The first sign was irritation, small and inexplicable.

Aditya noticed it one evening when Kavya asked him, for the third time that week, whether he would be home in time for dinner. The question itself was harmless. Her tone was gentle. But something in him stiffened.

"I don’t know," he replied more sharply than he intended. "It depends on work."

Kavya paused, surprised. She searched his face, trying to understand what she had misstepped. "I was just asking," she said.

He nodded, already withdrawing. "I know."

The conversation ended there, but the tension lingered like a thin crack in glass.

For Kavya, the days had begun to feel slightly off balance. Nothing obvious was wrong, yet a quiet unease followed her through familiar routines. Aditya seemed distracted, half-present. His silences stretched longer. When she spoke about the children, he listened politely, but his responses felt delayed, as if arriving from another room.

She responded instinctively. She organized more carefully. She planned meals in advance. She asked more questions.

If she could just understand what was happening, she believed she could fix it.

Aditya, meanwhile, felt a growing resistance he could not explain. The structure of his life, once reassuring, now felt rigid. Conversations followed predictable paths. Kavya wanted clarity, reassurance, emotional consistency. He found himself unable to provide what she sought, not because he no longer cared, but because he no longer understood what he felt.

Inside him, thoughts branched and contradicted each other. He loved his family. He also felt strangely absent from his own life.

Sometimes, in meetings, he caught himself staring at nothing, a dull pressure building behind his eyes. He began taking longer routes home, sitting in the car after parking, reluctant to cross the threshold.

Kavya noticed these delays. She said nothing at first, afraid that naming the fear might make it real.

One night, after the children were asleep, she asked softly, "Are you happy?"

The question startled him.

He opened his mouth to answer automatically. Yes. Of course. Instead, nothing came out.

The silence between them stretched.

Kavya felt her chest tighten. "You don’t have to answer," she said quickly. "I just thought—"

"I don’t know," he said finally.

The honesty landed between them like a dropped object, sudden and fragile.

Kavya nodded, though she did not understand. She lay awake that night, staring at the ceiling, replaying the moment again and again.

Aditya turned away from her, his back tense. He felt both relieved and terrified. Something unnamed had surfaced, and he had no idea where it would lead.

The crack had formed.

Neither of them yet knew how far it would spread.