I was hospitalized with a severe fever, and my boyfriend took care of me with flawless devotion. He even urged me to distance myself from my toxic family, telling me not to let them exhaust me anymore. But then, I found a post he made on Reddit. It was a detailed, meticulously formatted post, categorizing and comparing my "stats" against his ex-girlfriend's. Tens of thousands of users had voted me the "Ultimate Marriage Material." The reasons? I was an only child, estranged from my family, and a tenured public school teacher. The top pinned comment from him read: But I still can't forget my ex. 1 While I was sick in the hospital, my boyfriend, Ethan Wright, was incredibly considerate, running around taking care of my every need. My colleagues crowded into my hospital room, chattering away about how lucky I was. They gushed about how I had just landed a secure job at Oakridge High School right out of college, and on top of that, I had the perfect boyfriend. My head was spinning with fever, but I could still hear Ethan joking around with my coworkers. He laughed and agreed when one of them suggested we use the summer break for our honeymoon, and the winter break for my maternity leave. The comment hit right at Ethan's core desires. He nodded enthusiastically. I felt a sudden twist of discomfort in my chest. I simply closed my eyes and pretended to sleep. When it came to marriage, I still had a lot of reservations. I didn't want to expose too much of my private life to my colleagues. Plus, Ethan had brought up marriage a few times recently, and I had intentionally avoided giving him a straight answer. He was a wonderful boyfriend. But whenever the topic of tying the knot came up, my instincts always told me to pull away. Once the visiting hour was over, Ethan walked my colleagues out into the hallway. His phone, left on the bedside table, kept buzzing. The screen lit up. The orange Reddit icon kept flashing with notifications. Messages like u/Throwaway123 commented on your post were flooding his lock screen. Driven by some unexplainable urge, I swiped to unlock his phone. I knew his passcode. Under a post titled, Ultimate Marriage Choice: Girl A or Girl B?, I saw his username. It had over 10,000 upvotes and 800 comments. It turned out, my subconscious hesitation wasn't just baseless paranoia. 2 Ethan walked back into the room right at that moment. He adjusted his glasses, glanced at the phone that had clearly been moved, and asked with a half-joking tone, "Checking my phone?" I forced a smile, pretending everything was perfectly normal. "Just silencing a spam call. What took you so long?" His expression remained perfectly calm as he explained, "I was going to grab you some light soup from the cafeteria on my way back up, but realized I left my phone here. My brain is fried today!" The hospital AC was blasting. I pulled the blanket all the way up to my chin, shivering. He gently wrapped his warm hands around the IV tube, trying to warm up the fluid before it entered my vein. "These bags should be done by the afternoon. I'll pick you up then, and we can go get a nice steak dinner to build your strength back up. Don't go to the farmers' market tonight. You teach all day and spend your evenings shouting over the crowd selling your iced teas. Your throat can't take it. "Honestly, we should just get the wedding over with this summer. It'll save you from your parents constantly nagging you for money every time you visit. They have their own retirement savings; I don't know why they're always trying to drain yours. "Once we're married, you can move in with me. My mom can help take care of both of us. You know how much she adores you. She's always asking when I'm bringing you home." He spoke with such genuine excitement, smiling at me, his face glowing with anticipation for our married life. But beneath the blanket, my hands were clenched into tight fists. Ethan was great. But his greatness always felt a little... artificial. He never lost his temper with me. Everything he did was meticulously gentle. It was almost as if... he was an AI boyfriend custom-built to my exact preferences. And that Reddit post was now a jagged thorn lodged in my heart. He was definitely hiding something from me. And if I found out what it was, the dynamic between us would inevitably shatter. I gave him a noncommittal smile. "We'll see." Ethan didn't push the issue. He kissed my forehead and left for work. Not long after he left, his mother called to check on me. Ethan was raised by a single mother. They had a very tight-knit relationship, sharing absolutely everything. Before, I used to envy their close bond. But thinking about that post, a cold chill ran down my spine. My tone was a bit stiff. "Thank you for checking in, Mrs. Wright. I'm fine. I won't be coming over for dinner tonight, though. I booked an afternoon train ticket to go see my parents." She paused, her voice taking on a slightly scolding edge. "Oh, honey. You really are too attached to your parents. It'll be better once you're married. Your parents have their own lives. At the end of the day, your husband's home is your real home." As a language teacher, I am hyper-sensitive to tone and subtext. Before today, I only suspected that Ethan and his mother harbored a subtle hostility toward my family. But with that Reddit post fresh in my mind, my suspicions were confirmed. Ethan and his mother were definitely keeping secrets. When I finally got discharged and returned to my apartment, I opened Reddit on my own phone to search for the post. It was gone. Ethan was a meticulous guy. He probably deleted it the second he realized I might snoop. But he forgot one crucial rule: the internet is forever. 