I had already reached the hospital entrance when someone shouted my name.

“Tran Hi!”

I stopped.

Not because I wanted to.

My body was still weak from the procedure, and for one stupid second, three years of habit overpowered me.

I turned around.

Chu Muc was running toward me.

Behind him, the hallway had descended into chaos.

His mother was screaming.

Bach Nguyet was crying.

Doctors and nurses were trying to calm everyone down.

And the newborn they had celebrated as the heir of the Chu family only minutes earlier was no longer the center of their joy, but the center of their suspicion. Pasted text

Chu Muc stopped in front of me.

His face was terrifyingly pale.

“Did you hear?”

“Yes.”

“You knew?”

I almost laughed.

“Knew what?”

“That the child wasn’t mine!”

His voice echoed through the lobby.

People turned to look.

I stared at him.

“Chu Muc, we got divorced this morning. Why would I know who fathered your lover’s child?”

His mouth opened.

Nothing came out.

I turned away.

He grabbed my arm.

The sudden movement sent pain through my abdomen.

I inhaled sharply.

Chu Muc immediately noticed.

His eyes dropped toward my hospital bracelet.

Then to the documents in my hand.

“What are you doing here?”

I pulled my arm free.

“None of your business.”

“Tran Hi.”

For the first time that day, he really looked at me.

My pale face.

My slow movements.

The Obstetrics Department printed across my discharge papers.

Understanding came gradually.

Then all at once.

His eyes widened.

“No.”

I said nothing.

“You…”

His lips trembled.

“Our baby?”

I looked at the man who had told me that our child “could not be kept.”

The man who had asked me to remove our baby so Bach Nguyet’s child could enter the Chu family without complication.

And now he looked horrified.

“You told me what you wanted,” I said.

“Tran Hi…”

“I respected your decision.”

His face collapsed.

“You actually did it?”

That question almost broke my composure.

Actually?

Had he thought my pregnancy was another problem that would conveniently disappear without costing me anything?

“You asked me to.”

“I didn’t mean today!”

I smiled bitterly.

“What difference would tomorrow make?”

He staggered backward.

For several seconds, neither of us spoke.

Then his mother came rushing toward us.

“Tran Hi!”

Her hair was disheveled.

The elegant woman who had called me a hen that couldn’t lay eggs twenty minutes earlier now looked frantic.

Her gaze landed on the discharge documents.

“What surgery did you have?”

I didn’t answer.

Chu Muc whispered:

“She terminated the pregnancy.”

Giang Ha froze.

Then she screamed.

“What?!”

People across the lobby turned.

She rushed toward me.

“You killed my grandchild?”

I stared at her.

Something inside me finally snapped.

“Your grandchild?”

My voice was quiet.

That made her stop.

“Five minutes ago, weren’t you celebrating your grandson?”

Her face turned red.

“That bastard isn’t our family’s child!”

“And mine wasn’t supposed to be either, according to you.”

She went silent.

I continued.

“I heard everything outside my hospital room.”

Her expression changed.

I repeated her own words.

“‘A hen that doesn’t know how to lay.’”

Chu Muc closed his eyes.

His mother looked suddenly embarrassed.

“You misunderstood. I was angry—”

“No.”

I stepped backward.

“I understood perfectly.”

Then I looked at Chu Muc.

“And so did he.”

His mother immediately grabbed his arm.

“A Muc, that baby was really yours!”

He looked sick.

She became frantic.

“Stop her! Take her back to the doctor! Maybe something can still be done!”

The cruelty of that sentence was almost unbelievable.

I touched my flat abdomen.

“No.”

Only one word.

But this time it belonged to me.

Chu Muc’s eyes filled with tears.

“Tran Hi, please.”

Too late.

I walked away.

He didn’t follow.

Perhaps because he finally understood there are some doors regret cannot reopen.

Three days later, Bach Nguyet called me.

I blocked her.

Then Giang Ha called.

Blocked.

Finally Chu Muc sent a message from an unfamiliar number.

“I need to see you once.”

I deleted it.

But he came anyway.

I was packing my things when the doorbell rang.

Through the camera, I saw him standing outside our former home.

He looked as though he hadn’t slept in days.

I opened the door but didn’t invite him inside.

“What?”

He swallowed.

“The paternity test was repeated.”

“And?”

“I’m not the father.”

I felt nothing.

Not satisfaction.

