Chapter 8 — I Shall Never Set Foot in Nam Thanh Again

I retreated into the shadows, wishing the darkness could be even deeper, absolute and suffocating. My father sat before the glowing monitor, extracting data from the system before carefully saving a backup onto a USB drive.

"This device belongs to Tan Tu Bach," he murmured, his voice steady. "But the person who logged in? That is not necessarily him."

I nodded in the dim light. "I know, Dad."

Tan Tu Bach was never bright enough to pull off something like this. He was far too lazy to bother with such meticulous, petty details. The only person capable of accessing my father’s recovery files was Man Tri Ha. She had been the same in my past life—always lurking half a step behind him, never competing, never screaming, never throwing a tantrum. Yet, she always managed to get exactly what she wanted.

My father turned to me. "Do you intend to tell the Tan family now?"

"No," I replied, tucking the USB into a hidden compartment of my backpack. "If I say anything now, they will only claim that Man Tri Ha did it unintentionally."

They would accuse me of making a mountain out of a molehill. They would argue that because I knew his phone password, who could prove that I hadn't used his device to log in myself, only to frame someone else? The narrative would twist and turn until the blame circled back to me, pinning itself firmly to my back. They were experts at that performance, and I was all too familiar with the script.

My father sat in silence for a moment before speaking. "Thanh Chi, think carefully. Having the evidence is the easy part. The real trial is whether you can withstand the pressure when the time comes."

I offered a faint smile. "Dad, I have already endured it once."

In my previous life, I had endured every broken promise Tan Tu Bach made. I had endured every snide provocation from Man Tri Ha. I had endured the damp, cramped rental room in Nam Thanh and countless long, agonizing nights spent waiting for him to finally turn his head and look at me. The only tragedy was that, back then, I had poured my endurance into the wrong vessel. In this life, I would not waste a single drop of my strength waiting for him.

My father looked at me, his gaze profound and searching, before finally nodding. "Very well."

He opened a different folder, revealing a tracking chart of Tan Tu Bach's injuries over the last three months. He clicked on the final entry. "His recovery is nowhere near as successful as outsiders believe. The muscle groups behind his right leg are unstable; he absolutely cannot increase his sprint intensity right now."

I stared at the screen. In my previous life, Tan Tu Bach had suffered a catastrophic injury during an intense training session the very next day. Had he not suffered that recurrence, he would have undoubtedly made the elite training list for the Nam Thanh Sports Academy. If my father hadn’t stepped in to treat him, his wounds would never have healed as quickly as they did.

But now? Man Tri Ha had downloaded the initial draft. She knew it contained the line, "Gradually resume sprint training," but she had no idea that the document was two weeks old. Following subsequent check-ups, my father had revised his medical assessment. She was carrying an outdated map into deep, treacherous mountains; getting lost was only a matter of time.

I had no obligation to warn her. And certainly no responsibility to save her.

The next morning, the training camp’s group chat exploded. Although I was no longer part of the camp, I had joined their logistics group in my past life just to make things easier for Tan Tu Bach, and I hadn't bothered to leave yet.

I had barely finished breakfast when someone shared a video. It showed Tan Tu Bach standing beneath my apartment building, reaching out to tug at the strap of my backpack. Only a profile of my face was visible. It was from yesterday, when he had blocked my path. The clip had been masterfully edited; it captured only the moment I looked at him with cold indifference and said, "Your training, your leg—none of it has anything to do with me."

Everything that led to that moment had been stripped away. Why he had cornered me, why he had demanded I prepare his files, why I had spoken those words—all of it was gone. Almost immediately, a comment appeared in the thread: "So, is this the childhood sweetheart of our Tu Bach?"