I looked at Hua Nghien for several seconds.

Then I smiled.

“Yes. He certainly values feelings.”

Perhaps something in my tone was strange, because Tham Tri Vien turned around.

Our eyes met.

For the first time in ten years of marriage, I couldn’t recognize the man looking at me.

Or perhaps…

I was finally seeing him clearly.

My father died a year ago.

That morning, I called Tri Vien seventeen times.

He answered on the eighteenth.

I was sitting outside the emergency room, unable to stop shaking.

“Tri Vien, my father is gone.”

There had been silence.

Then he said:

“I’m sorry.”

“I’ll try to get the earliest flight.”

He never came.

Later, he explained that an important contract had gone wrong.

I believed him.

I defended him when my relatives criticized him.

I even apologized to my father’s photograph.

“Don’t blame Tri Vien. He really couldn’t come.”

But today…

I learned that the man who couldn’t spare one day for my father’s funeral could abandon three months of work to accompany another woman’s father through his final journey.

Some betrayals don’t need a bed.

They only need comparison.

Suddenly, everything becomes clear.

My phone vibrated.

A message from Tri Vien.

“Wait for me outside. We need to talk.”

I read it.

Then deleted it.

After the funeral ceremony, I said goodbye to Hua Nghien.

She held my hand.

“Manager Chau, thank you for coming.”

Then she added gently:

“And when you remarry, remember to invite me.”

Behind her, Tri Vien’s face darkened.

I smiled.

“Of course.”

I walked away.

Ten minutes later, footsteps came rapidly from behind.

“Chau Du!”

He grabbed my wrist.

I stopped.

Tri Vien looked around, then pulled me toward an empty corridor.

“What was that?”

“What?”

“He died a year ago?”

His voice was low with anger.

“I’m standing right there!”

I looked at him.

“Yes.”

“Then why did you say your husband was dead?”

“Because mine is.”

His expression froze.

I slowly removed his hand from my wrist.

“The husband I thought I married would never leave my father to be buried without him while he stayed beside another woman’s father.”

“Du Du—”

“Don’t call me that.”

His jaw tightened.

“Nothing happened between Nghien and me.”

I almost laughed.

“I didn’t ask.”

“She’s going through a difficult time.”

“So was I.”

He stopped.

I continued.

“My father died too.”

His face changed.

“That was different.”

“How?”

“I was actually on a business trip then.”

“And this time?”

Silence.

“Germany?”

I asked.

He looked away.

“Her father was seriously ill.”

“So you lied.”

“I didn’t want you to misunderstand.”

“No.”

My voice remained calm.

“You didn’t want me to know.”

He rubbed his forehead impatiently.

“Nghien and I knew each other before I married you.”

There it was.

The beginning of the truth.

“How long?”

“That’s not important.”

“How long?”

He finally answered.

“Fourteen years.”

Longer than our marriage.

I nodded.

“And next month’s engagement?”

His pupils contracted.

“That’s not what you think.”

“She introduced you as her boyfriend.”

“Her father was dying.”

He lowered his voice.

“He always wanted to see her settled. I only agreed to pretend.”

I stared at him.

“You spent three months pretending?”

“Yes.”

“Sleeping at the hospital?”

“Yes.”

“Meeting her relatives?”

He hesitated.

“Yes.”

“Wearing the family mourning flower?”

His silence answered.

“And you’re going to hold a fake engagement?”

“After things settle down, I’ll explain everything.”

I suddenly understood why he was angry.

Not because I had announced he was dead.

Because I had disrupted the script.

At home, I was supposed to remain his patient wife.

Here, he was Hua Nghien’s devoted future husband.

He wanted both worlds to remain intact.

“Fine.”

I opened my bag.

“Then explain this.”

I handed him my phone.

On the screen was the message he had sent last night.

“Germany is getting colder. Send my thicker coats when you have time.”

Tri Vien went pale.

“You were standing beside her father’s deathbed when you sent that, weren’t you?”

He said nothing.

“While I was at home choosing which coat would keep you warm in a country you weren’t even in.”

His lips moved.

“Chau Du, listen—”

“No.”

I took my phone back.

“I’ve listened for ten years.”

Then I walked away.

