth!” Arthur exploded, kicking a metal trash can across the room. “I break my back doing serious academic research to provide for this family, and you drag me down? Evelyn, you are a massive disappointment.” The commotion drew our son, Tom, out of his bedroom. He stood in the hallway, looking small and terrified. “Dad?” Arthur snapped his head toward the boy, finding an easy target. He lunged forward and grabbed Tom by the arm. “Was it you? Did you steal my iPad to play your stupid games and accidentally post this garbage?” Tom burst into tears, shrinking away. “I didn’t! Dad, I swear I didn’t!” “Don’t lie to me! Who else in this house plays these brain dead games?” Arthur raised his hand, ready to strike. I shoved my chair back, darting forward to shield my son. I pushed Arthur away with a heavy shove to his chest. “Arthur, stop acting like a lunatic and taking it out on a child! Those records were logged at three in the morning. Tom was fast asleep!” Arthur stumbled back, smoothed down his wrinkled collar, and glared at me with absolute ice. “If it wasn’t Tom, then it was a targeted cyber attack.” He walked over and sank into the leather sofa, instantly resuming his arrogant, professorial posture. “Evelyn, you used to be a Chief Data Officer in the tech industry. This level of technical troubleshooting should be easy for you.” I stared at him, genuinely stunned by the sheer thickness of his skin. “What exactly do you want me to do?” “I need you to write a comprehensive forensic data report proving my account was maliciously compromised. Make sure the IP address traces back to an overseas server.” He issued the command as if ordering a coffee. “Draft a public statement too. Use as much complex technical jargon as possible to confuse the old dinosaurs on the tenure committee.” I looked at the man I had shared a bed with for seven years. A wave of pure nausea washed over me. He wasn’t just cheating. He was trying to use the wife he betrayed as a shield to scrub his reputation clean. 2 “And what if I refuse?” I asked. Arthur narrowed his eyes, a heavy threat lacing his words. “Evelyn, we are a financial unit. If I don’t get tenure, my salary stagnates. How exactly do you plan on paying for Tom’s private prep school and his math tutors?” He stood up, walking over to place a heavy hand on my shoulder, forcing his voice into a softer, sickeningly sweet register. “Honey, I know being a stay at home mom is stressful and makes you overthink things. But this really is a massive misunderstanding. Just help me get through this disciplinary hearing, and I promise I will hand my entire paycheck over to you from now on.” I looked at his hypocritical face, swallowing the bile rising in my throat. I took a deep breath and lowered my head, playing the part. “Fine. I will write it. But this is the last time. And from now on, I get open access to all your electronics.” A gleam of triumph flashed in Arthur’s eyes. He instantly switched to a beaming smile. “Not a problem at all. A clear conscience fears no accusations. You are the best wife a man could ask for.” He hummed a cheerful little tune as he walked into the master bathroom. The moment I heard the shower running, I grabbed the iPad he had left on the coffee table. My fingers flew across the screen, inputting a string of bypass commands. Within seconds, a hidden, encrypted photo vault materialized. The folder was innocently named “Supplementary Coursework.” When I tapped it open, the blood in my veins turned to ice. The gallery was flooded with pictures of Allie, his graduate student, wearing an array of highly revealing cosplay outfits. Every single photo was captioned with a game level milestone. “Level 100 Clear Reward: Black lace.” “Level 300 Clear Reward: Call me Daddy.” “Level 500 Clear Reward: All night private tutoring at the Marriott.” The most recent photo was taken yesterday at dawn. Allie was wearing a string bikini that left absolutely nothing to the imagination. Around her neck hung a blue lanyard. It was Arthur’s university faculty ID. The caption read: “Professor, this level is too hard. I want to solve it with my body.” My hands turned freezing cold. I stared dead eyed at the glowing screen. The shower water turned off. I rapidly exited the vault, wiped the access logs, and placed the iPad exactly where I found it. Arthur walked out drying his hair with a towel. He saw me sitting at my laptop typing lines of code and nodded approvingly. “That is the spirit. Husband and wife tackling problems together.” I stared at the “Forged IP Routing Map” generating on my screen, a razor sharp smirk curving my lips. The next day, Arthur took the fabricated forensic report I wrote to the university. It worked like a charm. Armed with pages of dense, impenetrable cybersecurity jargon, he successfully completely bewildered the disciplinary committee. He even managed to subtly point the finger at a rival professor. That evening, he walked through the front door with a girl trailing behind him. She wore a pure white sundress, her long hair falling perfectly over her shoulders. It was Allie. The SweetStrawberry. “Good evening, Mrs. Shen!” Allie’s voice dripped with artificial sweetness. She bowed deeply the moment she stepped inside, making sure the plunging neckline of her dress was on full display. I stood holding a silicone spatula, watching the performance with dead eyes. Arthur kicked off his shoes and offered a smooth explanation. “Allie’s thesis is bottlenecked on the final data model. I brought her over to use the high performance desktop in the study to run the numbers.” “You could have given me a heads up. I didn’t prep enough dinner for guests.” Allie immediately put on the face of a kicked puppy, biting her lower lip as she looked up at Arthur. “Professor, maybe I should just go back to the dorms. I don’t want to inconvenience your wife.” Arthur instantly scowled. “Don’t be ridiculous. Academic research waits for no one. Evelyn, go cut up some fruit and cook two more dishes with heavy protein. Allie is still a growing girl.” I gripped the handle of the spatula so hard my knuckles turned white. “Alright. You two get to work.” I turned my back and walked into the kitchen. I could hear their muffled, conspiratorial