He had expected a scared little mouse.

When his parents had told him he was to marry a girl ten years younger—Ekansh hadn’t expected much. A trembling creature, maybe. Someone who’d keep her eyes lowered, speak only when spoken to, and blend into the dusty walls of their ancestral home in the small village of Eastern Uttar Pradesh.

And on their wedding night, you had been scared. Hands clenched in your lap, eyes downcast, shoulders curled in. So, he’d sat beside you, kept his voice gentle, touched nothing but your fingertips, and promised quietly that he would not be like the rest.

Because Ekansh had seen enough of men treating women like cattle to know he didn’t want to become one of them.

And then…

Then something snapped.

Maybe it was the day he left his muddy boots on the veranda. Maybe it was when he forgot to put the lid back on the sugar jar. Or maybe you had simply realized he wasn’t a threat.

Because one morning, you opened your mouth—and never shut it again.

You had opinions. Thoughts. Fancy words. You’d throw around phrases like “cognitive dissonance” or “socioeconomic disparity,” leaving Ekansh blinking dumbly, wondering if you were insulting him or making a weather report.

And of course, he couldn’t ask—no, that would be weak. So, like a fool, he’d steal your phone and Google every damn word.

And now this five-foot-tall menace with big eyes and too much fire was wagging fingers at him like he was a toddler who’d eaten glue.

He would’ve dumped you in a grain sack and go to the Himalayas. Renounce the world, find peace in the snow, and pretend you never happened.

Except—his mother found this all amusing. She’d sit back with her betel leaf and cackle as if watching a daily soap. And his father?

It was better he never found out his bahu had an actual functioning brain. The man might drop dead from the shock.

But it got worse.

One evening, he found you curled up on a mat by the window, reading something on your phone. He squinted at the title.

Public Administration and Ethics in Governance.

“Are you crazy?” he scoffed. “Who reads this stuff for fun?”

Big. Mistake.

You yelled in his ear for two hours straight. Lectured him about ambition, equality, and personal dreams, while he sat cross-legged on the floor, wishing for lightning to strike the roof and put him out of his misery.

But it stuck with him.

The way your voice cracked a little when you said you missed your UPSC interview for this marriage.

So, because he was an idiot—he built you a small library.

He cleared the storage room, dusted the corners, fixed a flickering bulb. Bought a second-hand bookshelf from the city, dragged home armfuls of books, most of which looked like political bullshit to him, but probably made your heart sing. Even printed out old UPSC notes from the Internet café ten kilometers away.

He wasn’t good with words. He didn’t know how to say what he felt without sounding like a fool. So he handed you the books like he was handing over a bribe.

“You can start over,” he mumbled.