Chapter 1 — Love Awakens After Leaving

The Person Blocking the General Director's Office Door

The thirty-fifth floor of the Doan Gia Group building was always strangely quiet at eight o'clock in the morning, as if the whole space was holding its breath waiting for something to happen. Vu Tuyet Nhi stepped out of the elevator with a cup of hot coffee in hand, walking straight, her heels tapping evenly on the shiny marble floor, and just looking at the way she glanced at the reception desk, the two staff members there immediately sat up straight.

"Hello, Tuyet Nhi." The young receptionist bowed her head slightly.

"Are there any appointments that interfere this morning?" Tuyet Nhi asked, her voice was neat, without a single extra word.

"There is... a female guest, sister. Said to be an old friend of the general manager, without an appointment, waiting in the lobby."

Tuyet Nhi did not need to ask more. Three years as Doan Bach Vu's special assistant had taught her enough to recognize that type of statement — "old friend" was always one of dozens of familiar openings that women who wanted to approach him used. She put her cup of coffee down on her desk, reviewed her schedule on her tablet, and then went straight to the lobby.

The woman sat there wearing a delicately tailored evening dress, an outfit that was not suitable for morning work hours at all, holding a gift box wrapped in a red bow. Seeing Tuyet Nhi approaching, she stood up.

"I need to meet Mr. Bach Vu. I'm his old classmate back in England."

"Sorry, Mr. Vu is having an important meeting with the board of directors until ten o'clock." Tuyet Nhi kept a polite smile just enough, not too cold nor too friendly. "If you want, I can arrange an official appointment through the secretariat after confirming the information."

"I only need five minutes."

"Sorry, his schedule is full all day." Tuyet Nhi looked straight into the woman's eyes, without avoiding or hesitation. "You can leave your business card, I will send it to you."

That's a sentence she had repeated countless times over the past three years, to all kinds of people - young ladies from tycoon families, models, actresses, even girls claiming to be "college friends" that Tuyet Nhi knew for sure Bach Vu had never had a class with in Vietnam because he studied high school and university abroad. The woman in front of her looked at her for a long time, her eyes both annoyed and searching, then finally put the gift box on the chair, turned around and left, her high heels tapping angrily on the stone floor.

Tuyet Nhi watched until the elevator door closed, then breathed a light sigh and returned to her desk. The colleagues in the next room were so used to this scene that they were no longer curious. Someone once joked that if a ranking was made of "an iron shield around the general director of the Doan family", Tuyet Nhi would unquestionably be number one, because during the three years she worked as a special assistant, no woman could surpass her to have a real private meeting with Bach Vu, except for official meetings with clear business purposes.

At nine thirty, the door to the conference room on the thirty-fifth floor opened. Doan Bach Vu stepped out first, tall figure, ash gray suit tailored down to every seam, his face showing no emotion after a meeting lasting nearly two hours with dense numbers and charts. He walked straight towards Tuyet Nhi's desk, without needing to look at her to know she was there, like a habit ingrained in his reflexes.

"How was the meeting?" Tuyet Nhi asked, ready to give him a cup of warm water — not coffee, because she knew he needed something calmer after long meetings.

"The board is still not satisfied with the pace of expansion into the southern market." Bach Vu took the glass of water and took a sip, his voice still steady as if reading a report. "Is it possible to move all work schedules with Japanese partners to Thursday this afternoon?"

"Moved." Tuyet Nhi replied without delay. "I also sent them an email to notify them at seven o'clock in the morning, after seeing the potentially long council meeting schedule."

Bach Vu stopped walking and looked at her for a moment. It was the kind of look he used to give her whenever she did something that went beyond his thoughts — not exactly surprise, because this had happened too many times to still surprise him, but more like a silent acknowledgment.

"Did anyone come to see you this morning?" he asked, his voice casual as if he were asking about the weather.

"A person introduced himself as an old classmate of mine in England, bringing a gift." Tuyet Nhi answered, not adding any personal feelings to her words, although in her heart she had memorized the face and the strange style of evening dress that mid-morning, in case that person ever came back. "I refused according to the correct procedure. I asked her to contact the secretariat if there was an official matter."

