“I remember.”

My voice wasn’t loud.

But both of them fell silent.

I looked at Chau Can Xuyen.

“November seventeenth. My birthday.”

His eyebrows tightened.

“You told me the company sent a driver because you had an emergency meeting in another city.”

Duong Duong hurriedly explained,

“Miss Hy Hoa, it really wasn’t what you think. General Manager Chau only—”

“I didn’t ask you.”

She immediately went quiet.

Chau Can Xuyen’s expression darkened.

“Enough. It was one ride. Do you need to interrogate everyone over something that happened almost a year ago?”

One ride.

I almost admired how easily he said it.

That night, I had cooked an entire table of food.

I waited until everything became cold.

At eleven fifty-eight, he finally sent me a message:

Don’t wait. Sleep first.

I had answered:

Okay. Drive safely.

Meanwhile, the man who refused to let me close my eyes for five minutes was driving another woman back to school while she slept peacefully in my passenger seat.

“Fine.”

I picked up my suitcase.

Chau Can Xuyen stared.

“Fine what?”

“Nothing.”

“Tham Hy Hoa, don’t use this attitude with me.”

I looked at him.

“For seven years, you told me passengers sleeping beside the driver were selfish.”

His face changed slightly.

“That’s different.”

“Yes.”

I nodded.

“Now I finally understand that.”

Duong Duong bit her lip.

Chau Can Xuyen became impatient.

“What exactly do you want?”

“A divorce.”

Silence.

Even the air conditioner seemed suddenly too loud.

Then he laughed.

Not because it was funny.

Because he didn’t believe me.

“You want a divorce because she slept in my car?”

“No.”

“Then because I changed the hotel room?”

“No.”

His voice rose.

“Then what?”

I stared at the man I had loved for almost a decade.

“Because I finally realized the problem was never the neck pillow.”

He froze.

“It was never the water bottle.”

“Never the hotel.”

“Never even Duong Duong.”

I pointed between us.

“The problem is that you have spent seven years demanding things from me that you never believed someone you truly cared about should have to endure.”

His mouth opened.

I didn’t give him time.

“When I was exhausted, you called me selfish.”

“When she is exhausted, you lower the temperature and cover her with a blanket.”

“When I drank from your bottle, you threw it away.”

“When she drinks from it, you wipe the rim for her.”

“When I needed you after surgery, you left me at a highway rest stop.”

“But today you left your wife inside a hot car for two hours because her exhibition materials had a problem.”

Duong Duong’s face turned pale.

Chau Can Xuyen snapped,

“Don’t bring up that surgery again.”

I went still.

He realized too late what he had said.

But I smiled.

“Why not?”

“Because it has nothing to do with this.”

“It has everything to do with this.”

That was the day I lost our first child.

The pregnancy had stopped developing.

The procedure wasn’t something I had wanted.

I had walked out of the hospital empty, dizzy from anesthesia, unable even to stand steadily.

Five minutes after I closed my eyes in his car, Chau Can Xuyen had pulled into a rest stop.

He opened my door and said coldly:

If you’re going to sleep, get out.

So I did.

I took a bus home alone.

And still, for years, I convinced myself he was simply strict.

That this was his personality.

That he treated everyone the same.

How stupid.

Cruelty feels like personality only until you watch someone receive the tenderness you kept begging for.

I pulled the door open.

Chau Can Xuyen grabbed my suitcase.

“You’re not leaving.”

“Let go.”

“You’re emotional.”

“No.”

I looked at his hand.

“For the first time in seven years, I’m not.”

Perhaps something in my expression frightened him.

He slowly released the suitcase.

I walked away.

That night, I booked another hotel.

The room was small.

No sea view.

No anniversary decorations.

No husband.

Yet when I closed the door, I could finally breathe.

At 11:40 p.m., my lawyer sent the draft divorce agreement.

I read it once.

Then replied:

Proceed.

The next morning, Chau Can Xuyen called seventeen times.

I answered the eighteenth.

“Where are you?”

“At breakfast.”

“We’re leaving at nine. Come back.”

“We?”

He paused.

“Duong Duong and I.”

I smiled.

“You two go.”

“How will you get home?”

“Train.”

His tone immediately became cold.

“Don’t be ridiculous. It’s hundreds of kilometers.”

“I know.”

“You’ve never traveled that route alone.”

“Then I’ll learn.”

He was silent.

