Chapter 5 — Fake Kisses with My Ex's Best Friend

After the conversation in the elevator with Bách Nhân, Khả Tâm went home and did not say anything more to Nhật Hạ for two days in a row. She still went to work normally, still "gradually remembered" little by little in front of Thành Kiệt according to the script, still smiling and greeting her colleagues, but inside, something had completely changed. The initial pain, which made her cry silently, gradually transformed into another feeling, colder, sharper, and much more dangerous.

Friday night, when they both sat down to have dinner in the small apartment, Nhật Hạ noticed her friend silently staring at the bowl of rice, her chopsticks barely moving.

"What are you thinking?" Nhật Hạ asked, putting down his chopsticks.

Khả Tâm looked up, there was something in his eyes that made Nhật Hạ shiver a bit, "I think, if he wants to keep both options at the same time to see which one is more beneficial, then I should also show him that I am not the only option that he can arbitrarily leave behind when he no longer needs it."

"What do you mean?" Nhật Hạ frowned.

"I want him to be jealous," Khả Tâm spoke frankly, her voice so decisive that even she was surprised at her calmness at this moment. "I want him to see me happy with someone else, so that he will wonder if the decision to abandon me was a mistake or not. I don't need him back, I just need him to pay the price with the feeling of loss he intended to cause me."

Nhật Hạ sat quietly for a moment, then blurted out half-jokingly, half-seriously, "Then you need to find someone to pretend to be your boyfriend. It must be someone who knows Thành Kiệt, so that the news can spread to his ears as quickly as possible, the closer the better, the type of friend he is most effective."

That careless sentence, right when Nhật Hạ finished speaking, both of them froze and looked at each other. In Khả Tâm's head, a name popped out immediately, so clearly that she wondered why she hadn't thought of it sooner.

"Tưởng Bách Nhân," she said softly.

"Are you crazy?" Nhật Hạ rolled her eyes, "Brother Nhân is Thành Kiệt's best friend, how could he help you with this?"

"It's because he's Thành Kiệt's best friend that it works." Khả Tâm analyzed, her voice gradually becoming sharper as if she were planning a real media campaign, the job she is best at. "If I were to date a stranger, Thành Kiệt probably wouldn't care much, even feel relieved because I 'have someone else to worry about, he'll feel less guilty'. But if that person is Bách Nhân, the person he trusts the most, the person who knows all his secrets the most, then it's not just a matter of ordinary jealousy. It will be a shock, a betrayal that he has to wonder if he caused it or not."

"But Mr. Nhân has no reason to agree to help you take revenge on your best friend." Nhật Hạ is still skeptical.

"He told me himself, that he was sorry for being silent for so long." Khả Tâm recalled the conversation in the elevator, "And he also did not agree with the way Thành Kiệt behaved, I saw it clearly in his eyes. I think, if I proposed properly, he would agree, not because he wanted to harm his friend, but because he also wanted Thành Kiệt to reflect on himself." Nhật Hạ sighed, rubbed his forehead, "Heart, I support you in finding justice for yourself, but this plan sounds too risky. If it breaks down, not only will your relationship with Thành Kiệt end in disgrace, but the friendship between Bách Nhân and Thành Kiệt will also be broken. Are you sure you are willing to bear the responsibility for dragging a ten-year friendship into your personal revenge?"

Nhật Hạ's question made Khả Tâm pause a bit. She was not a heartless person, and the thought of possibly breaking someone else's long-standing friendship just for her own benefit made her feel truly guilty. But then she thought again, it was Thành Kiệt who was breaking everything, breaking the three-year love, breaking the trust, and perhaps, sooner or later, he would break the friendship with Bách Nhân if he continued to live a double life like that. She was just accelerating a truth that already existed before.

"I will make it clear to him from the beginning, that this is just an act, nothing more than that, and I will take full responsibility if anything happens to their friendship." Khả Tâm decided, "I will let him freely choose. If he refuses, I will find another way."

On Monday morning, Khả Tâm proactively texted Bách Nhân, asking to meet him during lunch break at Gió Sông restaurant, the same place where he had witnessed her collapse. She thought choosing the right place would probably make her proposal more sincere and easier to understand.

Bách Nhân arrived on time, sat down opposite her, his eyes were a bit suspicious when he saw Khả Tâm's unusually serious face. "What do you want to talk about?"