"I've never had any old classmates bring gifts to the company." Bach Vu raised the corners of his lips, an expression that was almost a smile but not quite a smile. "I handled it fine."

That's all. No fancy words of thanks, no lingering compliments. But for Tuyet Nhi, the three words "you handled it well" from Doan Bach Vu's mouth were enough to make her find a day at work worthwhile, even though she never showed it to her face.

At noon, while waiting for Bach Vu to have an online meeting with the foreign branch, Tuyet Nhi quickly ate a lunch box she brought along, sitting at the corner of the desk, her eyes still watching the afternoon schedule. A colleague on the same floor, a girl named Chu Bich Ngoc who worked in the internal communications department, stopped by and sat next to her, her voice full of curiosity.

"Hey Nhi, I heard that someone came to look for boss Vu this morning?"

"Yes, a guest without an appointment." Tuyet Nhi replied briefly, not wanting to give more details.

"You're really good. In the past three years, I haven't seen anyone surpass you to meet the boss in person." Bich Ngoc smiled, lowering her voice to a whisper as if telling an interesting secret. "Out there, people also say that you are the closest mysterious woman next to boss Vu, do you know?"

Tuyet Nhi paused for a second, her chopsticks picking up the rice stopped halfway. She smiled softly, trying to keep her voice calm.

"People say random things. I'm just an assistant, doing my job."

But her fingers, under the table, had tightened the hem of her shirt without realizing it. The corner of her mouth still curled up into a smile, but it was an incomplete smile — half happy to at least be mentioned by his name, even if only in a rumor; half aching because she knew better than anyone else the distance between the "mysterious woman" in that rumor and the real person sitting here, her rough fabric sleeves still smelling of laundry soap from the night before. Outsiders looking in only saw her as a sharp assistant, standing next to the general manager in hastily taken photos at the event, with all kinds of speculation about the true relationship between the two. None of them knew that when the office lights turned off, when the company car took Bach Vu back to the mansion, Tuyet Nhi also sat in that same car, but not to enter the splendid main hall with him, but to go around to the back gate, towards the small backyard where she had lived since birth.

The afternoon passed with a series of calls, emails, and a short working session with a domestic partner that was urgently rescheduled. At five thirty, Bach Vu called her into his private office to review the quarterly financial report about to be presented to the board of directors. The late afternoon sunlight poured through the large glass, dyeing the whole room a soft orange-yellow color, and in that moment, when Bach Vu bowed her head to consider each number she had just presented, Tuyet Nhi allowed herself to look at him a little longer than usual.

His face was serious, his features sharp, his eyes so focused that he almost forgot there was someone else sitting across from him. That was the face she had seen countless times during the past three years, and beyond, in a memory that she had never mentioned to anyone, not even Bach Vu himself.

"I compiled very detailed revenue data this quarter." He raised his head, his eyes meeting hers for a brief moment. "Thank you."

"That's my job." Tuyet Nhi replied, her voice was gentle but firm, like a familiar defensive wall she always erected at the right time.

At seven o'clock in the evening, when most of the offices had turned off the lights, the shuttle took both of them out of the building and towards the Doan family mansion located in the middle of a large, quiet plot of land on the outskirts of Hanoi. In the car, Bach Vu sat quietly looking at documents, while Tuyet Nhi looked out the window, watching the rows of street lights passing by, her heart gradually shifting from the urgent pace of a working day to a different feeling - the familiar feeling of about to step through an invisible door, leaving behind the image of her sharp assistant, and return to her true identity.

The car stopped in front of the government's main gate. Bach Vu stepped down, without turning back, went straight into the large hall where the warm yellow light was waiting. Tuyet Nhi sat in the car for a few more seconds, watching his back disappear behind the delicately carved wooden door, then signaled the driver to turn the car around to the back gate, which led to the backyard.

No one in the mansion, not even the person who called her "you're handling it well" less than an hour ago, knew that in just fifteen minutes, the sharpest girl in the company would take off her business suit, put on a simple cotton shirt, and start a completely different job - the job she had been doing silently for twenty-six years of her life, since the day she didn't even know what love was, let alone hide it.