I returned home soaked from head to toe.
My mother opened the door and nearly screamed.
“What happened to you?”
I looked at her.
Then I smiled.
“Mom, can I still change my university preference?”
She froze.
For months, everyone knew I planned to attend Giang University.
Not because it was the best school my score could reach.
Because Lo Trach was there.
I had even rejected my teacher’s recommendation to apply to a higher-ranked university in another city.
My mother had argued with me for three nights.
I refused to listen.
Now I asked:
“When is the deadline?”
“Tomorrow at noon.”
I nodded.
“Good.”
That night, I opened the admissions website.
My score was high enough for the university I had once considered impossible only because it was too far away from Lo Trach.
I changed my first choice.
Deleted Giang University.
Then submitted.
When the confirmation appeared, I felt strangely calm.
The future I had spent years planning around one person disappeared with a single click.
And for the first time—
the empty space looked exciting.
Lo Trach came home the next morning.
At eight, he was standing outside my house carrying a cake.
Manh Thu was beside him.
She held flowers.
Both smiled as though nothing had happened.
“Tay Tay!”
Lo Trach opened his arms.
I stepped aside.
He froze.
“What?”
I looked at Manh Thu.
She was wearing a bracelet I recognized.
I had bought the matching pair for her birthday.
One for her.
One for me.
She noticed my gaze and quickly pulled down her sleeve.
“Congratulations,” she said. “We came to celebrate your score.”
I accepted neither the cake nor the flowers.
Lo Trach frowned.
“Why are you acting strange?”
“I went to Giang University yesterday.”
Everything stopped.
Manh Thu’s face became white.
Lo Trach stared at me.
“You… what?”
“It was raining.”
I smiled.
“So I thought I’d surprise you.”
Nobody spoke.
I continued:
“I saw the umbrella.”
Manh Thu lowered her head.
“I followed you to the apartment.”
Lo Trach’s hand tightened around the cake box.
“And I called you.”
His face completely changed.
“Tay Tay, listen—”
“You told me you were in your dormitory.”
“I can explain.”
“Then explain.”
He opened his mouth.
Nothing.
I looked at Manh Thu.
“You first.”
Her eyes immediately filled with tears.
“It wasn’t what you think.”
That sentence almost made me laugh.
“What do I think?”
She began crying harder.
“We just became confused.”
“For how long?”
Silence.
“Manh Thu.”
She whispered:
“Four months.”
Four months.
During my final exam preparation.
During the nights she came to my house supposedly to help me study.
During the months Lo Trach kept telling me:
Just work harder. Come to Giang University. Then we’ll finally be together every day.
I nodded slowly.
“Four months.”
Lo Trach stepped toward me.
“I was going to end it.”
“When?”
“Before you arrived at university.”
I looked at him.
“So I could come without knowing?”
His face tightened.
“I didn’t want to hurt you.”
“You lied to me so I could rearrange my future around you.”
“That was because Giang is still a good university.”
I laughed.
Finally.
“So that’s why you told her I’m antisocial and need Giang University?”
Both of them froze.
I had heard that too.
Every word.
Lo Trach’s face turned pale.
I looked at Manh Thu.
“You said you felt guilty because I could get into a better school.”
Her tears stopped.
Just for a second.
That was enough.
“You knew.”
“I…”
“You knew my score.”
“Yes.”
“You knew I wanted to apply elsewhere originally.”
She lowered her head.
“Yes.”
“And you still encouraged me to follow him.”
“Tay Tay, I thought—”
“No.”
I shook my head.
“You hoped I would stay close enough not to become suspicious.”
She started sobbing.
“We never wanted to lose you.”
That sentence disgusted me more than the betrayal.
They wanted each other.
But they also wanted me.
My loyalty.
My friendship.
My trust.
My ignorance.
They wanted to betray me without losing any of the benefits of having me around.
I looked at them both.
“You didn’t want to lose me.”
I smiled faintly.
“You just didn’t care if I lost myself.”
Lo Trach put the cake down.
“Tay Tay, I made a mistake.”
I took out my phone.
“I changed my university choice.”
He stopped.
“What?”
“I’m not attending Giang.”
His face went blank.
“Where are you going?”
I told him.
The silence afterward was almost beautiful.
That university was hundreds of kilometers away.
More competitive.
More prestigious.
The school my teachers had wanted me to choose from the beginning.
“You can’t.”
I stared at him.
“What?”
Lo Trach immediately corrected himself.
“I mean… you already decided on Giang.”
“No.”
“You promised me.”
“So did you.”
He had no answer.
Then he reached for my hand.
I stepped back.
“Tay Tay, university is four years. Don’t make a life decision because you’re angry.”
I almost admired the audacity.
“You convinced me to make a life decision because you wanted me nearby while secretly seeing my best friend.”
He froze.
“I’m simply correcting it.”
Manh Thu suddenly whispered:
“What about me?”
I looked at her.
“What about you?”
“Are you ending our friendship too?”
“Yes.”
She cried immediately.
“We’ve been friends since middle school.”
“I know.”
“I made one mistake.”
“No.”
I shook my head.
“You made hundreds of small choices for four months.”
Answering his messages.
Meeting him.
Lying to me.
Standing beside me while I talked about him.
Encouraging me to choose his university.
Then holding his hand when you thought I wasn’t looking.
“That isn’t one mistake.”
She covered her face.
I felt pain.
Of course I did.
She had been my best friend.