Not pity.

Nothing.

He laughed bitterly.

“She admitted it.”

Apparently, Bach Nguyet had been involved with another man before reconnecting with Chu Muc.

The dates overlapped.

When she discovered she was pregnant, she wasn’t certain who the father was.

But Chu Muc had money, stability and a mother desperate for a grandson.

So she chose the answer that gave her the better future.

“And the baby’s condition?” I asked.

His expression changed.

“They’re treating him.”

“Good.”

Chu Muc stared at me.

“You don’t hate her?”

“I don’t know her well enough to spend my life hating her.”

He lowered his head.

Then whispered:

“My mother wants me to sue.”

“That has nothing to do with me.”

“Tran Hi.”

I began closing the door.

His hand stopped it.

“I made a mistake.”

I looked at him.

“No.”

He seemed confused.

“You made many decisions.”

I counted them calmly.

“You cheated.”

His face tightened.

“You came home and called another woman your true love.”

He lowered his eyes.

“You asked me to divorce you.”

Silence.

“You told me our baby couldn’t be kept.”

His eyes reddened.

“You listened while your mother insulted me and said nothing.”

A tear slid down his cheek.

“And on the day our child disappeared from my body, you were standing outside another delivery room calling another woman your wife.”

He started crying.

I had never seen Chu Muc cry.

Once, that would have destroyed me.

Now I only felt tired.

“I was wrong.”

“Yes.”

“I thought Bach Nguyet was the person I had always loved.”

“Then you should live with the consequences of choosing her.”

“But now I know—”

“No.”

I interrupted him.

“You don’t get to come back because the replacement turned out to be a lie.”

That sentence stopped him.

“You didn’t choose me, Chu Muc. You chose her. The fact that she deceived you doesn’t suddenly make me valuable again.”

He stared at me helplessly.

Then his eyes dropped to my abdomen.

“Our child…”

I stepped back.

“Don’t.”

His voice broke.

“Was it a boy or a girl?”

I closed my eyes.

I knew.

I had asked.

But that knowledge belonged to me now.

Not him.

“You gave up the right to ask.”

I closed the door.

This time, he didn’t stop me.

Six months passed.

I moved to another city.

I returned to work.

I rented a small apartment with enormous windows and terrible plumbing.

And slowly, painfully, I learned how to live without arranging my life around another person’s expectations.

There were bad nights.

Sometimes I dreamed about the child I never met.

Sometimes I woke with my hand resting on my stomach.

Freedom didn’t erase grief.

It simply gave grief somewhere honest to exist.

Nearly a year later, I received a letter.

Not from Chu Muc.

From his mother.

It contained an apology.

She wrote that she had spent her entire life believing a family’s continuation mattered more than the women inside it.

She wrote that when she learned Bach Nguyet’s baby wasn’t related to them, her first reaction had been rage.

Then she remembered what she had said about me.

About my pregnancy.

About heirs.

About blood.

She said she finally understood how monstrous she had sounded.

I folded the letter.

I didn’t answer.

Some apologies deserve acknowledgment.

Others simply arrive too late to require anything from the person who was hurt.

As for Chu Muc, I heard about him only once more.

A mutual friend told me he never married Bach Nguyet.

He financially assisted with the baby’s initial treatment because, despite everything, the child was innocent.

That was perhaps the first mature thing he had done in a very long time.

He also apparently kept asking about me.

I never asked about him.

Two years after the divorce, I returned to that same hospital for an ordinary medical examination.

When I walked past the Obstetrics Department, my steps slowed.

For a moment, I was twenty-eight again.

Freshly divorced.

Weak from anesthesia.

Listening through a hospital door while my husband celebrated another woman’s baby.

Then I remembered what happened afterward.

The test result.

The screaming.

Chu Muc collapsing.

And me walking outside alone while the sun warmed my face. Pasted text

Back then, I thought freedom meant I had stopped loving him.

I was wrong.

Freedom came much later.

It came when I stopped needing him to suffer in order for my suffering to matter.

Chu Muc lost the woman he called his wife.

He discovered the son he had celebrated wasn’t his.

And only then did he remember the wife and child he had willingly discarded.

But by then, I had learned something he understood far too late.

I was never the consolation prize waiting for him after his great love disappointed him.

I was the woman he had chosen to lose.

And once I finally walked out of that hospital without looking back, I made sure he never got the chance to choose me twice.