Chapter 1 — Fake Kisses with My Ex's Best Friend

The stairs on the sixth floor of the Hưng Thịnh building were always empty at this time, seven forty-five in the morning, when the elevator was jammed because the whole building arrived at once. Đỗ Khả Tâm chose the stairs not because she liked exercising, but because she was carrying two cups of hot coffee: one for herself and one for a seven-fifty client meeting that the Communications department could not be late for by even a minute.

She walked quickly, her heels tapping steadily on the stairs, her mind still rewinding the presentation slides one last time. Right at the bend between the fifth and sixth floors, her right heel slid lightly on the smooth edge of the stairs because someone had just cleaned the floor. She flinched, two cups of coffee flew out of her hands, her body fell sideways, and the last thing she remembered before hitting her head on the stair railing was the sound of coffee pouring onto the tile floor, sounding like a sigh.

The fall did not knock her unconscious. It was only hard enough to make her ears ring for a few seconds and send a sharp pain from her temple to the back of her neck. When she opened her eyes, three or four colleagues were gathered around her, including a familiar face bent over her with a panicked expression.

"Tâm! Are you okay?" Diệp Thành Kiệt knelt on one knee, his hand supporting her shoulder. His voice was urgent, but his eyes flicked to his watch—a gesture so small that perhaps only Khả Tâm, who had loved him for three years, noticed.

She was about to say she was fine, only a little scrape on her elbow, when a thought flashed through her mind. For the past two weeks, something had been wrong between her and Thành Kiệt. He replied to her messages more slowly. He took calls in the hallway instead of beside her. Whenever she walked past, he looked at his phone and turned it face down. She had no evidence, only the intuition of a woman in love who had begun to doubt—an intuition that made her fear she was wrong even as she feared she was right.

And now, right before her eyes, was the chance to know the truth without asking directly, without making a fuss, without risking being lied to again with a smooth answer.

"Who... are you?" She frowned slightly, letting her voice tremble as she looked at Thành Kiệt as if trying to remember a face from far away. "Why does my head hurt? Everything is mixed up." The whole group froze. Someone called security; someone else said she needed to go to the hospital immediately. Thành Kiệt's face went pale. He seized her hand. "Tâm, it's me. It's Thành Kiệt. Don't you remember me?"

Khả Tâm looked straight into his eyes and was surprised to realize how smoothly she was acting. Perhaps the real pain helped; perhaps her long-simmering doubt had become the perfect cover. She shook her head slowly. "I... I don't remember clearly. Everything seems to have been erased."

The hospital was fifteen minutes from the company. During the ride, Thành Kiệt held her hand while Khả Tâm said nothing and quietly observed him. He seemed genuinely worried. Yet amid all the questions, she caught him twice taking out his phone, checking the screen, and quickly putting it away whenever he noticed her looking.

The doctor concluded that it was a mild concussion with no physical brain damage and advised monitoring her for a few days. Localized short-term memory loss caused by psychological trauma combined with impact was possible, though rare, and usually resolved on its own. That was the opening Khả Tâm needed, and she seized it before considering the consequences.

The first person she called, as soon as Thành Kiệt went out to take a work call, was Vũ Nhật Hạ.

Nhật Hạ had been Khả Tâm's best friend since their first days at Hưng Thịnh Creative. They worked in the same Communications department, ate lunch together, complained about deadlines together, and she was the only person who had heard Khả Tâm confess her vague doubts over the past two weeks. Nhật Hạ rushed into the hospital room with red eyes. Just as she was about to hug her friend, Khả Tâm caught her hand, signaled for silence, and leaned close to whisper.

"I pretended to lose my memory."

Nhật Hạ widened her eyes and took a half step back, "What?"

"I'm not really crazy. But I want to try, want to see what's going on in the past two weeks that he's been hiding from me. If I ask directly, he'll have time to prepare the perfect answer. But if I 'don't remember', everyone around me will accidentally tell me everything, unwary, unprepared."

"Tâm, this is the craziest idea I've ever heard from you, and I've heard you suggest quite a few crazy ideas." Nhật Hạ rubbed her temples. Her voice was still panicked, but her eyes gradually softened when she saw the determination in her friend's eyes. "Are you sure? If it's revealed, everyone will think you're a liar."

"I'm not lying to anyone." Khả Tâm held her friend's hand tightly, her voice choked but determined. "I'm just trying to find a way to avoid being lied to again. If he's honest, everything will be fine, I'll 'gradually remember' over a few days and no one will get hurt. But if something's wrong... I need to know before it's too late."