But pain did not mean the boundary was wrong.
Lo Trach contacted me every day afterward.
At first he apologized.
Then he became angry.
Then nostalgic.
He sent old photographs.
Screenshots of conversations from high school.
A picture of the broken model umbrella he had bought for himself.
Remember this?
I blocked him.
Manh Thu wrote me a six-page apology.
I read it once.
Then archived it.
I did not forgive them immediately.
I also did not spend my summer watching whether they stayed together.
That part surprised everyone.
Friends kept trying to tell me.
“They fought.”
“They’re not talking.”
“Lo Trach regrets everything.”
“Manh Thu cries every day.”
I stopped them.
“I don’t need updates.”
Because if I spent my new life monitoring their punishment, I would still be organizing my days around them.
I had done enough of that.
My admission letter arrived three weeks later.
My mother cried before I did.
My father held it up and said:
“You almost gave this up for a boy.”
I covered my face.
“Please don’t remind me.”
He laughed.
“I absolutely will remind you.”
Then his expression softened.
“But only because one day you’ll laugh too.”
He was right.
Eventually.
University was difficult.
Much harder than Giang would have been.
For the first semester, I frequently wondered whether I had made a mistake.
Everyone seemed smarter.
More confident.
More interesting.
I had always believed Lo Trach when he said I was quiet because I did not know how to connect with people.
Without him, I discovered something strange.
I wasn’t antisocial.
I had simply spent years staying inside the same tiny circle.
I joined a study group.
Then the debate club.
Then a research competition.
I made friends who knew nothing about Lo Trach.
Nobody introduced me as his girlfriend.
Nobody compared me with Manh Thu.
I was simply myself.
That feeling became addictive.
During winter break, I finally saw Lo Trach again.
He waited outside my old high school.
Alone.
He looked thinner.
“Tay Tay.”
I stopped.
“What are you doing here?”
“Waiting for you.”
I almost laughed at the irony.
For years, I had been the one waiting.
He held out a new umbrella.
The same limited-edition model.
“I found another one.”
I stared at it.
Then at him.
“I don’t need it.”
His hand dropped.
“I ended things with Manh Thu.”
I felt almost nothing.
“When?”
“Two months ago.”
“Okay.”
He looked shocked.
“That’s all?”
“What do you want me to say?”
“I thought…”
He stopped.
Then quietly asked:
“Do you still love me?”
I answered honestly.
“Probably a little.”
Hope appeared immediately.
Then I continued:
“But that doesn’t mean I want you back.”
His expression collapsed.
He asked:
“If I had ended things with her before you found out, would we still be together?”
I thought for a moment.
“Maybe.”
His eyes reddened.
“But I would still be attending a university I chose because of you.”
He looked down.
“And I might never have known that both of you thought my future was something you could arrange for your convenience.”
That was the part I could not forgive.
Not yet.
Maybe not ever.
He had not only betrayed my relationship.
He had quietly helped me make myself smaller.
Then he handed me the umbrella again.
“Take it anyway.”
I shook my head.
“Why?”
I smiled.
“Because the old one taught me enough.”
His eyes filled.
I walked away.
This time, it was not raining.
Manh Thu contacted me once during our second year.
She asked to meet.
I agreed.
Not because I wanted the friendship back.
Because I no longer felt afraid of seeing her.
She looked nervous.
“I’m sorry.”
“I know.”
“I was jealous of you.”
That surprised me.
“Of me?”
“You always thought I was more social, prettier, better with people.”
She laughed sadly.
“But Lo Trach always looked for you first.”
Her eyes lowered.
“When he started relying on me because you were busy studying, I liked it.”
I stayed quiet.
“And then I wanted to prove I could make him choose me.”
Finally, she said the part that mattered.
“I knew encouraging you to choose Giang was selfish.”
I nodded.
“Yes.”
She started crying.
“I’m sorry.”
I believed her.
But forgiveness did not magically restore trust.
So I told her:
“I hope you become someone who never needs to take another woman’s place to feel valuable.”
Then I left.
We never became best friends again.
And that was okay.
Four years later, I graduated with an offer from a research institute in another city.
At commencement, my mother took approximately nine hundred terrible photographs.
My father cried secretly and denied it.
That evening, while cleaning my old cloud storage, I found a photograph.
Two umbrellas.
Identical.
Mine and Lo Trach’s.
I stared at it for a long time.
Then deleted it.
Not angrily.
Just because I did not need it anymore.
People sometimes asked whether I regretted taking that train in the rain.
No.
If I had stayed home, Lo Trach would have returned the next day carrying a cake.
Manh Thu would have hugged me.
Both would have congratulated me on choosing Giang University.
And I might have spent years thanking them for a future they had quietly helped shrink.
Instead, I saw one umbrella leaning entirely toward another girl.
I heard Lo Trach say:
“Tay Tay will think too much. I can’t bear it.”
He was right about one thing.
I did think.
I thought about the lies.
The university.
The friendship.
The boy I had planned my entire future around.
Then I threw away the umbrella he once told me represented his presence beside me.
Years later, I understood why that moment mattered so much.
I was not throwing away a gift.
I was throwing away the belief that love meant following someone wherever they asked me to go.
Lo Trach had promised:
“I’ll wait for you at Giang University.”
He did wait.
I simply never arrived.
Because the best decision I made at eighteen was not discovering that my boyfriend loved someone else.
It was discovering that my future did not have to follow him.
