I hung up.

For the first time in seventeen years, I did not wait for Luc Tranh to call back.

He did.

Three times that evening.

Seven times the next morning.

I didn’t answer any of them.

Instead, I opened every window in my parents’ old house.

Dust floated in the morning sunlight. The furniture was old, the curtains smelled faintly of damp wood, and there was a crack running along one wall that I didn’t remember from childhood.

But when I stood in the middle of the living room, I could breathe.

No one was telling me to understand.

No one was asking me to endure.

No one was reminding me how grateful I should be.

I spent the morning cleaning.

Around noon, someone knocked on the door.

I thought it was Luc Tranh.

It wasn’t.

A man in a rescue-service uniform stood outside.

Deputy Captain Tran.

He had worked with Luc Tranh for years.

When he saw me, his expression became complicated.

“Ky Lien.”

“Captain Tran.”

He held a plastic evidence bag in one hand.

Inside was my phone.

The one I had lost during the flood.

“We found this near the building where you were rescued.”

I stared at it.

The screen was shattered and mud had dried along the edges.

“Thank you.”

I reached for it, but he didn’t immediately let go.

“There’s something else.”

I looked at him.

He lowered his voice.

“Did you really stay at your original coordinates the entire time?”

“Yes.”

His expression darkened.

“You’re certain?”

“I nearly drowned there, Captain Tran. I’m certain.”

He finally handed me the phone.

Then he took out another document.

A printed rescue log.

“Your emergency coordinates were received correctly at 14:37.”

My heart stopped.

“What?”

“At 14:37, dispatch received your location. East River residential district, Building Seven.”

That was exactly where I had been.

He pointed lower.

“But at 14:51, your rescue marker was manually reassigned to the western evacuation zone.”

I stared at the page.

“Manually?”

“Yes.”

“By whom?”

He didn’t answer.

He didn’t need to.

There was only one technical officer Luc Tranh had mentioned.

Lam Duong. Pasted text

I suddenly remembered Luc Tranh standing in our living room.

The coordinates were verified by Lam Duong.

She is the best technical staff at the station.

Lam Duong cannot be mistaken.

My fingers began trembling.

Captain Tran noticed.

“We’re investigating.”

“Was it an accident?”

His silence answered me.

“Captain Tran.”

“We don’t know yet.”

“Could someone accidentally move a rescue marker across the city?”

His jaw tightened.

“Not easily.”

The room became unbearably quiet.

I looked down at the rescue log.

Fourteen minutes.

That was all it took.

Fourteen minutes between someone knowing exactly where I was and someone sending my rescuers somewhere else.

I remembered the water reaching my neck.

Remembered standing on my toes.

Remembered swallowing filthy water when a current knocked me against the wall.

Remembered thinking:

Luc Tranh knows where I am.

He’ll come.

But he hadn’t.

Because someone had changed the coordinates.

And when I survived, he came home and accused me of wasting rescuers.

“Does Luc Tranh know?”

I asked.

Captain Tran hesitated.

“The investigation report hasn’t been formally submitted.”

“So no.”

“No.”

“Don’t tell him yet.”

He looked surprised.

“Ky Lien—”

“Please.”

After a moment, he nodded.

That afternoon, I went to the hospital.

I requested copies of everything.

Emergency admission.

Treatment records.

Photographs of my injuries.

The doctor’s assessment stating that I had suffered severe hypothermia, water aspiration and oxygen deprivation.

The doctor looked through my records.

“You were fortunate.”

I smiled.

“Yes.”

But walking out of the hospital, I no longer felt fortunate.

I felt angry.

Not because Luc Tranh had saved Lam Duong first.

That wound had already closed.

I was angry because someone might have deliberately made sure nobody came back for me.

At five that evening, Luc Tranh finally found me.

He stood outside my parents’ house.

His eyes were bloodshot.

“Ky Lien.”

I didn’t invite him inside.

He looked past me.

“So you really moved here.”

“I told you I did.”

He stared at me for several seconds.

Then his gaze dropped to my bare ring finger.

“Where’s the ring?”

“Gone.”

“What do you mean, gone?”

“I threw it away.”

His face changed.

“Where?”

“In the flood.”

“Why would you—”

He stopped.

Maybe he finally understood when I had removed it.

He stepped toward me.

“Ky Lien, I know you’re angry.”

“I’m not.”

“Then why are you doing this?”

I almost laughed.

Even now, he believed my leaving was something I was doing to him.

“I don’t want to marry you anymore.”

His expression froze.

“You don’t mean that.”

“I do.”

“We’ve been together since we were children.”

“Exactly.”

His voice grew rough.

“Seventeen years, Ky Lien.”

“Seventeen years doesn’t mean I owe you eighteen.”

He stared at me.

For once, he had no answer.

Then his phone rang.

Lam Duong.

I saw her name.

So did he.

He rejected the call immediately.

A second later, it rang again.

He rejected it again.

“See?” he said. “I’m here.”

I looked at him.

“What am I supposed to see?”

“That I’m choosing to stay and talk to you.”

Something inside me almost broke into laughter.

“You want praise?”

His face stiffened.

“That’s not what I meant.”

“She calls, and you reject it twice, so suddenly I’m supposed to believe I matter?”

“Ky Lien—”

“Where were you when I called from the flood?”

He fell silent.

“You told me to wait.”

My voice remained calm.

“You walked away with her while the water was already at my neck.” Pasted text

“She was choking!”

“And I was drowning.”

“You survived.”

The words came out too quickly.

Luc Tranh seemed to regret them immediately.

But it was too late.

I looked at him.

“Yes.”

I nodded.

“I survived.”

I closed the door.

This time, he didn’t stop me.

Three days later, the internal investigation summoned me.

Captain Tran was there.

