“Ms. Hai Duong, I’m a bit motion sick today. I’ll sit in the front for some air. You don’t mind, do you?”
Duong Vu Nhu smiled at me through the open window.
Before, I would have minded.
I would have stared at Luc Uyen, waiting for him to notice that his wife had been pushed into the back seat again.
But I was no longer his wife.
So I simply nodded.
“Of course not.”
Luc Uyen looked at me strangely.
Perhaps my calmness finally made him uncomfortable.
He opened his mouth.
“Hai Duong…”
“Drive.”
I got into the back seat.
Vu Nhu immediately leaned toward him.
“Brother Uyen, look!”
She opened their marriage certificates and held them side by side.
“We actually did it.”
Luc Uyen smiled helplessly.
“You’re satisfied now?”
“Of course.”
She took out her phone.
“Let’s take a picture.”
Click.
Another.
Then another.
I sat behind them and watched the city pass outside.
My phone vibrated.
It was the hospital.
The doctor had sent me a reminder.
Prenatal examination in two weeks.
I stared at those words for several seconds.
Then deleted the notification.
Luc Uyen saw the movement through the rearview mirror.
“Who messaged you?”
“The hospital.”
His expression changed slightly.
“What happened?”
“Nothing.”
He was quiet for two seconds.
Then Vu Nhu suddenly grabbed his sleeve.
“Brother Uyen, you promised to have dinner with me tonight.”
Luc Uyen’s attention immediately shifted.
“Yes.”
I smiled faintly.
Five years.
And I had finally learned the simplest truth.
I had never needed to compete with Duong Vu Nhu.
Because Luc Uyen had already chosen the winner long ago.
When we arrived home, I took out two suitcases.
Luc Uyen frowned.
“What are you doing?”
“Moving.”
He stared at me as if I had said something ridiculous.
“Where?”
“My apartment.”
“What apartment?”
“The one my mother left me.”
His face darkened.
“Hai Duong, stop making trouble.”
I looked at him.
“We are divorced.”
“For one day.”
“No.”
I pulled the suitcase toward the door.
“We divorced permanently.”
His expression froze.
Behind him, Vu Nhu stopped smiling.
“What do you mean?”
I took out the divorce certificate.
“It means exactly what is written here.”
Luc Uyen suddenly laughed.
But there was no amusement in it.
“You’re angry.”
“No.”
“You’re trying to scare me because of Vu Nhu.”
“No.”
“Tomorrow morning we’re registering again.”
“You can go.”
I glanced at the woman standing beside him.
“But you’ll need to divorce your current wife first.”
Vu Nhu’s face changed.
Luc Uyen stepped toward me.
“Hai Duong.”
For the first time that day, his voice contained genuine irritation.
“Enough.”
I looked directly at him.
“I agree.”
He frowned.
“Enough.”
I pulled my suitcase outside.
“I’ve had enough.”
That night, he called me seventeen times.
I turned off my phone.
The next morning at nine, someone knocked violently on my apartment door.
I already knew who it was.
When I opened it, Luc Uyen stood outside.
His hair was slightly messy.
He was still wearing yesterday’s shirt.
“Come with me.”
“No.”
“The Civil Affairs Department opens at nine.”
“I know.”
“Hai Duong.”
He reached for my wrist.
I stepped back.
His hand stopped in midair.
“You promised.”
“I promised to divorce you.”
“You said okay when I said we would remarry!”
“I said okay to your request.”
His face became increasingly pale.
“You knew what I meant.”
“And you knew what marriage meant.”
Silence.
I continued.
“Yet you still ended ours because another woman challenged you.”
His jaw tightened.
“It was only a game.”
“To you.”
I nodded.
“To me, it was my marriage.”
He stared at me.
Then suddenly asked:
“Is this because you’re pregnant?”
My heart stopped.
I had hidden the ultrasound report in my suitcase.
How did he know?
He pulled something from his pocket.
My hospital appointment card.
It must have fallen out in the car.
His fingers trembled.
“You went to obstetrics yesterday.”
I said nothing.
His face slowly changed.
“Hai Duong…”
He stepped closer.
“Are you really pregnant?”
I looked at the man who had once told me he wanted a daughter with my eyes.
“Yes.”
His eyes immediately reddened.
For one second, joy appeared.
Pure joy.
Then disbelief.
Then fear.
“You knew yesterday?”
“Yes.”
“When I called?”
“Yes.”
His lips parted.
“You were carrying my child while I asked you to divorce me?”
I smiled sadly.
“You finally understand how absurd that sounds.”
He looked devastated.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I tried.”
His face froze.
I remembered the hospital entrance.
Luc Uyen asking whether I was carrying something.
Me asking him the same question back.
He had laughed.
He had believed pregnancy was merely an excuse I invented to stop his little game.
His shoulders stiffened.
“I thought…”
“I know what you thought.”
“Hai Duong, listen to me.”
