Chapter 1 — CEO Phong, Stop Chasing Her—She Already Has a Marriage Certificate

At seven o'clock in the morning, the October sunlight penetrated through the cream-colored linen curtains, falling in thin streaks on the oak dining table in the Phong family's villa. Vương Nhã Kỳ stood in front of the stove, her hands quickly flipping the omelet so that the yolk wouldn't break, a small detail that she had never forgotten over the past seven years: Phong Chính Nguyên did not like the egg yolk to leak onto the plate, he liked it just cooked, firm, and still soft inside.

She put the plate of eggs on the table, next to it was a cup of black coffee without sugar, hot enough to drink immediately without having to wait for it to cool - because she knew her husband was not in the habit of sitting at the dining table for long. He always ate breakfast in exactly twelve minutes, no more, no less, read reports on his tablet while chewing, and left the house at seven twenty-five, neither early nor late.

Nhã Kỳ memorized all those numbers like a prayer she recited every morning.

"Dad, can you take me to school today?" Phong Bảo Nhiên, their six-year-old daughter, sat perched on a high chair, her legs swinging, holding a small spoon to scoop up pieces of oatmeal. She had eyes like her mother, but the way she frowned when thinking was exactly like her father.

Chính Nguyên looked up from the screen for exactly one second, enough to look at his daughter. "Dad has a meeting soon. Let me take you there."

"But dad promised." Bảo Nhiên pouted.

"Dad will take you on Friday," he spoke, his voice monotonous, without any fluctuations, as if announcing the schedule of a shareholder meeting. Then he turned back to the screen, his fingers quickly gliding across the glass, his eyebrows slightly frowning when he read a number that was not as expected.

Nhã Kỳ poured more coffee and said nothing. She was used to the fact that Chính Nguyên's promises always had a condition attached - unless something happened to interrupt, he still kept his word, it's just that the way he kept his word was so cold that it was difficult for the listener to feel comforted.

Seven years ago, when Nhã Kỳ first met Phong Chính Nguyên at a charity fundraiser sponsored by Phong Thịnh Group, she was fascinated not by his cool handsome appearance, but by the way he stood quietly in the corner of the room, observing everything that happened without having to squeeze into the crowd to demonstrate his presence. A thirty-year-old man who has the ability to run a large corporation, but seems strangely lonely at his own family party.

She thought, maybe he just needed someone who understood him.

She was half wrong. You don't need anyone to understand you. He just needs someone to run his life smoothly, so he can devote himself fully to his work.

But Nhã Kỳ, when she was twenty-six years old, did not see that difference. She only sees a lonely man, and she believes that love — if patient enough, sincere enough — can melt any ice, no matter how thick.

"Nhã Kỳ." Chính Nguyên closed his tablet, stood up, and buttoned his vest sleeve. "Next week I have to go to Singapore for ten days to sign a cooperation agreement with a retail chain there. I will take Bảo Nhiên with me, so you can get used to the international environment early."

Nhã Kỳ paused slightly. "It's your mid-term break that whole week, I was going to take you to the beach—"

"This trip is more important," he interrupted, not in a harsh tone, but with a decisiveness that made the listener immediately understand that there was no room for argument. "The Embassy will have a private reception, with his wife accompanying the partners. Bảo Nhiên's accompanying will create better sympathy."

"What about you?" Nhã Kỳ asked, trying to keep her voice gentle.

"You stay at home and take care of the housework. Mom also needs someone to be on duty. Besides—" he paused for a moment, "—I'm not used to those kinds of parties."

That statement was not malicious. Nhã Kỳ knows that clearly. But it still hurt her, in the way a small but deep cut into the exact spot that she had deliberately ignored for seven years: that in Chính Nguyên's eyes, she was always placed in a separate box - "the wife at home", completely separate from "the wife who can stand next to him at work".

She was one of the three best students in the fashion design course, and her graduation collection was once introduced by a lifestyle magazine. But seven years of being the daughter-in-law of the Phong family has taught her how to fold all of those things into a corner of the closet, the same way she folds up old sketches, only bringing them out to look at on sleepless nights.