Nhật Hạ was silent for a long time, looking at her friend lying on the hospital bed with a small bandage on her temple, then finally sighed and nodded. "Okay. I'll help you. But you have to promise, if things go too far, if it's too painful, you have to stop immediately, don't try to endure it alone." Khả Tâm nodded, not knowing that promise, just a few days later, would become much harder to keep than she thought.

That evening, Thành Kiệt stayed at the hospital until nearly ten o'clock, bought porridge, comforted her, and even called Khả Tâm's mother in the countryside to tell her that her daughter only had a mild concussion, nothing serious, don't worry and quickly took the car to the city. Looking at him so thoughtfully, there was a moment when Khả Tâm almost thought she was going too far, unfoundedly doubting the man who was still sitting next to the hospital bed taking care of her little by little.

But then, at exactly nine forty-five, his phone lit up on the table, and for a moment he thought she was asleep. Khả Tâm glanced at a notification appearing on the lock screen, a name she had never heard: "Bảo Ngân: Are you done yet? I've been waiting for you."

Thành Kiệt picked up the phone, walked into the hallway to listen, his voice was soft but enough for the first sentence to reach Khả Tâm's ears through the slightly opened door: "Yes, I'm at the hospital, I'll come over in a bit..."

The door closed, his voice faded away. Khả Tâm lay still, her heart pounding, her hands clasped tightly around the edge of the hospital blanket. She closed her eyes, tried to keep her breathing even, telling herself that maybe it was just colleagues, just work, don't rush to conclusions.

But the words "I've been waiting all this time" kept ringing in her head like a bell that refused to go off.

Nearly eleven o'clock at night, when Thành Kiệt returned, Nhật Hạ stopped by again, bringing a bag of personal belongings for Khả Tâm because she knew her friend would have to stay in the hospital for at least one more night. Seeing that Khả Tâm's expression had changed, Nhật Hạ sat down on the edge of the bed and held her hand.

"What's wrong? You just talked to the doctor, why is your face so pale?"

Khả Tâm recounted the text messages and calls she had just heard, her voice trembling even though she tried to stay calm. After listening, Nhật Hạ frowned, "They could be real colleagues, don't rush to conclusions. But if you decide to continue playing this role, we have to discuss carefully, we can't leave any loopholes." The two whispered and discussed until nearly midnight, setting up basic rules: Khả Tâm would only "forget" things from the last three to four months, enough to get the necessary information without having to act so long that it became obvious; she would not take the initiative to ask about anyone specifically, only ask general questions and let others volunteer information; and, most importantly, Nhật Hạ would be the only person who knew the truth, never revealing it to anyone else in the office, including close colleagues.

"My biggest fear is that you will hurt more when you know the truth than when you know nothing," Nhật Hạ said, her voice low. "Are you sure you can endure it?"

Khả Tâm looked up at the ceiling of the hospital room, the pale white fluorescent light falling on her face, "I don't know. But it's better to be in pain because I know the truth, than to live peacefully in a lie that I don't know about. If he's sincere, I'll be the one at fault for doubting, and I'll make up for it by loving him more. But if not..."

She left the sentence unfinished, not daring to think further. Nhật Hạ squeezed her friend's hand, didn't say anything more, just stayed until Khả Tâm fell asleep before quietly leaving.

That night, Khả Tâm couldn't sleep. She lay in the darkness of the hospital room, listening to the steady whirring of the heart rate monitor of the patient in the next bed, and wondered where the drama she had just created, just to test one person's heart, would eventually lead her. She did not expect that this was just the first brick of a long road, where real and fake kisses would be so intertwined that even she, later, would have a hard time distinguishing them.

The next morning, when the doctor came to examine her again and asked her if she remembered anything else, Khả Tâm looked at Thành Kiệt standing next to him, his eyes were full of sincere concern, then she shook her head slightly, her voice weak: "I'm still... a bit confused. The last few months have been like a blank space to me."

The doctor took notes in the file, gave a few more instructions and then left. Thành Kiệt sat down on the edge of the bed, held her hand, "It's okay, slowly you will remember. I will tell you everything, you will know everything."

Khả Tâm looked at him, smiling slightly, a smile that only she knew was heavy with how much was an act and how much was real. "Yes. Tell me. Tell me everything, so I can remember from the beginning."

She didn't know how much that statement would open the door to a painful truth. But she knew one thing for sure: she had started, and would not stop until she found the answer, whatever it was.