I laughed coldly.

—Take your hand away.

Tham Thanh Chu froze.

His fingers slowly left my shoulders.

I pulled off his coat and handed it back.

—Five years ago, you were also very good at telling me what to do.

His face went pale.

He knew exactly what I meant.

That night.

The night everything between us truly ended.

I had discovered him kissing the new junior member of our team.

I didn’t confront them privately.

I sent the photographs, messages and hotel records I had received directly to everyone involved in our circle.

Colleagues.

Friends.

Senior members of the project.

I wanted everyone to know exactly why our relationship had ended.

Tham Thanh Chu arrived furious.

He accused me of destroying his reputation.

We argued.

And in the middle of that chaos, he lost control.

Afterward, everything changed.

Not only our relationship.

My work too.

Rumors spread through the company.

Some people said I was unstable.

Others said I had deliberately sabotaged a colleague because I was jealous.

The junior girl cried in front of management and insisted I had bullied her.

And Tham Thanh Chu—

the person who knew better than anyone what had actually happened—

said nothing.

That silence destroyed me more completely than the betrayal.

I resigned.

Returned to my hometown.

Changed my number.

And eventually applied for graduate school.

Five years later, he was standing in front of me again.

—Shihan.

His voice was hoarse.

—That night—

—Don’t.

I looked at him.

—Whatever explanation you’ve prepared for five years, keep it.

His jaw tightened.

—I wasn’t going to explain the cheating.

That surprised me.

He continued:

—I was wrong.

—Completely.

—And what I did afterward was worse.

For once, there was no excuse.

No “but.”

No attempt to blame alcohol, anger or misunderstanding.

He lowered his eyes.

—I found out later that the company had blacklisted you from two projects.

My fingers tightened.

—Later?

—Three months after you disappeared.

I almost laughed.

Three months.

By then I had already returned home with nothing but two suitcases and the belief that my entire career was over.

He continued:

—I tried to correct it.

—You couldn’t be reached.

—So I sent statements to the companies involved and admitted what happened.

I looked at him.

—How noble.

He accepted the sarcasm without reacting.

—I know it doesn’t undo anything.

—Good.

A car finally stopped at the curb.

Before I opened the door, he asked:

—Did you really disappear because of me?

I turned around.

—No.

His expression changed.

—I disappeared because I realized I had built my entire life around people who could watch me be humiliated and still ask me to be reasonable.

Then I got into the car.

Three weeks later, our paths crossed again.

This time there was nowhere to hide.

My research group had been invited to present a financial risk model to a technology investment company.

The company was Tham Thanh Chu’s.

When I entered the conference room behind my professor, his expression became almost comical.

My professor smiled proudly.

—This is Jiang Shihan, lead researcher on the behavioral forecasting model I mentioned.

Tham Thanh Chu stared at me.

—Lead researcher?

I opened my laptop.

—Mr. Shen, shall we begin?

For the next forty minutes, I didn’t look at him as my former boyfriend.

He was simply a client.

I presented the model.

Answered questions.

Corrected one of his analysts’ assumptions.

And when the meeting ended, his chief strategy officer immediately requested a second-stage collaboration.

Outside the conference room, Tham Thanh Chu stopped me.

—You really came back.

I frowned.

—Back where?

—To this field.

I finally understood.

He still remembered the twenty-three-year-old woman who had left believing her career was finished.

I smiled.

—I didn’t come back.

—I started over.

That silenced him.

A few days later, I learned something else from my professor’s wife.

Tham Thanh Chu’s “girlfriend” had never been the junior woman from five years ago.

That relationship had ended within months.

Apparently the moment they were no longer hiding anything, whatever excitement they had mistaken for love vanished quickly.

The girlfriend his mother mentioned was someone his family had recently introduced.

And even that relationship had already ended.

I didn’t ask why.

It wasn’t my story anymore.

At the professor’s birthday celebration a month later, Tham Thanh Chu found me alone on the balcony.

—My mother thinks you’re avoiding coming here because of me.

—I’m busy.

—Shihan.

I looked at him.

He took something from his pocket.

A small strawberry candy.

The same brand he used to bring me after overtime.

For a moment, neither of us spoke.

Then I pushed his hand back.

—Don’t do that.

His eyes dimmed.

—Do what?

—Use good memories to bargain with what happened later.

His fingers slowly closed around the candy.

I continued:

—I loved the man who waited downstairs with hot milk.

—I loved the man who walked through snow with me.

—Both of those things are true.

His eyes reddened.

—And it’s also true that the same man betrayed me and stood by while my career collapsed.

He whispered:

—I know.

—Then don’t ask the younger version of me to forgive you through nostalgia.

He stayed silent for a long time.

Finally:

—Is there someone else?

I smiled.

—There is.

His face stiffened.

I added:

—Me.

He looked confused.

—I spent five years becoming someone I could depend on.

—I don’t intend to abandon her just because you finally regret losing me.

That was our last real conversation.

We continued seeing each other occasionally because of my professor and the cooperation project.

He was polite.

So was I.

No reconciliation.

No dramatic hatred.

Eventually, the project I led received national funding, and I accepted a permanent research position in Nam Thanh.

The career I once believed he had destroyed became something completely different from the one I had planned—

but it became mine.

One snowy evening, after another seminar, I passed the same street where Tham Thanh Chu used to wait for me after work.

He was standing on the opposite side.

He saw me.

I saw him.

Neither of us crossed.

Five years earlier, I had thought exposing his betrayal would be the final act of our relationship.

It wasn’t.

The real ending came much later—

when I finally understood that revenge, apologies and regret were all still ways of keeping him at the center of my life.

So I stopped.

Tham Thanh Chu eventually admitted what he had done.

He even tried to repair part of the damage.

But remorse could only change the man he became afterward.

It could not return the woman who had loved him before.

And when we met again five years later, he finally discovered the consequence he had feared most:

I hadn’t spent those years waiting for him to apologize.

I had spent them learning how to live as if he no longer mattered.