giggles trailing behind me. They went into the study, leaving the door cracked open. I sliced a watermelon, the sharp steel slicing through the red flesh, juice bleeding onto the cutting board. Holding the fruit platter, I walked to the study. Just as I reached out to push the door open, my hand froze in midair. “Unbelievable!” The signature combo sound effect from Sweet Crush blared from the room. It was immediately followed by Allie’s sickeningly sweet whine. “Professor, this stage is just too hard. My fingers are so sore from swiping.” Arthur’s voice was dripping with a nauseatingly tender affection I hadn’t heard in a decade. “Fingers sore? Come here, let your professor massage them. You can’t just brute force this game. It is like solving a complex equation. You have to find the most sensitive variables.” “Oh stop it, Professor, you are so bad. Where are you touching me…” “Just helping you relax your tense muscles. How else are you going to clear the level?” The unmistakable sound of rustling fabric drifted through the crack in the door. I stood in the hallway, my stomach violently churning. 3 I took a deep breath, kicked the door wide open, and walked in. “Fruit is ready.” The two people inside sprang apart like they had been electrocuted. Allie’s face was flushed crimson as she frantically adjusted the collar of her dress. Arthur pretended to aggressively inspect the computer monitor, though his hand was gripping the mouse completely backward. “Have you never heard of knocking?!” Arthur snapped, throwing the mouse onto the desk in a pathetic show of outrage. “Can’t you see we are in the middle of calculating a critical variable? You just ruined my entire train of thought!” I slammed the heavy ceramic fruit platter down onto the desk with a loud crack, making a stack of textbooks jump. “Does calculating critical variables require hand massages? Professor Arthur, your pedagogical methods are truly unique.” Allie’s eyes darted nervously around the room, refusing to look at me. In her panic, her elbow clipped her designer handbag resting on the edge of the leather sofa. It hit the hardwood floor with a heavy thud, spilling its contents everywhere. Lipstick, a compact mirror, and a very oddly shaped gaming controller tumbled out. It was a limited edition pink haptic feedback controller, heavily bedazzled with rhinestones. I recognized it immediately. Last month, Arthur claimed his research lab desperately needed to procure specialized equipment for a project, draining ten thousand dollars from our joint savings account. He told me it was a highly advanced “haptic interface device” for simulating complex mathematical variables. So this was his haptic interface. Allie slowly crouched down to gather her things. “Oh no, this was an academic achievement reward the Professor bought for me. If it is broken, my heart will shatter.” She looked up, a glint of naked provocation in her eyes, her gaze sweeping over my faded, slightly oversized loungewear. “You probably don’t play video games, do you, Mrs. Shen? The Professor always says you are far too rigid. You just don’t understand the romance inherent in mathematics.” Arthur cleared his throat loudly, desperate to diffuse the tension. “Alright, Allie. Pack up your things. We will stop the modeling for today.” Allie nodded obediently, slinging her designer bag over her shoulder. As she reached the door, she paused and turned back, flashing me a brilliant, saccharine smile. “Thank you for the fruit, Mrs. Shen. The slices were a bit clunky and unrefined, but it quenched my thirst.” Arthur walked her down the stairs. I stood on the balcony, watching them leave the building. They walked dangerously close together, Arthur’s hand hovering just an inch above the curve of her waist. At three in the morning, the entire city was dead asleep. The only sound in the study was the rapid, rhythmic clacking of my mechanical keyboard. As the final line of code executed, the monitor flooded with dense spreadsheets. It was a complete extraction of every single bank account, credit card, and digital payment platform under Arthur’s name. Fifty thousand dollars. Over the past two years, Arthur’s expenditure on “virtual services” and “electronic hardware” totaled a staggering fifty thousand dollars. Just last week, Tom begged to enroll in a prestigious summer STEM academy. The tuition was two thousand dollars. What did Arthur say that day? He scowled, staring down at his son with absolute disgust. “With your mediocre brain, paying for camp is throwing money into a fire! We don’t have cash to burn on your failures. Sit at your desk and run drills instead!” Tom had stood there, head bowed, fighting back tears he was too terrified to shed. I had actually believed his lies back then, thinking the mortgage was squeezing our finances tight. But right now, staring at the glowing ledgers, it felt like someone had driven a hunting knife straight through my ribs. On the exact same afternoon he called our son a failure, he wired seven thousand dollars to Allie. The transaction note read: “Fund for my baby’s premium cosmetics.” Seven thousand dollars. Enough to pay for Tom’s STEM academy three times over. Enough to feed our family for an entire year. My vision blurred. I aggressively wiped the tears away and kept scrolling. A specific three thousand dollar charge caught my eye. It happened six months ago. Cross referencing the timestamp, I hacked into Allie’s restricted social media timeline and found the answer. Six months ago, Allie posted a selfie. She was sitting in a Michelin starred restaurant, a glittering diamond pendant resting against her collarbone. The caption read: “Thank you to the man who truly understands me. On this special day, you gave me the ultimate sense of security.” Special day? I glanced at the calendar. It wasn’t a holiday. But it was the exact day Tom was hospitalized with a dangerous fever. I had spent the entire night sitting awake in a plastic hospital chair. Arthur told me he was locked in the lab, racing a grant deadline. Rage was no longer an adequate word for what I felt. I felt a terrifying, absolute zero coldness settling deep into my bones.
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