Is She Going to Divorce Me?

The changes began one day.

Sticky tentacles dangled from the shadows on the ceiling. The stairwells and corridors outside randomly refreshed into an endlessly ascending spiral. The bus stop was deserted during the morning rush hour. Unnameable nerve synapses crawled along the office corridors...

Her sense of self was on the verge of collapse, yet society continued to function as usual. The world still needed office workers to sacrifice their lives to overtime.

The only thing keeping Yan Qiu from giving up on herself and sinking into complete depravity was probably her kind, home-loving husband, who hated going out and talking to people, and had chosen to become a full-time househusband instead.

But she had been immersed in the anomalies for far too long, and had devoted far too much of herself to them. She carelessly overlooked her husband's increasingly silent demeanor and the way he seemed to want to say something but couldn't. By the time Yan Qiu noticed that something seemed wrong, her husband apparently hadn't had a proper conversation with her in almost a week.

That wouldn't do.

Yan Qiu didn't want to become a horrible woman who gave her family the silent treatment because of work stress, so she deliberately picked a relatively quiet day and planned to come home early to have a good talk with her husband.

*

I love my wife very much.

She's gentle, beautiful, elegant, and rational. She willingly married me and understands and respects every one of my flaws. But at some point, her gaze stopped lingering on me.

She absentmindedly responds when I speak. She doesn't notice my new clothes, the dishes I've learned to cook, the care I've taken of my body, or anything I've done to keep our marriage together...

I realized with despair that she might be cheating on me, and I wasn't at all surprised by the possibility. More despairing still, even so, I don't want her to divorce me.

So, to preserve our marriage and keep my beloved wife by my side, I intend to eliminate the person she might be cheating with

I'll start with the lump of rotten flesh hanging from the ceiling, the one that always steals my wife's attention at mealtimes.

This should be a sticky, gooey, black-mud romance wearing a Lovecraftian horror skin (

Other people will have crushes on the heroine (unrequited), but consider this an advance warning just in case.

The focus probably won't be on clearing instances or the heroine taking everyone down. Don't ask; the answer is no.

If you can fall in love in a setting like this, neither lead has a particularly normal mind.

As usual, feel free to speak your mind in the comments, but please don't police people's words or attack them personally.

Theme: Love is the surrender of one's free will