Luc Yen Chau replied less than a minute later.
What do you mean?
Then another message.
Nien Niem, are you angry because I missed your birthday?
I stared at those words until they became almost funny.
He still thought the problem was one forgotten birthday.
I opened To Uyen Thanh’s secondary account again.
One year and three months.
Dozens of videos.
Different cities.
Different hotels.
Different lies.
Then I downloaded everything.
Not because I wanted revenge.
Because after so many years of believing him, I needed proof for the moment when he inevitably tried to convince me that I had misunderstood.
I replied:
I’m in Xiamen.
For nearly thirty seconds, nothing happened.
Then my phone rang.
Luc Yen Chau.
I answered.
He did not speak immediately.
Finally:
“Where in Xiamen?”
“Does it matter?”
“Nien Niem.”
His voice had changed.
The exhaustion from his imaginary Shenzhen meeting had disappeared completely.
“Did you see something?”
“Yes.”
Silence.
“The portrait?”
“Yes.”
“The pottery shop?”
“Yes.”
Another silence.
I added:
“And Uyen Thanh’s secondary account.”
This time, I heard his breathing stop.
I laughed softly.
“You should tell her to make private things private before calling them secrets.”
“Nien Niem, listen to me.”
“I’ve listened to you for years.”
“Every business trip.”
“Every overtime shift.”
“Every time you told me you were too tired to come home.”
I wiped my face.
“Now I’m tired.”
He lowered his voice.
“Where are you? I’ll come find you.”
“No.”
“We need to talk face-to-face.”
“We don’t.”
“We’re getting married!”
That sentence finally made me look at the engagement ring on my hand.
I removed it slowly.
Then placed it beside the identical necklace photograph he had sent me.
“Not anymore.”
He found me anyway.
At eleven that night, someone knocked on my hotel door.
I opened it.
Luc Yen Chau stood outside, hair messy from the wind, breathing hard.
Behind him was To Uyen Thanh.
Of course she came too.
My fiancé and my best friend.
Perfect.
Luc Yen Chau stepped forward.
“Nien Niem, let me explain.”
I looked at Uyen Thanh.
“What explanation did you two agree on downstairs?”
Her face turned white.
“Nien Niem…”
“How long?”
She lowered her eyes.
Luc Yen Chau answered:
“It isn’t what you think.”
I almost laughed.
“One year and three months of videos say otherwise.”
He froze.
“So I’ll ask again.”
“How long?”
Finally, Uyen Thanh whispered:
“About a year and a half.”
Something inside me became completely still.
Longer than the account.
Long enough to include my fever.
Long enough to include the day Luc Yen Chau took me to choose our wedding venue.
Long enough that Uyen Thanh had helped me compare wedding dresses while secretly sleeping with the groom.
I looked at her.
“You helped me choose invitations.”
She began crying.
“I never wanted to hurt you.”
“Then what exactly did you think would happen?”
No answer.
Luc Yen Chau interrupted.
“It was my fault.”
I turned toward him.
“Yes.”
He looked almost relieved that I agreed.
Then he made the mistake of continuing.
“But what I feel for you is different.”
“Different how?”
“You’re the person I want to marry.”
I stared at him.
“And she?”
His jaw tightened.
“Uyen Thanh understands me.”
I nodded slowly.
There it was.
I was the wife.
The stable future.
The person suitable for parents, property, routines and old age.
Uyen Thanh was inspiration.
Adventure.
The woman worth flying three hours to see.
The woman worth painting.
The woman worth making pottery with.
I smiled.
“So you wanted me for marriage and her for love?”
“No!”
But his denial came too late.
Uyen Thanh stopped crying.
She looked at him.
“What do you mean, she’s the one you want to marry?”
Luc Yen Chau turned.
“Uyen Thanh, not now.”
Her expression changed.
Apparently, after a year and a half of being his sweetest secret, she had expected the secret to eventually become official.
“How long were you planning to keep me hidden?”
He rubbed his forehead.
“This isn’t the time.”
I almost admired the absurdity.
For the first time, I was no longer the woman demanding answers.
She was.
