I looked at Quy On Dien and suddenly asked:
“Do you remember my call thirteen days ago?”
He frowned.
“What call?”
That answer killed the last trace of hesitation in me.
“The night you were helping Loan Giai choose earrings.”
His expression changed.
I continued:
“I was calling from an emergency room.”
Silence.
“I’d just been in a car accident.”
His face went white.
“What?”
“I was alone in a city where I barely understood the dialect. My shoulder was bleeding. I was terrified.”
I looked directly at him.
“But you told me that if it wasn’t important, I should hang up.”
His lips parted.
“Nang Nhiem, I didn’t know—”
“Exactly.”
I smiled.
“You didn’t know because you didn’t give me enough time to tell you.”
He reached toward me.
I stepped back.
That single movement seemed to frighten him more than all our previous arguments.
“I’m sorry.”
“I know.”
“We can fix this.”
“No.”
This time, I finally said the sentence I’d failed to finish in Ky Du’s hospital room.
“We should break up.”
The next morning, I submitted my resignation.
Quy On Dien came to my desk before HR had even processed it.
“You’re leaving because of me?”
“No.”
“Because of Loan Giai?”
“No.”
“Then why?”
I closed my laptop.
“Because I don’t want either of you deciding what I’m capable of anymore.”
His jaw tightened.
“You worked years for this company.”
“Exactly.”
“And when I earned a promotion, you gave it to someone else.”
“Loan Giai was more qualified.”
“Then you shouldn’t care that I’m taking my inferior abilities somewhere else.”
He went silent.
I picked up my box and walked past him.
For the first time, he didn’t know how to stop me.
Three weeks later, I joined TSC.
Ironically, the same company Loan Giai had left.
My new director had contacted me months earlier after seeing one of my project reports.
I had refused then because I didn’t want to compete with Quy On Dien’s company.
Now I accepted.
During my first week, something strange happened.
A senior manager asked me about the project Loan Giai had removed me from.
“Why didn’t your previous company submit the corrected technical model?”
I froze.
“What corrected model?”
“The one attached to your revised report.”
My heart began pounding.
The version presented at that disastrous meeting had contained an old error.
But I’d replaced it before the deadline.
So where had my corrected file gone?
TSC’s manager forwarded me an archived email.
My revised version had been received.
Then recalled internally.
The authorization belonged to Loan Giai.
I finally understood.
She hadn’t simply overworked me.
She had manufactured my failure.
I sent everything to my former company’s compliance department.
Not to Quy On Dien.
I was finished asking him to believe me.
The investigation lasted two months.
Loan Giai had altered project records, manipulated assignments and repeatedly redirected my work under her own name.
Several of the “new techniques” that supposedly justified her promotion had also been exaggerated.
When questioned, she finally admitted something even uglier.
She knew exactly what she was doing.
“I wanted her gone.”
Quy On Dien reportedly asked:
“Why?”
Loan Giai laughed.
“Because every time she was around, you tried to prove you didn’t love me anymore.”
That sentence apparently silenced him.
Loan Giai had mistaken his favoritism for love.
Perhaps Quy On Dien had too.
He came to see me that evening.
“I was wrong.”
I continued packing my computer.
“I know.”
“I saw the investigation.”
“Good.”
“I should have listened to you.”
“Yes.”
His eyes reddened.
“Nang Nhiem, please stop answering like that.”
I finally looked at him.
“What answer do you want?”
“Get angry.”
He stepped closer.
“Yell at me. Ask me why I trusted her. Tell me what I need to do.”
I almost felt sorry for him.
“That’s what you don’t understand.”
My voice was quiet.
“I did all of that already.”
Every argument.
Every accusation.
Every night waiting.
Every time I asked him to notice.
“I fought because I still believed there was something to save.”
His face collapsed.
“And now?”
“Now I’m tired.”
Loan Giai resigned before she could be dismissed.
Her relationship with Quy On Dien didn’t become romantic afterward.
Without me standing between them, there was suddenly nothing exciting left to prove.
Months later, Ky Du told me they’d barely spoken since the investigation.
I didn’t ask for more.
My life had become busy in a completely different way.
At TSC, the project I’d once been told I wasn’t qualified to lead became mine.
Six months later, it launched successfully.
A year later, I received the director title I’d waited so long for.
Ky Du brought champagne.
She raised her glass.
“General Director Doanh.”
I laughed.
That silly joke I’d once made over breakfast no longer hurt.
Quy On Dien attended the industry awards ceremony that winter.
Afterward, he waited outside.
“I heard you won.”
“I did.”
“Congratulations.”
“Thank you.”
He looked older somehow.
Then he said:
“I keep thinking about that phone call.”
I knew which one.
“If you’d said you’d been in an accident, I would have gone to you.”
“Maybe.”
“You don’t believe me?”
“I do.”
That surprised him.
I smiled sadly.
“But I needed a partner who stayed on the phone long enough to hear me say it.”
He lowered his head.
There was nothing left to explain.
Before leaving, he asked one last question.
“If I had chosen you instead of her back then, would things have been different?”
I thought about it.
Then shook my head.
“You still don’t understand.”
His eyes met mine.
“It was never supposed to be a competition.”
And I walked away.
For years, I thought love meant waiting for someone to choose me.
Choose me over his ex.
Choose my work.
Choose my pain.
Choose my phone call.
But the day I lay alone in that unfamiliar hospital and quietly ended the call, something had already changed.
I stopped waiting to become important enough for Quy On Dien to notice.
And once I finally chose myself, I discovered the strangest thing.
I had never needed to defeat Loan Giai.
I had never needed him to admit I was better.
I only needed to leave the place where my worth was constantly being put on trial.
By the time Quy On Dien finally understood what he’d lost, I no longer needed his choice.
Because I had already made mine.