“No.”
“I’ll divorce Vu Nhu immediately.”
I almost laughed.
“Yesterday she wanted to marry you, so you divorced me.”
I looked into his eyes.
“Today you want me back, so you’ll divorce her.”
“Tomorrow, if she cries again, what happens?”
He couldn’t answer.
“That is why I’m not coming back.”
His voice broke.
“But our child—”
“Will have a father.”
I placed a hand protectively over my abdomen.
“But having a father does not require me to remain your wife.”
Duong Vu Nhu appeared that afternoon.
She wasn’t smiling anymore.
She stood outside my apartment wearing sunglasses.
“You’re pregnant.”
“So you heard.”
“Brother Uyen wants a divorce.”
“That’s between you and your husband.”
Her expression twisted.
“You did this deliberately.”
I almost admired the logic.
“I deliberately became pregnant during my five-year marriage?”
“You deliberately hid it!”
“From whom?”
I asked quietly.
“My husband was busy marrying you.”
Her face flushed.
She took off her sunglasses.
“You think a baby means you’ve won?”
That word again.
Won.
Lost.
Challenge.
Game.
I suddenly understood why she and Luc Uyen fit together so naturally.
They had turned people into proof of affection.
I opened the door wider.
“Vu Nhu, I don’t want him.”
She stared at me.
“You can keep your husband.”
Then I closed the door.
Luc Uyen and Duong Vu Nhu’s one-day marriage did not last one day.
It lasted twenty-six days.
She initially refused to divorce him.
Perhaps because she finally possessed the thing she had spent years testing.
Perhaps because giving him back would mean admitting that the game had become real.
I didn’t care.
When their divorce was finally completed, Luc Uyen came to me again.
This time he brought no flowers.
No promises of Hokkaido.
No marriage registration forms.
He simply stood outside and said:
“I was wrong.”
I looked at him.
“I know.”
“I thought loving someone meant indulging them.”
“You indulged her by hurting me.”
“Yes.”
He lowered his head.
“I didn’t realize it.”
“That was the problem.”
His eyes reddened.
“I can change.”
“Maybe.”
“Give me another chance.”
“No.”
The answer came so quickly that even I surprised myself.
Luc Uyen stared at me.
I continued.
“You should change.”
A little hope appeared in his eyes.
“But not to get me back.”
It disappeared.
“Change because our child deserves a father who understands boundaries.”
He stood silently for a long time.
Finally, he nodded.
“All right.”
And for the first time since I had known him, Luc Uyen accepted a boundary without arguing.
Seven months later, our daughter was born.
She had my eyes.
And, unfortunately, Luc Uyen’s stubborn expression.
He waited outside the delivery room for almost nine hours.
When the nurse finally placed the baby in his arms, the man who had once treated marriage like a dare began crying so hard that the nurse had to remind him to breathe.
I watched quietly from the bed.
He looked at me.
“Thank you.”
I closed my eyes.
“You’re welcome.”
He never asked me to remarry that day.
Or the next.
That was how I knew he had finally begun to understand.
Some things cannot be repaired simply because you regret breaking them.
A year later, the women from that pregnancy group arranged another gathering.
Someone remembered our ridiculous hospital challenge.
One woman laughed.
“Do you remember? We wanted to see whose husband would come running after one phone call.”
Everyone became awkward when they remembered what had happened to me.
I laughed instead.
“It’s fine.”
My daughter was sitting on my lap, trying to steal fruit from my plate.
Someone hesitated.
“Hai Duong… do you regret divorcing him?”
I looked through the restaurant window.
Across the street, Luc Uyen was waiting beside his car.
It was his afternoon with our daughter.
He no longer entered my life without permission.
He no longer used tenderness as an excuse to ignore my feelings.
And Duong Vu Nhu had long since disappeared from our conversations.
“No.”
I kissed my daughter’s forehead.
“I regret waiting five years to understand something.”
“What?”
I smiled.
“If you need to keep testing whether someone will choose you, you probably already know the answer.”
A few minutes later, I carried my daughter outside.
When she saw Luc Uyen, she stretched out both arms.
“Daddy!”
He smiled and took her carefully.
Then he looked at me.
“I’ll bring her back at seven.”
“Seven.”
He nodded.
As I turned away, he called:
“Hai Duong.”
I looked back.
For a moment, I saw the same man from five years ago.
The man I had once loved enough to forgive almost anything.
But then he only said:
“Take care.”
“You too.”
And I walked away.
There had been a time when I believed the greatest proof of love was that Luc Uyen would come running whenever I called.
I had been wrong.
Love was never about how quickly someone ran toward you after a phone call.
It was about whether they respected you when nobody was watching.
Whether they protected your place when someone else tried to take it.
Whether they understood that marriage was not a prize, a dare, or something that could be handed away for twenty-four hours.
Luc Uyen learned that lesson.
He simply learned it one divorce too late.
