At Three in the Morning, My Husband Called Me a Slut at the Design Institute

Amid the high-pressure culture of a design institute in City A, architect Lin Yu and her husband Chen Mo, also an architect, were once the enviable “Engineer Chen and Engineer Lin” duo, sharing a dream of building careers and a home together with steel and concrete. But years of industry exploitation, punishing overtime, meager pay, and the pressure of making a life in a major city weighed on them like cold, heavy cement, layer by layer hardening and distorting their bodies, minds, and relationship.

Lin Yu struggles between her professional ideal of creating light, graceful architecture and the harsh reality of demanding clients, structural conflicts, and endless overtime. She sees buying a home and putting down roots as the only lifeline for their marriage and future, and is willing to drain herself dry for it, even turning into a cold financial-planning machine. Under the crushing weight of reality, Chen Mo has sunk into nihilism. He builds walls with games, indifference, and emotional withdrawal, seeing his wife's efforts as futile self-destruction. To him, their marriage has become a cold cage he needs to escape.

The novel's fuse is an all-night shift at the design institute. Lin Yu is on the verge of collapse over a cantilever beam problem and begs Chen Mo for help, only to be met with cutting mockery and a cold refusal. This clash at three in the morning tears away the mask of warmth and exposes the cancer at the heart of their marriage: communication has broken down, understanding is gone, and their values have taken opposite paths...