"Yes," she replied, simply as always. "I will prepare luggage for you two." Chính Nguyên nodded, not realizing — or not paying attention — to the short silence before his wife's answer. He bent down and gently kissed Bảo Nhiên's head, told her to finish the bowl of porridge, then picked up her bag and walked out the door. The shiny black car had been waiting outside in the yard five minutes ago.

Nhã Kỳ stood at the door, watching her husband's figure disappear behind the iron gate. She didn't wave, because she knew he wouldn't turn around to look. Seven years, and she had counted correctly—only three times had he turned around before getting into the car. One time was the wedding day, when he looked back at her standing in the middle of the wedding stage in a white dress. One time, on the day Bảo Nhiên was born, he looked at her through the glass window of the delivery room with eyes that she thought - just thought - were a bit emotional. And again, she no longer remembers why.

Three times in seven years. She learned not to ask for a fourth time.

Mrs. Thái Ngọc Hân, her mother-in-law, appeared at the top of the stairs, wearing a silk robe and holding the agarwood rosary she used every morning. "Have you prepared things for Nguyen and Bảo Nhiên? This trip is important, don't let him lack anything."

"Yes, I finished preparing it yesterday," Nhã Kỳ replied, her voice still soft and polite like she had been for the past seven years.

Mrs. Ngọc Hân nodded, looked at her daughter-in-law for a moment longer than usual, as if about to say something more, but in the end she just sighed and turned back into the room. Nhã Kỳ did not pay attention to that look. She was busy thinking about the cake she had ordered for her own birthday — her thirty-third birthday, which fell on the fifth day of her husband's business trip.

She decided that if he forgot this year like the previous three years, she would buy her own cake, light her own candles, sit alone in her old office - a room now filled with fabrics and unfinished drawings that she had never had the courage to throw away - and wish herself a happy birthday.

But this year, another thought popped into her head, a bolder thought than her resigned self for the past seven years: if he didn't remember, why didn't she try to surprise herself? If she flew to Singapore and appeared before him on his birthday, maybe — just maybe — he would be startled to realize he had forgotten something important, and in that rare moment of confusion, a bit of genuine warmth would creep between them.

She did not know that decision would be the beginning of the collapse of all the trust she had built for seven years.

That afternoon, Nhã Kỳ sat in her old office, opening the wooden box containing her student sketches. She pulled out a leather-bound notebook with frayed corners and flipped to the last page — a drawing of an evening dress she never had the chance to sew, inspired by the moonlight reflecting on an autumn lake. She drew it the night before her wedding, as a farewell to her old dream.

Seven years later, those lines are still intact in her, just waiting for a chance to come to life.

Her phone vibrated. It's Trần Tú Anh, best friend since college, currently working as an editor for a lifestyle magazine.

"Nhã Kỳ, want to go for coffee tonight? I just came back from Milan, there's something I want to tell you."

Nhã Kỳ looked out the window, where the afternoon sunlight was dyeing the entire garden behind the villa yellow. The white rose bushes Mrs. Ngọc Hân planted from the day she first became a bride are now in thick rows, blooming according to the season, as a quiet testament to the time she has stayed in this place. Seven years is long enough for a small flower cluster to become an entire fence, long enough for a twenty-six-year-old girl who once dreamed of standing on the fashion stage to become a thirty-three-year-old woman who knows her husband's breakfast tastes better by heart than her own dreams.

"Okay. I'm free," she replied, her voice much more relieved than it had been all morning.

In fact, besides Tú Anh, Nhã Kỳ doesn't have many people with whom she can talk comfortably without having to consider every word. Her childhood friends, after learning that she was marrying into a large family, gradually became fewer, perhaps because everyone was shy when faced with the invisible distance between the Phong family's villa and the small apartments they were renting. Only Tú Anh still kept calling her by her familiar name, without any reservation.

She closed the notebook and put it in a drawer, but this time, she didn't lock the drawer like usual. Something inside her, so vague yet so real, was beginning to move—as if her body knew, sooner than her mind, that her days of resignation were about to come to an end.