3 I remembered the contents of that post almost perfectly. The whole point of his comparison was to calculate value: separating the assets from the liabilities. It read like an actuarial table. Ethan had listed out the family backgrounds, incomes, and career stability of both me and his ex-girlfriend. He literally uploaded a screenshot of an Excel spreadsheet. Height, weight, and "attractiveness ratings" were highlighted in red. I had heard about his ex-girlfriend from his mother. According to Mrs. Wright, Ethan and that girl dated for four years in college and broke up right after graduation. The reason? The girl demanded a massive $50,000 diamond ring and an extravagant wedding fully paid for by Ethan. She wouldn't budge. His mother had told me, with fierce conviction, "I would never allow a gold-digger like that into our family." But when she turned to me, her face softened into a warm smile. "Chloe, sweetie, you are the only daughter-in-law I'll ever acknowledge. Here, wear this bracelet. I bought it specifically for you. It's going to be our family's heirloom." Sitting in my apartment, I rubbed the emerald bracelet on my wrist, feeling sick to my stomach. On my first day wearing this "heirloom" to the teachers' lounge, a veteran teacher with a good eye pulled me aside and told me it was cheap, dyed glass. She warned me not to wear it often because the chemical dyes could cause a skin rash. At the time, I defended her. "She's an older lady, she probably just got scammed at a mall kiosk. It's the thought that counts. I'll just wear it occasionally so I don't hurt her feelings." Looking back, I was painfully naive. In this twisted, passive competition, my "winning" stats were glaringly obvious. The older teachers at my school always joked that a tenured public school job with full pension and union benefits was the ultimate dowry. Add the fact that I was an only child with a highly strained relationship with my parents. I vividly remembered the vile comments under his post: "Bro, secure the bag. When her parents pass, the whole estate is yours." "Teacher benefits are top-tier. You'll never pay for healthcare again." "She doesn't even want a ring? You could marry six of her for the price of your ex." I searched the keywords on Twitter and TikTok, and sure enough, several large drama accounts had already screenshotted and reposted the thread. Ethan's burner username was MissingM. His ex's name was Mia. The profile picture he used for that burner account was a candid photo I took of his back on our very first date. The irony was suffocating. The post was originally made during my first year teaching—the same year Ethan and I met. Back then, I was trying to build a side hustle selling artisanal iced teas at the weekend farmers' market. On my first day, a massive thunderstorm hit. I was struggling to push my heavy cart under a building's awning, drenched and miserable. Yet, I still managed to sell a few cups to people seeking shelter. Ethan bought my first cup of tea that day and asked for my number. He had braved the pouring rain to run to a nearby CVS just to buy me an umbrella. That umbrella was still sitting in the corner of my apartment. I cherished it so much I refused to use it on rainy days, afraid it would get ruined. I truly thought he loved me, at least a little. I thought what we had was a real romance. But the pinned comment under his analytical spreadsheet read: I picked the teacher for the financial security, but I still can't forget my ex. The timestamp on that comment? Yesterday. 4 I packed a small overnight bag, intending to go to my parents' house just to clear my head. But Ethan's words, "I still can't forget my ex," echoed in my mind like a cursed loop. I curled up in the corner of my room and cried for a long time. I remembered Ethan mentioning that his ex was obsessed with Instagram. Acting on pure impulse, I created a burner account, searched through dozens of variations of her name, cross-referenced locations, and finally found Mia's profile. She had updated her story that morning. —Welcoming our little Gemini baby into the world. The photo showed a family of three in a hospital room. The newborn's face was still red, eyes squeezed shut. On either side, two exhausted but beaming adults looked down at the baby with pure, unadulterated happiness. I scrolled down. Mia had gotten married last year. Her husband looked like a normal, everyday guy—probably a coworker. Her grid was full of the little details of her life. Things like, "Hubby picked me up from work again!" accompanied by a selfie of the two of them wearing helmets, smiling on the back of a beaten-up Vespa. I also saw a post about her wedding. It was a modest, beautiful backyard ceremony. She captioned it: True love doesn't need a $50k ring or a country club to prove its worth. She was the complete opposite of the shallow gold-digger Ethan's mother had described. With my sharp eyes, I noticed a familiar profile picture in her likes. It was the same photo of Ethan's back. The account name was EW_Secret. I hated my own investigative skills in that moment, because clicking on EW_Secret led me to a public Twitter account Ethan had been using. A tweet from three months ago read: Lonely as hell tonight. Who gets this? My girlfriend plays the pure saint and insists on waiting until the wedding night. But she keeps dodging my proposals. What do I do? I didn't realize Ethan had such a talent for being an online degenerate. The replies were disgusting. Several bot accounts with half-naked profile pictures dropped their Snapchat handles. Ethan replied to one: How much for an hour? Prices ranged from $100 to $600. Ethan didn't reply publicly after that. Whether he slid into their DMs, I didn't know. But less than ten days later, Ethan posted a photo of his hand resting on a woman's bare collarbone. A comment asked: Did you score? Ethan replied: Took three days, but I made a married older woman break her vows for me. There was no shame in his words. No guilt. Only grotesque pride. I felt bile rising in my throat. Someone else commented: Why mess around with used goods? Gross. Ethan replied with a smirking emoji: You just don't understand the benefits of an older woman. Another user chimed in: This guy is playing chess. Married women keep their mouths shut. No drama. And once you're married yourself, keeping a side piece is way more thrilling. Ethan simply replied: You get it. Several people replied: Taking notes, bro. Looking closely at the photo Ethan posted, the woman's face was cropped out. But you could clearly see Ethan's arm, and on his finger was the matching promise ring he had bought for us. Meanwhile, on his main Facebook account, Ethan was constantly posting our couple photos, writing long, sappy captions about our three-year anniversary. For a moment, the room spun. I genuinely couldn't tell what was real anymore.
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