From the day To Mat returned, Hua Ky Bac came home even less often.

Luong Mo Tuyet stopped asking where he was.

She already knew.

Restaurants.

Concerts.

Private hospitals.

Old streets they had visited when they were young.

Places filled with memories that had nothing to do with his wife.

Three days after submitting her transfer request, Mo Tuyet received confirmation from the aviation department.

Her permanent assignment would begin in twelve days.

Base location:

Frankfurt.

International long-haul division.

She read the email twice.

Then printed another document.

Divorce agreement.

That evening, Hua Ky Bac unexpectedly came home.

He was holding a white coat in one hand.

The scent of women’s perfume lingered faintly on it.

Mo Tuyet looked once and continued packing her aviation manuals.

He frowned.

—What are you doing?

—Organizing things.

—Why?

—There are too many.

He didn’t ask further.

His phone rang.

To Mat.

The coldness on his face disappeared almost instantly.

—What’s wrong?

Mo Tuyet watched him walk toward the balcony.

His voice became softer.

—Don’t cry. I’ll come over.

Ten minutes later, he left.

He didn’t notice the divorce agreement sitting beneath the aviation manual.

Nor the transfer approval beside it.

The next morning, Mo Tuyet woke to a message.

Ky Bac:

“Mat Mat had a nightmare. I stayed with her. Don’t wait for me.”

She read it calmly.

Then replied:

“Okay.”

It was the last personal message she ever sent him.

Over the following week, she moved everything she owned out of the Hua residence.

There wasn’t much.

Uniforms.

Flight logs.

Books.

A framed photograph of her parents.

Three years of marriage had filled an enormous villa with almost nothing that belonged to her.

The butler watched silently.

Finally, he couldn’t help asking:

—Madam, are you traveling?

Mo Tuyet folded her captain’s jacket.

—Yes.

—For long?

She smiled.

—Probably forever.

On the tenth day, she left the divorce agreement on Hua Ky Bac’s desk.

Signed.

She also left the birthday gift he had given her one day late.

Still unopened.

That afternoon, she piloted her final domestic flight for Nam Ha Airlines.

When the aircraft landed, the entire crew gathered beside the cockpit.

The minister handed her a small bouquet.

—Captain Luong, congratulations.

Someone applauded.

Then everyone joined.

Mo Tuyet looked through the cockpit window toward the runway.

For the first time in three years, she felt excited about tomorrow.

Meanwhile, Hua Ky Bac was at To Mat’s birthday dinner.

Three months early.

She had suddenly said she wanted to celebrate the anniversary of the day they first met instead.

He reserved an entire restaurant.

Imported roses.

Opened the necklace from Sotheby’s.

To Mat touched it and smiled.

—You still remember everything.

Ky Bac looked at her.

Strangely, he didn’t feel the joy he expected.

For years, he had imagined her return.

He had believed that if she ever stood before him again, everything in his life would become complete.

Yet sitting across from her, he suddenly remembered another woman.

Mo Tuyet.

He remembered yesterday’s dining table.

One empty chair.

The silent house.

Her birthday.

Yesterday?

No.

He froze.

Her birthday had been eleven days earlier.

He had gotten the date wrong.

Again.

To Mat noticed.

—Ky Bac?

He stood abruptly.

—I have to go home.

Her smile disappeared.

—Now?

—Yes.

He returned to the villa shortly before midnight.

The lights were off.

—Mo Tuyet?

Nothing.

He walked upstairs.

Her closet was empty.

Her toiletries were gone.

Her suitcase was missing.

For the first time, Hua Ky Bac’s heartbeat became uneven.

He went into the study.

And saw the documents.

Transfer approval.

Frankfurt International Base.

Permanent assignment.

Then the divorce agreement.

His fingers stopped on the final page.

Luong Mo Tuyet had already signed.

Beside her signature was a short sentence.

“Three years ago, I thought being beside you was enough. Now I understand that being beside someone who never sees me is lonelier than being alone.”

Ky Bac read it again.

Then grabbed his phone.

He called.

Disconnected.

He called the aviation department.

The minister answered.

—Where is Mo Tuyet?

There was a pause.

—Captain Luong?

—Yes.

—She left this afternoon.

Ky Bac’s face changed.

—Where?

—Her international assignment begins tomorrow.

—Which flight?

The minister became silent.

Then his voice hardened.

—Mr. Hua, she waited for you for three years.

—You can wait for her now.

The call ended.

Ky Bac drove to the airport.

By the time he arrived, Mo Tuyet’s aircraft had already pushed back from the gate.

Through the huge terminal windows, he saw a plane moving toward the runway.

He didn’t know whether she was inside.

He called again.

No answer.

At 1:17 a.m., a message finally arrived.

Not from her.

From her lawyer.

“Mr. Hua, Ms. Luong has appointed our firm to handle all divorce matters. Please direct future communication to us.”

Only then did Hua Ky Bac understand.

She wasn’t angry.

She wasn’t threatening him.

She had truly left.

Three months later, the divorce was finalized.

To Mat remained beside him for less than six weeks afterward.

Without Mo Tuyet standing silently in the background, something between them changed.

The love Ky Bac remembered belonged to two people who no longer existed.

To Mat eventually admitted the truth.

Years earlier, she had not disappeared because she had no choice.

Her family had sent her abroad.

She accepted.

She started another relationship.

When that relationship ended, she returned and discovered Ky Bac had never forgotten her.

So she came back.

Not because she had waited for him.

Because she wanted to know whether he still would.

Ky Bac stared at her for a long time.

Then asked:

—So why did you let everyone believe otherwise?

To Mat lowered her eyes.

—Because you looked at me the way no one else ever had.

That was when he finally understood the cruelest part.

He had sacrificed a real marriage for a memory.

A year later, at Frankfurt Airport, Luong Mo Tuyet walked through the terminal in a captain’s uniform.

Four gold stripes on her shoulders.

Hair neatly tied.

Confident steps.

She had just completed her first qualification as commander on a new international route.

Near the departure board, someone called her name.

—Mo Tuyet.

She stopped.

Hua Ky Bac stood several meters away.

He looked thinner.

Older.

He held nothing in his hands.

No flowers.

No gifts.

No excuses.

—I heard you were here.

She nodded.

—I’m working.

He looked at the stripes on her uniform.

—Congratulations, Captain Luong.

—Thank you.

Silence stretched between them.

Finally, he asked:

—If I had noticed earlier… would things have been different?

Mo Tuyet thought about the woman she had once been.

The woman who remembered his meals.

His schedules.

His medicine.

His preferences.

Who celebrated every small thing he accomplished while accepting that he forgot almost everything about her.

Then she smiled.

—Maybe.

His eyes changed.

But she continued:

—But you didn’t.

An announcement sounded above them.

Her crew was boarding.

Mo Tuyet picked up her flight bag.

Ky Bac suddenly said:

—I did love you.

She stopped.

Then turned back.

—Perhaps.

Her voice was gentle.

—But love that is never shown eventually becomes indistinguishable from not loving someone at all.

She walked toward the gate.

This time, Hua Ky Bac didn’t chase her.

He simply watched.

Three years earlier, Luong Mo Tuyet had believed marrying the man she secretly loved was the greatest luck of her life.

She eventually learned otherwise.

Her greatest luck wasn’t marrying Hua Ky Bac.

It was discovering, before she wasted the rest of her life waiting for him, that she had wings strong enough to leave.