Khả Tâm took a deep breath, then spoke frankly, without beating around the bush. "I want to ask you to help me with something. It might sound very strange, even excessive, but I want you to hear it all before answering."

She recounted the entire plan, from wanting to pretend to date to make Thành Kiệt jealous and regretful, to the reason why she chose him and not anyone else. She spoke clearly and decisively, not shying away from the fact that this was a selfish action that could damage his and Thành Kiệt's friendship.

"I know this is an outrageous offer," she said, her voice sincere, "If you refuse, I completely understand, and I won't blame you at all. But I think, you're the only one who can help me, and also the only one who knows the whole truth so this doesn't turn out to be another scam to deceive another innocent person."

Bách Nhân sat quietly for a long time, twirling the coffee cup in front of him, his eyes thoughtful. He didn't answer right away, but asked again." Why me? Besides the reason 'close to Thành Kiệt' that you just said, there must be other reasons?"

Khả Tâm was a bit surprised by the counter-question, but she thought for a moment and answered honestly, "Because you are the only person in this matter who told me the truth, when everyone else was silent or chose to avoid it. I think, a person who is willing to be honest even when it is difficult, will be the most suitable person to walk with me through a plan that is inherently based on lies, without making things worse."

That answer made Bách Nhân silent for a while longer. He thought about Thành Kiệt, about the conversation the previous morning when his friend admitted that he was weighing the interests between two women like a business problem. He thought about ten years of friendship, about what he and Thành Kiệt had gone through. But he also thought about Khả Tâm, about the image of her crying alone in this very cafe, about the naked frankness of the proposal she had just made.

"I need time to think," he finally said, "This is not something that can be decided in five minutes."

"I know." Khả Tâm nodded, "Think carefully. No matter how you answer, I thank you for listening," She stood up to leave, but Bách Nhân called back, "Tâm."

She turned back to look at him.

"If you agree," he said slowly, as if weighing his words, "then we need to set clear boundaries from the beginning, so neither of us gets hurt further by a drama that's already complicated enough." Khả Tâm nodded, "Of course. I will respect any limits you set."

On the way back to the office, Khả Tâm walked slowly through each familiar street, still confused with the proposal he had just made. She asked herself no less than a dozen times whether she was going too far, whether she was turning her pain into a burden for someone who had nothing to do with her and Thành Kiệt's relationship. But every time she thought about the words "I will say goodbye at the end of this month" that she overheard, the fire of determination in her heart flared up stronger.

Returning to her desk, she sent a short text message to Nhật Hạ who was in a meeting in the next room: "I talked to Mr. Nhân. He said he needed time to think."

Nhật Hạ texted back immediately, "Whatever the result is, the important thing is that you dared to say it. Let's go eat this afternoon after work, I'll buy you the milk tea you like."

That afternoon passed strangely slowly. Khả Tâm tried to focus on the content plan for the next quarter's campaign, but his mind kept wandering, occasionally glancing towards the Design room area, where Bách Nhân was sitting and working, trying to guess what he was thinking after the afternoon conversation. There were a few times when their eyes accidentally met across the gap between the rows of tables, then they both quickly turned away, as if afraid someone would see the hidden confusion.

At the end of work, when Khả Tâm was packing her things to prepare to leave, her phone vibrated with a text message from Bách Nhân's number, the number he asked for at noon so that he could easily contact her about "plans" if any. She opened it to read, her heart beating faster than usual.

"I agree. But we need to meet and clarify a few things before starting anything."

Khả Tâm stood silently in the middle of the office hallway, reading and re-reading that short message three or four times, a feeling of both relief and confusion invaded her at the same time. Relieved because her plan was about to be implemented, and confused because she knew, from this moment, everything would no longer be as simple as a sudden decision in pain, but would become a series of actions she had to maintain, had to perform to the fullest, in front of the eyes of everyone she knew.

She texted back, her fingers shaking slightly on the screen, "Thank you. I will arrange to meet with you as soon as possible to discuss everything in detail."

Putting down the phone, she looked out the office window, where the city lights were starting to shine at dusk, and told herself, no matter what the road ahead is, she will not back down. She didn't know that Bách Nhân's short answer, behind it, was a long night of him tossing and turning between friendship and righteousness, between the safety of staying on the sidelines and a decision that could completely change the life trajectory of all three people.