Perhaps that was the first moment he understood that I had stopped arranging my life around his steering wheel.

I returned home one day later.

He arrived that evening.

Duong Duong wasn’t with him.

The moment he entered, he saw two suitcases near the door.

Not his.

Mine.

His expression finally changed.

“You were serious?”

I placed the divorce papers on the table.

“Sign them.”

He didn’t touch them.

“Where are you going?”

“I rented an apartment near the hospital.”

“You already found somewhere?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“Yesterday.”

His eyes darkened.

“So while I was driving back, you were preparing to leave me?”

I looked at him calmly.

“No.”

“I’ve been preparing to leave you for seven years.”

He stared.

I continued,

“I just didn’t know it.”

For the first time, he had nothing to say.

Then he saw the wooden box beside my suitcase.

Inside were things I had prepared for our anniversary.

Two watches.

A handwritten album from our seven years of marriage.

And tickets for a trip I had planned for winter.

He picked up the album.

On the first page was our wedding photo.

He stopped breathing for a moment.

“You prepared all this?”

“Yes.”

His fingers tightened.

“Then why—”

“Because I prepared it before I understood.”

He looked at me.

“Understood what?”

I took the album from his hand.

“That loving someone alone can keep a marriage alive for a surprisingly long time.”

I dropped it into the trash.

“Just not forever.”

Three days later, Duong Duong resigned.

I learned about it accidentally from a former colleague of Chau Can Xuyen.

Apparently, after the trip, someone at the company discovered the hotel reservation.

Rumors spread.

Duong Duong cried and insisted nothing had happened.

Perhaps nothing had.

That wasn’t important anymore.

Chau Can Xuyen came to my apartment that evening.

He stood outside for almost an hour before I opened the door.

“She resigned.”

“I heard.”

“There was nothing between us.”

“I believe you.”

He froze.

“You believe me?”

“Yes.”

That answer seemed to hurt him more.

Because he had expected jealousy.

Questions.

Maybe even relief.

Instead I simply didn’t care.

“Then why won’t you come home?”

I looked at him.

“Because I don’t need you to sleep with another woman to betray me.”

His face stiffened.

“Sometimes betrayal is spending years teaching your wife that she deserves less tenderness than everyone else.”

He lowered his head.

After a long silence, he whispered,

“I didn’t know I treated you like that.”

“I know.”

That was the saddest part.

He hadn’t hated me.

He had simply become so accustomed to my sacrifices that he stopped seeing them.

A month later, he signed the divorce papers.

At the civil affairs office, he asked one last question.

“If I change, is there still a chance?”

I thought about it carefully.

Then shook my head.

“You should change.”

Hope flashed in his eyes.

But I finished:

“Just not for me.”

His eyes reddened.

I picked up my copy of the divorce certificate.

Outside, rain had begun to fall.

Chau Can Xuyen instinctively reached for his car keys.

“I’ll drive you.”

“No.”

“The rain is heavy.”

“It’s okay.”

“Hy Hoa.”

I stopped.

He looked at me exactly the way he had seven years ago when he first drove me home after our wedding.

“I can drive slowly.”

For a moment, neither of us spoke.

Then I smiled.

“Can Xuyen, I’m tired.”

His expression collapsed.

Because he knew exactly what I meant.

For seven years, whenever I sat beside him, no matter how exhausted I was, I had forced myself to remain awake.

But I wasn’t talking about the road anymore.

I turned and walked toward the metro station.

Three months later, I traveled to another city for a medical conference.

The train left before sunrise.

I found my seat beside the window.

The woman next to me was reading quietly.

The carriage was warm.

Rain traced silver lines across the glass.

I had worked the night shift before leaving.

My eyelids slowly became heavy.

For a moment, instinct made me straighten.

My hand almost pinched my palm.

Then I stopped.

There was no one beside me demanding conversation.

No one telling me I was selfish.

No one measuring my love by how much discomfort I could endure for them.

So I leaned my head against the window.

Closed my eyes.

And slept.

When I woke up, sunlight filled the carriage.

The train was already hundreds of kilometers away.

I looked outside and suddenly smiled.

For seven years, I thought love meant staying awake so someone else could keep driving.

Only after leaving him did I finally understand:

If the journey requires you to hurt yourself just to prove you deserve a seat beside someone, then maybe you were never meant to stay in that car.

And this time—

I chose my own road.