And he was giving her the same impatience he had given me for years.
I picked up the ring from the table.
Then placed it in Luc Yen Chau’s hand.
“You can solve this yourselves.”
He grabbed my wrist.
“Nien Niem, don’t do this because you’re emotional.”
I looked at his hand.
“Let go.”
He froze.
Then slowly released me.
“I gave you ten years,” I said.
“Do you know what the saddest part is?”
His eyes reddened.
“I begged you for a portrait.”
“I begged you to make pottery with me.”
“I begged you to take one day off for my birthday.”
I looked toward Uyen Thanh.
“And apparently none of those things were difficult.”
“You just didn’t want to do them with me.”
He had no answer.
I closed the door.
The next morning, I changed my flight.
Not home.
Shanghai.
Three months earlier, my company had offered me a leadership position there.
I had rejected it because Luc Yen Chau said moving before the wedding would be inconvenient.
I called Human Resources.
“Is the position still available?”
There was a pause.
“Yes.”
“I’ll take it.”
That afternoon, I canceled the wedding venue.
Then the photographer.
Then the invitations.
Luc Yen Chau’s mother called me in panic.
“What happened?”
I told her only:
“Ask your son.”
I did not protect his reputation.
But I did not campaign to destroy it either.
His choices could explain themselves.
Uyen Thanh sent me a long message three days later.
She said she had always envied me.
My family.
My career.
Luc Yen Chau.
She claimed he told her our relationship had become “only responsibility.”
She said she thought he would eventually leave me.
I replied once.
Then you should have waited until he did.
After that, I blocked her.
Our friendship ended more quietly than I expected.
Maybe because once trust dies, there is very little left to argue over.
Luc Yen Chau did not give up so easily.
He came to Shanghai.
Waited outside my office.
Returned the ring.
Brought flowers.
And, cruelly enough, a portrait.
Mine.
He had drawn it from an old photograph.
I looked at the canvas for a long time.
Years ago, I would have treasured it forever.
Now it felt like an apology written in a language I no longer wanted to read.
“You finally drew me,” I said.
His eyes filled.
“I should have done it years ago.”
“Yes.”
“I can fix this.”
“No.”
“Nien Niem, Uyen Thanh and I are over.”
I looked at him.
“That changes nothing.”
His face fell.
“You wanted me to choose you.”
“No.”
I shook my head.
“I wanted you not to put me in a competition I didn’t know existed.”
Silence.
“I wanted loyalty when I trusted you.”
“Choosing me after getting caught isn’t loyalty.”
He lowered his head.
I handed the portrait back.
“Keep it.”
His fingers tightened around the frame.
“Do you hate me?”
I thought about it.
“No.”
That seemed to hurt him more.
“I just don’t want the life we planned anymore.”
A year later, I heard Luc Yen Chau and To Uyen Thanh had tried dating openly after our breakup.
They lasted four months.
Without secrecy, stolen weekends and the excitement of deceiving someone else, apparently they discovered they were less compatible than they imagined.
I felt nothing when I heard.
Not satisfaction.
Not regret.
Just distance.
By then, Shanghai had become home.
I had been promoted.
I traveled on my own schedule.
On my next birthday, I went to a small pottery studio with colleagues.
I made one cup.
Only one.
I engraved my own initials on the bottom.
Then I laughed at how symbolic it looked.
The instructor asked:
“Making one for someone special?”
I smiled.
“Yes.”
“For me.”
That night, I remembered Xiamen.
The cliff.
The portrait.
The two cups marked with initials that were never mine.
For years, I believed Luc Yen Chau was simply too busy, too practical, too impatient for romantic gestures.
But love had not been asking too much.
I had simply been asking the wrong person.
He could paint.
He could travel.
He could make pottery.
He could cross cities for someone he missed.
He could be gentle.
Patient.
Romantic.
He had all of those things inside him.
He just kept giving them to someone else while asking me to be satisfied with promises.
So on my birthday, I did not lose a fiancé and a best friend.
I lost two people who had already left me long before I discovered it.
And once I stopped waiting for them to come back—
I finally started celebrating my own life instead.
