Lang Diep Tieu stared at the paper for a long time.

His fingers tightened around it.

“Why are you giving me this?”

I looked at him calmly.

“You asked for the recipe.”

“That isn’t what I mean.”

His voice became lower.

“You said you would only give it to me when we separated.”

“Yes.”

One word.

His expression froze.

For several seconds, neither of us spoke.

Then he suddenly crumpled the paper.

“Stop talking nonsense.”

He threw it onto the bedside table.

“You were injured. Rest. We’ll discuss this when you’re thinking clearly.”

I almost laughed.

For years, every time I became angry, he said I was emotional.

When I cried, I was unreasonable.

When I questioned him, I was jealous.

And now that I felt nothing, he decided I wasn’t thinking clearly.

“Take the recipe,” I said.

“Gia Hue is waiting.”

His face darkened.

“Are you driving me away?”

“No.”

I closed my eyes.

“I’m reminding you why you came.”

That sentence finally silenced him.

A few minutes later, he left.

This time he took the recipe.

The next morning, the doctor removed the remaining fragment from my shoulder.

I signed my discharge papers alone.

When the nurse asked whether someone would collect me, I shook my head.

I returned home and began packing.

Not clothes.

Memories.

Tieu Yen’s little yellow cup.

Her drawing of three people holding hands beneath an enormous sun.

The wooden rabbit she had carried everywhere.

And finally, the small military identification pendant Lang Diep Tieu had made for her when she was born.

On the back were four words:

DAD WILL PROTECT YOU.

I stared at them.

Then placed the pendant inside the box.

He hadn’t protected her.

The day Tieu Yen died, Gia Hue had ignored an evacuation restriction and entered a controlled testing area.

My daughter followed her.

An equipment malfunction caused the accident.

Gia Hue survived.

Tieu Yen didn’t.

Everyone called it an unfortunate chain of mistakes.

Lang Diep Tieu called it an accident.

Then he personally stopped disciplinary proceedings against Gia Hue because she was “too important to the program.”

That was the day my marriage ended.

It simply took my heart several months to understand it.

At noon, Lang Diep Tieu returned.

He found three suitcases beside the door.

“What is this?”

“My things.”

“Where are you going?”

I folded Tieu Yen’s final sweater and placed it inside the suitcase.

“Away.”

His jaw tightened.

“You’re still angry about last night?”

I looked at him.

“Do you really believe this is about soup?”

He fell silent.

Then his gaze landed on the box containing our daughter’s belongings.

His face changed.

“Don’t touch her things.”

“They’re mine too.”

“This is her home.”

“No.”

I closed the box.

“It stopped being her home the day the person responsible for her death became more important than justice.”

His eyes hardened.

“Gia Hue didn’t intentionally hurt Tieu Yen.”

“I never said she did.”

“Then why can’t you let this go?”

Something inside me almost moved.

Almost.

“Because our daughter died.”

My voice remained quiet.

“And your first concern was protecting Gia Hue’s career.”

“She is essential to national research.”

“Tieu Yen was essential to me.”

Lang Diep Tieu stopped breathing.

I pulled the suitcase upright.

He blocked the doorway.

“You’re my wife.”

“For three more days.”

His eyes sharpened.

“What does that mean?”

I didn’t answer.

Unfortunately, he was too accustomed to giving orders to accept silence.

He grabbed my transfer folder from the table.

I moved too late.

He opened it.

DEEP SPACE SHIELD PROJECT.

AUTHORIZED RESIDENCY: TWENTY YEARS.

EXTERNAL CONTACT: RESTRICTED.

His face lost all color.

“What is this?”

“My new assignment.”

“You applied?”

“Yes.”

“Without discussing it with me?”

I met his eyes.

“You made decisions concerning our daughter without discussing them with me.”

His hand trembled.

“This isn’t the same.”

“You’re right.”

I took the folder back.

“This time, I’m choosing for myself.”

He stared at me.

“You’ll withdraw it.”

“No.”

“Van Hanh.”

His voice carried the tone that made soldiers straighten instinctively.

I felt nothing.

“You cannot disappear for twenty years.”

“I can.”

“What about me?”

That question nearly made me smile.

For once, Lang Diep Tieu had remembered me only when he realized I could leave.

“You’ll have your work.”

I picked up my coat.

“And Gia Hue.”

His expression turned furious.

“There has never been anything between us.”

“I know.”

He seemed startled.

“I don’t care whether you love her.”

I opened the door.

“I care that when our daughter died because of her recklessness, you chose to protect her.”

I walked past him.

He caught my wrist.

Then immediately loosened his grip when I winced from the wound.

For the first time, he noticed the bandage beneath my sleeve.

His eyes changed.

“Does it still hurt?”

I gently removed my hand.

“It will heal.”

“And us?”

I looked at him.

“No.”

That evening, I completed the final security interview.

Only forty-eight hours remained before my application became irreversible.

Then, at 11:40 p.m., someone knocked violently on my temporary quarters.

I opened the door.

Lang Diep Tieu stood outside.

But this wasn’t the controlled commander everyone feared.

His hair was disordered.

His breathing was uneven.

And in his hand was Tieu Yen’s case file.

“Van Hanh.”

I looked at the folder.

“What happened?”

He entered without waiting.

Then placed several photographs across the table.

Security-camera stills.

Maintenance reports.

Access logs.

My pulse changed.

“I reopened the investigation.”

I stared at him.

“Why?”

His voice broke slightly.

“Because you were right.”

He pointed toward an access record from the day Tieu Yen died.

“Gia Hue wasn’t supposed to be in that sector.”

“I already knew that.”

“No.”

He shook his head.

“You don’t understand.”

He placed another report beside it.

“She didn’t enter accidentally.”

I looked at the timestamp.

Gia Hue had used Lang Diep Tieu’s personal authorization code.

My blood went cold.

“How did she get that?”

“I don’t know.”

Then he showed me the final page.

A technician had reported the security breach two hours before the accident.

The warning had been deleted.

By someone with command-level access.

Lang Diep Tieu’s access.

He stared at the document as if it could destroy him.

“Someone used my credentials.”

I whispered:

“Gia Hue?”

“I don’t know.”

Before he could continue, his phone rang.

The military security office.

He answered.

His expression changed within seconds.

“When?”

Silence.

“Seal the base.”

Another pause.

“Don’t let anyone leave.”

He hung up.

“What happened?”

He looked at me.

“Gia Hue disappeared.”

My stomach tightened.

Then his phone received a message.

No sender.

Just one photograph.

Tieu Yen.

My daughter was standing outside the restricted laboratory on the morning she died.

Beside her was Gia Hue.

But there was someone else in the photograph.

A man wearing a senior officer’s uniform.

Lang Diep Tieu enlarged the image.

His face went completely white.

“You know him?” I whispered.

He didn’t answer.

I grabbed his wrist.

“Who is he?”

Finally, he looked at me.

“My older brother.”

I froze.

Lang Diep Tieu’s older brother had supposedly died six years before Tieu Yen was born.

“That isn’t possible.”

“I attended his funeral.”

He enlarged the photograph again.

There was no mistake.

Same face.

Same scar near the temple.

And on the back of the photograph, someone had written one sentence:

“Your daughter wasn’t the accident. She was the witness.”

For the first time since Tieu Yen died, I felt something stronger than grief.

I felt fear.

Because suddenly the question was no longer why Gia Hue had been protected.

It was what my five-year-old daughter had seen before she died.