So was the station director.

And across the table sat Lam Duong.

She looked pale but composed.

Luc Tranh sat beside her.

Of course he did.

When I entered, he stood.

“Why is Ky Lien here?”

The director frowned.

“Captain Luc, you weren’t informed?”

“Informed about what?”

A technician connected a laptop to the projector.

A digital rescue map appeared.

My original emergency marker flashed on the eastern side of the city.

14:37.

Then the system log advanced.

14:51.

The marker disappeared.

A new one appeared kilometers away.

Luc Tranh slowly turned toward Lam Duong.

The technician spoke.

“The modification was made from Technical Terminal Three.”

Luc Tranh frowned.

“Who was using Terminal Three?”

No one answered.

Lam Duong’s hands tightened.

The technician enlarged the login record.

One name appeared.

LAM DUONG.

Luc Tranh stared at it.

Then he laughed once.

Not because anything was funny.

Because he didn’t believe it.

“Impossible.”

Lam Duong immediately looked at him.

“Brother Luc Tranh, I can explain.”

Those words changed his face.

Not I didn’t do it.

I can explain.

The director leaned forward.

“Then explain.”

Her eyes filled with tears.

“There was chaos. Multiple emergency signals were coming in. I thought her location might have been inaccurate.”

“You thought?” Captain Tran asked.

“Her signal was unstable.”

The technician shook his head.

“No. It wasn’t.”

Lam Duong went white.

“We recovered the backend logs. Her GPS remained within a nineteen-meter radius until the device stopped transmitting.”

Luc Tranh slowly stood.

“You told me she moved.”

Lam Duong began crying.

“I thought she did.”

“You told me you verified it.”

“I was under pressure!”

“You sent us west.”

His voice cracked.

“We searched for four hours.”

She reached for his sleeve.

He stepped away.

That tiny movement was the first time I had ever seen Luc Tranh avoid her touch.

Lam Duong looked at me.

Suddenly, the tears disappeared.

“You were never supposed to stay there that long.”

The room went silent.

My skin turned cold.

Captain Tran spoke first.

“What does that mean?”

She realized what she had said.

“I mean—I thought another team would reach her.”

“Which team?”

She couldn’t answer.

The technician clicked another file.

“We also recovered deleted internal messages.”

Lam Duong’s face became completely white.

One message appeared on the screen.

It had been sent nineteen minutes before my rescue marker was altered.

From Lam Duong to another colleague.

Captain Luc always chooses her because she’s his fiancée.

Then another.

If she weren’t there, he’d finally understand who actually belongs beside him.

Luc Tranh stopped breathing.

I didn’t.

Strangely, I felt nothing.

Not shock.

Not satisfaction.

Nothing.

The director ordered security to remain outside the room.

Lam Duong began sobbing.

“I didn’t want her to die!”

No one had accused her of wanting that.

Not yet.

But she kept talking.

“I only wanted her to be scared! I thought someone else would find her!”

Luc Tranh looked at her as if he had never seen her before.

“She was unconscious for a day.”

His voice was barely audible.

“I know.”

His eyes snapped toward her.

“You knew?”

Lam Duong covered her mouth.

Another mistake.

Luc Tranh turned toward me.

And for the first time since the flood, there was no accusation in his eyes.

Only horror.

“Ky Lien…”

I stood.

“Don’t.”

He stopped.

“You trusted her,” I said.

His lips trembled.

“You trusted her when I told you I never moved.”

I remembered how firmly he had dismissed me, insisting that Lam Duong could not have been wrong. Pasted text

“You trusted her when she sent rescuers away from me.”

“Ky Lien, I didn’t know.”

“I know.”

That hurt him more than blame would have.

Because it was true.

He hadn’t known.

He had simply decided that if Lam Duong said something and I said the opposite, then I must be the liar.

The investigation lasted another week.

Lam Duong was suspended pending criminal proceedings.

The station issued a formal apology.

Luc Tranh came to my house every day.

I never opened the door.

On the eighth day, he left something outside.

A small velvet box.

Inside was an engagement ring.

Not mine.

A new one.

There was a note.

Tieu Lien, give me one chance to start again.

I looked at it for a long time.

Then I put the ring back into the box.

The next morning, I took it to the station.

Luc Tranh ran after me as I left.

“Ky Lien!”

I stopped.

He stood in front of me, breathing hard.

“I know I was wrong.”

“Yes.”

“I’ll spend the rest of my life making it up to you.”

“No.”

His face crumpled.

“Why?”

I looked at the man who had once sat beside my bed when I had nightmares.

The boy who hid candy in my schoolbag.

The man I had loved long enough to mistake history for destiny.

“Because when I was drowning, I still believed you would come back.”

His eyes reddened.

“And you didn’t.”

“I didn’t know where—”

I shook my head.

“This isn’t about the coordinates.”

He went silent.

“It’s about what happened afterward.”

I stepped closer.

“I came home alive and told you the truth.”

His face slowly went pale.

“And you still chose her.”

He had no defense.

I placed the velvet box in his hand.

Then I walked away.

Three months later, I received an offer from the provincial emergency-management research center.

They wanted me to join a new project developing redundant civilian location systems for disaster response.

I accepted.

On my first day, Captain Tran sent me a photograph.

It showed workers removing the old Terminal Three.

Underneath, he wrote:

New verification system goes live today.

I smiled.

Then I turned off my phone and entered the laboratory.

Luc Tranh had once asked whether, in my eyes, I was merely a family member who could be sacrificed or truly his fiancée. Pasted text

In the end, I realized I had been asking the wrong question.

I didn’t need to know what I was in his eyes anymore.

I knew what I was in my own.

Someone worth saving.

And this time, I wasn’t waiting for anyone else to do it.