Chapter 13 — Between Two Worlds: A Bride Exchanged for a Dumpling

After the Ma Dac Uy incident was exposed, although on the outside everything seemed to have returned to peace, Thua An felt a new insecurity in his heart. He understands that a person who has held power for many years, and has now lost all face and property, will not easily accept defeat. Insinuated threats began to reach his ears through a few acquaintances - someone said that Ma Dac Uy's son, currently working for a trading group in another district, had vowed to "account" for Mr. Ky; There were rumors that the Ma family in the surrounding area was trying to unite to retaliate.

Instead of sharing those worries with Tieu Mien like he usually did, Thua An began to tend to shoulder them himself and keep them to himself. He feared that if he let his wife know too much about potential threats, she would have to live in constant anxiety, affecting her health, which had not yet fully recovered from years of famine. He told himself he was doing the right thing — protecting her from unnecessary burdens — but he didn't realize that very silence was silently creating a dangerous distance between the two.

He began to spend more nights outside the warehouse, under the pretext of checking goods, but in reality he was left alone to think about defense plans, sometimes staying up all night studying the map of the area, making a list of people who could be potential threats. He also began to make some important decisions on his own without discussing them with Tieu Mien in advance, as was his previous habit - hiring more guards without clearly informing them of the reason, cutting back on some risky business trips without explaining them in detail, and sometimes giving short answers when she asked about unusual changes at work.

Tieu Mien, with the sensitivity of a wife who understands her husband better than anyone else, quickly noticed that change. She noticed that Thua An shared less and less with her. His eyes were often distant and thoughtful whenever she asked about trips to the mountains to visit his master or sudden decisions at work. There were nights when she woke up, saw that the bed next to her was empty, and knew that her husband was alone struggling with something outside the warehouse, but when she asked, he just replied lightly that "there's nothing to worry about, just go back to sleep".

"You're so different these days," Tieu Mien couldn't help but speak up one evening when she saw Thua An planning to leave the house again after a quick dinner. "You're hiding something from me, right? Since the Ma Dac Uy incident, you've been like a lost soul, always thinking vaguely, and no longer sharing with me like before."

Thua An paused, a feeling of guilt rising in his heart, but he still tried to maintain his stance. "I'm just worried about some security-related matters after the Ma Dacwei incident," he replied, trying to sound gentle. "There's nothing you need to worry about, just let me take care of it."

"Nothing to worry about?" Tieu Mien frowned, her voice began to have a rare harsh tone. "Do you remember what you once told me? That we are husband and wife, partners, it's not like you shoulder everything alone and I just sit back and wait. Yet now, every time something important comes up, you choose to hide it, pushing me out of decisions directly related to this whole family."

Tieu Ha, witnessing the tense atmosphere gradually forming between her sister and brother-in-law, could not help but worry. One afternoon, when the two sisters were alone together at the books, she asked quietly. "What's going on with you and your brother-in-law? Lately I feel like the atmosphere in the house is heavy, it's not as happy as before."

Tieu Mien sighed and closed the notebook. "I don't know anymore. Since the Ma Dac Uy incident, it's like he's been hiding something very important from me. I understand that he's worried about the safety of the whole family, but the way he handles everything alone, without sharing with me, makes me feel like I'm being pushed to the sidelines of my own life."

"Is it possible," Tieu Ha cautiously suggested, "that brother-in-law has a secret bigger than the threats from the Ma family, that he hasn't had the courage to tell? I've noticed that sometimes he looks towards the warehouse with a very strange look, both worried and as if he's protecting something precious."

That question made Tieu Mien pause, a vague confusion arose in her heart that she had never allowed herself to think about before. Over the past few months, she has chosen to trust her husband absolutely, not to inquire too deeply about the true origin of her fortune, and to accept the story of the mountain hermit as an inevitable part of her current life. But now, in the face of the increasingly obvious separation, she can't help but wonder if there's something bigger, more complicated hiding behind everything she once knew.

That reproach made Thua An stunned, realizing somewhat the absurdity of his recent behavior. But the fear of the looming threats, along with the fact that he was not ready to face the real story about the gate - which he had always avoided revealing no matter how many times he tried to say it - made him still choose to stay silent, only saying a few general words of reassurance and then leaving, leaving Tieu Mien standing there with hurt eyes that could not be hidden.

That night, when Thua An went out to the warehouse, placing his hand on the wooden cabinet door as usual, he was startled to realize something unusual: the familiar pale blue halo of light was no longer stable like the previous weeks, but flickered, sometimes dim and sometimes bright, just like the first days when the gate was still weak. He tried to open the door, but the layer of mist separating the two worlds vibrated abnormally, causing the item he was about to exchange to almost get stuck between the two sides, unable to penetrate completely.

He stood dumbfounded in front of the door, a feeling of panic rising in his heart. This gate, which had saved his life and supported an entire business, was now showing signs of instability again, and he couldn't help but think of Tieu Mien's reproaches earlier, of the gap that had been silently growing between the two since the Ma Dac Uy incident. His intuition told him that this was not a coincidence.

He tried placing his hand on the closet door longer, trying to regain the strange feeling of understanding he had in the first days, and this time, another vague image appeared in his mind — no longer the warm image of two clasped hands, but a cold void, a distance creeping in between. He understood, although he did not dare to completely believe it, that his own concealment, even though it came from the intention of protecting his wife, was unintentionally gnawing away the energy that fed the gate.

He stood still for a long time in the darkness of the warehouse, torn between fear of outside threats and a newer, closer fear—fear of losing the very bond that had sustained everything he had. He knew he needed to change something, but the wall of secrecy he had built up over the past many months had now become a burden he didn't know how to remove without causing everything to collapse.

That night, when he returned home, he saw Tieu Mien still awake, sitting next to a flickering oil lamp, holding the wooden comb he gave him, looking distantly into the dark yard. He wanted to go forward, wanted to say everything, but the words were stuck in his throat. He was afraid that once he spoke, she would think she had been deceived all along, would lose trust in him, and who knows, that breakdown would accelerate the collapse of the gate he was trying to protect. That paradox made him keep procrastinating, choosing to silently walk through the bedroom, leaving Tieu Mien alone with her chaotic thoughts.

In the days that followed, the atmosphere in the house became even more stuffy. Tieu Mien still did all the bookkeeping and took good care of her husband as usual, but the gossip around the dinner table and the moments of leaning on each other's shoulders under the moonlight had gradually become less frequent, replaced by a heavy silence that both feel but neither actively breaks. One night, Thua An went out to the warehouse three or four times, each time seeing a pale blue light weaker than the last time, to the point that one night, the gate could not be opened at all, even though he had been waiting for many hours, his hand placed on the cold wooden surface, filled with extreme confusion.

He returned to the bedroom when it was almost dawn, his face haggard, his eyes revealing the helplessness he rarely showed in front of others. Tieu Mien, even though she pretended to be asleep, still felt the insecurity emanating from her husband, and in her heart, the worry about some great secret being hidden became even deeper. She knew that if this situation continued, sooner or later, something would have to break - either the truth, or the marriage that both of them had worked so hard to build over the past months.