Chapter 12 — I Won't Wait for You to Return

Furthermore, the two of you have been together for eight years without marriage; who can say for sure if it will ever lead to anything at all...

Ha Nhan let out a faint laugh. The sound was colder and more piercing than any sob.

So, it is not that you do not know me, Auntie. You simply decided that I had outlived my usefulness.

Chu’s mother grew flustered, rushing to defend herself. Nhan, that is not what I meant. I have always thought you were a good girl, it is just that Dien is currently at a critical stage in his career.

Ha Nhan cut her off. He needed a new girlfriend who could help him get into that research project, and he needed an ex-girlfriend who could be molded into a gold-digging villain, someone to cast him in the role of the innocent, devoted victim. Auntie, you were not deceived by him. You simply chose to believe the version of events that was most profitable for your son.

The recording ended abruptly. The truth was finally laid bare. In his desperate pursuit of the junior student—and his desire to leverage her professor father’s connections—Dien had lied to his own parents, claiming that Ha Nhan had dumped him for being poor. And his parents were far from innocent. They knew Ha Nhan existed, they knew how she had sacrificed herself to support him all these years, and they were well aware of his flirtations with the student. Yet, faced with the prospect of his advancement, they chose silence. They chose to play the fool, and ultimately, they chose to participate in the charade.

He had reduced eight years of Ha Nhan’s unwavering devotion to the caricature of a shallow, money-grubbing harpy. The entire family had trampled over her youth and her dignity to pave a pristine path for him. His carefully crafted persona—the man who had finally waited long enough to find the right one—crumbled instantly, revealing itself as the most pathetic, laughable fraud in existence. Ha Nhan posted the audio with a single, biting caption: Eight years of my youth, fed to the dogs, and in doing so, I ended up raising a pack of wolves.

The backlash struck like a thunderbolt shattering dry wood. Co Trach Vu did not merely lose his luxury brand endorsements; the films he had already secured as the lead actor began terminating his contracts one by one, leaving him to face astronomical breach-of-contract penalties. Dien was summoned by the Chemistry Department of the university; his name was unceremoniously struck from the prestigious project list, and his doctoral candidacy was placed under a rigorous academic review. The things they valued most in this world were the very things they had destroyed with their own hands.

As for us, we stopped paying attention to the trending topics. Our guesthouse had suddenly gone viral. It began with a short video I had captured on a whim. In it, the surface of Erhai Lake shimmered with light, the owner was busy tie-dying fabric in the courtyard, A Luong was roasting a suckling pig, and Ha Nhan was bent over, carefully trimming a bouquet of daisies. The sunlight caught her profile, casting a glow that was both peaceful and vibrant. Using the skills in composition and lighting I had learned during my years of trailing after film crews, I edited that three-minute clip into something that felt like a short, cinematic masterpiece. Within half a day of posting, the video had surpassed one hundred thousand likes. Scores of heartbroken women left comments:

It looks so healing; I want to go to Dali and stay for a while.

The way she trims those flowers is so beautiful; she radiates such a quiet, resilient strength.

Bookings for the guesthouse skyrocketed. The owner could not stop grinning and decided to promote Ha Nhan and me from volunteers to shareholders. Ha Nhan took the patience and meticulous organization she had honed over eight years of caring for Dien and applied it entirely to the management of the guesthouse. She stayed up for two nights straight, crafting an incredibly detailed guide to Dali. From the best place to find authentic bridge-crossing noodles to the safest routes for cycling around the lake—and even which seasons offered the best views of the clouds—every detail was recorded with absolute precision.