This time, he didn’t follow.

The next morning, I contacted a lawyer.

I wasn’t preparing to remarry.

That had been a lie.

But suddenly it sounded like a wonderful idea.

Not marrying another man.

Marrying another life.

I gathered our financial records.

Property documents.

Bank statements.

Insurance.

Everything.

That evening, Tri Vien returned home.

For the first time in three months.

He stood in the doorway with his suitcase.

I was eating noodles.

He looked around.

“Why didn’t you send my clothes?”

I almost choked laughing.

He frowned.

“I’m serious.”

“So am I.”

I placed an envelope on the table.

“Your winter clothes are in the bedroom.”

His expression softened slightly.

Then he opened the envelope.

Divorce agreement.

His face changed instantly.

“What is this?”

“The thickest thing I could find.”

“Chau Du!”

I continued eating.

He threw the papers down.

“I already told you nothing happened!”

“You also told me you were in Germany.”

“I was helping a friend!”

“For three months.”

“Her father was dying!”

“So was mine.”

That stopped him again.

I put down my chopsticks.

“A year ago, you told me work couldn’t wait.”

“Yesterday, I heard you tell someone else that work could be made up, but the final journey with an elderly parent could never happen again.”

His face drained of color.

Because those weren’t my words.

They were his.

“I didn’t know your father would…”

He stopped.

“Would what?”

I asked.

“Die?”

“He was in intensive care.”

“You knew.”

I stood.

“The difference isn’t that you understood death better this time.”

“The difference is that this time the daughter beside the hospital bed was Hua Nghien.”

He had no answer.

Three days later, Hua Nghien called me.

Her voice was shaking.

“Manager Chau…”

“Yes?”

“I need to ask you something.”

Pause.

“Do you know Tham Tri Vien?”

I looked at the divorce papers on my desk.

“Yes.”

“How?”

I answered simply.

“He’s my husband.”

The silence lasted almost twenty seconds.

Then something fell on her side.

“No.”

“Ten years.”

“But…”

Her breathing became uneven.

“He told me his wife died.”

This time…

I was the one who became silent.

“When?”

“Three years ago.”

I slowly sat down.

So while I had declared him dead at a funeral out of anger…

my husband had buried me three years earlier.

Hua Nghien started crying.

“He said he never remarried because he couldn’t move on.”

I closed my eyes.

Everything suddenly made sense.

Why I had never met some of his newer business contacts.

Why he avoided photographs with me.

Why he increasingly attended events alone.

Two wives.

Except neither woman knew she was sharing one man.

“I’m sorry,” Hua Nghien whispered.

“You didn’t know.”

“Neither did you.”

That was the only kindness we owed each other.

The following week, Tri Vien finally signed the divorce papers.

Not because he wanted to.

Because his lies had collapsed from both sides.

Hua Nghien canceled the engagement.

I resigned from managing her account to avoid any further personal entanglement.

Tri Vien came to see me once afterward.

He stood outside my apartment.

“You’ve destroyed everything.”

I looked at him.

“No.”

“You built two lives on lies.”

“I just opened the door between them.”

His eyes reddened.

“Did you ever love me?”

I almost felt sorry for him.

Almost.

“For ten years.”

“Then how can you leave so easily?”

I smiled.

“Who said it was easy?”

I closed the door.

A year later, on National Day, I visited my father’s grave.

I brought flowers.

I sat there for a long time and told him everything I had been too ashamed to admit before.

Finally, I touched his photograph.

“Dad.”

“Last year I kept defending a man who didn’t deserve it.”

“I’m sorry.”

The wind moved softly through the trees.

My phone rang.

It was my mother.

“Are you coming home for dinner?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t be late.”

I smiled.

“I won’t.”

Before leaving, I looked once more at Dad’s photograph.

That funeral had shown me something I should have understood long ago.

Love isn’t measured by what someone says when life is easy.

It’s measured by where they stand when things become unbearable.

At my father’s funeral, my husband wasn’t beside me.

At another woman’s father’s funeral…

he stood in the family line.

So when Hua Nghien asked where my husband was, I hadn’t really lied.

The man I believed I’d married had died long before that day.

I simply hadn’t attended his funeral yet.