For several seconds, I stayed frozen on the bathroom floor.

The tiles were cold against my cheek, but I barely noticed.

Behind the frosted glass, Chau Minh was still standing beside the running shower. His shoulders were trembling. The sound I had heard came again—low, broken, almost swallowed by the water.

Then he whispered something.

At first, I couldn’t make it out.

I pressed my ear closer to the gap beneath the door.

“An…”

My fingers tightened against the floor.

A name.

He was calling someone’s name.

Not mine.

I slowly pushed myself up, afraid even the sound of my breathing would expose me.

My mind immediately went somewhere ugly.

Another woman.

There had to be another woman.

Seven years of marriage, and while I slept a few meters away, my husband locked himself in the bathroom, turned on the shower to hide the noise, and whispered another person’s name.

Suddenly every strange detail from the past few months seemed to rearrange itself into an explanation I didn’t want.

The nights he came home distracted.

The way he sometimes stared at his phone and immediately turned the screen off when I entered the room.

The showers after midnight.

His carefully rehearsed reassurance.

“Don’t worry about anything.”

I felt ridiculous for ever believing him.

I was about to return to bed when the water stopped.

My heart jumped.

I hurried back into the bedroom, climbed beneath the blanket, and shut my eyes.

Less than a minute later, the bathroom door opened.

Chau Minh entered.

I could smell the shower gel before I felt the mattress sink.

But this time, he didn’t lie down.

He sat beside me.

For a long time.

Exactly as if he were making sure I was asleep.

Then I heard the faint sound of his phone unlocking.

My heartbeat became so loud I was terrified he could hear it.

There was silence.

A few seconds later, a soft sound came from the phone.

Not music.

A voice.

A woman’s voice.

It was faint enough that I couldn’t understand the words, but there was no mistaking it.

I almost opened my eyes.

Then Chau Minh whispered:

“An Nhi…”

His voice cracked.

“I’m sorry.”

Something inside me went completely cold.

He stayed there for several minutes.

I heard no typing, no phone call, no reply.

Only that recording playing quietly again.

Eventually, he locked the phone, placed it on the bedside table, and lay down.

His back faced me.

I didn’t sleep for the rest of the night.

The next morning, Chau Minh behaved exactly as usual.

He made coffee.

Watered the orchids.

Asked whether I wanted noodles or rice for lunch.

Watching him move around the apartment with that familiar calm expression made me feel as if I were losing my mind.

How could someone hide something so enormous and still remember that I didn’t like too much sugar in my coffee?

I didn’t confront him.

Not yet.

I needed to know who An Nhi was.

The opportunity came two days later.

Chau Minh was showering before work when his phone vibrated on the dining table.

Normally, I never touched his phone.

That morning, I picked it up without hesitation.

There was a message on the lock screen.

It wasn’t from a woman.

It was from someone saved as “Uncle Phuc.”

The preview read:

“Minh, the cemetery called again. They need confirmation before Friday.”

I stared at those words.

Cemetery?

Before I could process them, the bathroom door opened.

I put the phone down so quickly that I nearly dropped it.

Chau Minh walked out drying his hair.

He looked at me.

Then at his phone.

For one second, something changed in his face.

Not anger.

Fear.

“You touched my phone?”

My throat tightened.

“It kept vibrating.”

He walked over and picked it up.

I watched him read the message.

His face became pale.

“Who is An Nhi?”

The question escaped before I could stop it.

Everything stopped.

Chau Minh didn’t blink.

Didn’t breathe.

The towel slipped slightly from his hand.

I had never seen my husband look like that.

Not even when his father had surgery three years earlier.

“Where did you hear that name?”

His voice was almost a whisper.

“So there is an An Nhi.”

“Lin Duyet—”

“Who is she?”

He closed his eyes.

That small movement hurt me more than a confession would have.

I laughed once, bitterly.

“Seven years, Chau Minh. We’ve been married seven years. How long have you been hiding her from me?”

His eyes opened immediately.

“It isn’t what you think.”

“Then tell me what I should think.”

He said nothing.

That silence felt like an answer.

I grabbed my bag from the chair.

Chau Minh caught my wrist.

“Please.”

I pulled away.

“Don’t touch me.”

His hand dropped.

For several seconds, neither of us spoke.

Then he said something I never expected.

“An Nhi died nine years ago.”

I stopped.

The anger inside me stumbled.

“What?”

He looked toward the balcony instead of at me.

“She died two years before I met you.”

I stared at him.

If this was a lie, it was a strange one.

“Then why are you whispering her name in the middle of the night?”

His jaw tightened.

“And why is a cemetery contacting you?”

He slowly sat down.

Suddenly, the gentle man I had lived with for seven years looked exhausted. Older, somehow.

“The cemetery where she’s buried is being relocated.”

“Who was she?”

He didn’t answer immediately.

I thought he might say an ex-girlfriend.

A childhood sweetheart.

Someone he had loved before me.

Instead, he said:

“My younger sister.”

I couldn’t speak.

“You don’t have a sister.”

That was what I had always known.

Chau Minh’s parents had one child.

Him.

Every family photograph I had seen showed the same three people.

His father.

His mother.

Chau Minh.

He rubbed both hands over his face.

“My parents don’t talk about her.”

“Why?”

His eyes turned red.

“Because they blame me for her death.”

The apartment became painfully quiet.

Outside, someone downstairs was honking repeatedly. A child was crying somewhere in the building. Normal morning sounds continued while the ground beneath my marriage seemed to shift.

“What happened?”

Chau Minh looked at me.

For the first time since we married, I saw something in his eyes that I had never recognized before.

Not secrecy.

Shame.

“It happened in a bathroom.”

My stomach tightened.

He continued slowly.

“An Nhi was sixteen. I was twenty-one.”

His hands began trembling.

“We argued that night. She locked herself inside the bathroom. I was angry, so I walked away.”

He swallowed hard.

“When I came back…”

His voice disappeared.

I suddenly understood the midnight showers.

Or thought I did.

But then Chau Minh said:

“The official report said it was an accident.”

He stared down at his hands.

“My parents accepted that.”

A long pause.

“I didn’t.”

“Why?”

He looked up at me.

“Because I know what she said before she died.”

My skin prickled.

“What did she say?”

Chau Minh didn’t answer.

Instead, he reached for his phone.

He unlocked a hidden folder I had never seen before.

Inside were dozens of audio files.

All dated years before our marriage.

His thumb hovered over the oldest one.

“I’ve never let anyone hear this.”

Then he pressed play.

Static filled the room.

A girl’s frightened breathing came through the speaker.

And then a young woman’s voice whispered:

“Brother, if something happens to me tonight…”

Chau Minh immediately stopped the recording.

His entire hand was shaking.

I stared at the phone.

“Play the rest.”

He shook his head.

“Chau Minh.”

“I can’t.”

“Why?”

He looked at me, and the expression on his face made my blood run cold.

“Because after you hear what she says next, you’ll understand why my parents spent nine years pretending An Nhi never existed.”

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