Wei Dinh Tieu said nothing. He quietly washed his hands and turned off the faucet.
Outside, Giai Moc Vi stood with a dark cloud over her head. Seeing the way he was trying so hard not to laugh made her chest burn like someone set a fire inside it.
The corner of his mouth lifted slightly, his eyes narrowing with amusement.
His eyelashes trembled a little from the effort of holding back his laughter.
Giai Moc Vi was completely defeated.
Why would she stick a man's photo on the mirror?
Was she planning to see that face every morning and every night?
What kind of childish behavior was this?!
No. That wasn't the main problem.
The problem was
She got caught by the owner of that face!
Look at him. He was clearly enjoying this deep down, wasn't he?
"Hmm? Girl. Your mouth says you don't like me, but in truth you're obsessed with me, aren't you?"
Giai Moc Vi swore that if he dared to say something like that out loud, she would absolutely smash that handsome face of his.
Fortunately, Wei Dinh Tieu didn't say anything.
She quickly pushed open the bathroom door, shook the water droplets from her hands, and said, "I'm done. Let's go."
Her face darkened as she added, "I need to use it too,"
then shoved herself back into the bathroom and slammed the door shut with a "bang," locking it from inside.
Thankfully, she didn't let Wei Dinh Tieu see the notes she wrote on the menu, otherwise that man would be even more unbearably smug!
She hurriedly tore the photo off the mirror. She was about to crumple it and throw it away when she suddenly noticed something written on the back in black ink:
"Target."
Giai Moc Vi stiffened.
Some kind of instinctive memory surged up from deep in her bones.
Maybe it was the body's original memories.
Maybe it was all the late nights she used to pull that carved the knowledge into her bones.
She wasn't lucky to have seen this. It brought up all the knowledge she shouldn't have remembered, but she understood what it meant.
She grew even more suspicious of why she had written something like that on the back of Wei Dinh Tieu's photo.
The pen strokes were sharp, the ballpoint marks carved into the paper like a blade.
The writer's mood was calm, but the determination was unmistakable.
Giai Moc Vi suddenly calmed down.
The entire room was spotless.
She loved cleanliness.
But the mirror had many sticky patches of leftover tape.
As if something had been stuck there over and over, not just Wei Dinh Tieu's photo there must have been many others.
What… exactly?
Her eyes shifted to the drawer beneath the sink. When she pulled it open, piles of papers spilled out.
All of them had adhesive tape stuck on, just like Wei Dinh Tieu's photo.
The papers were all different.
Some were professional photos, some ripped from magazines, some from art books.
Giai Moc Vi carefully flipped through them. Aside from the fact that all of them were pictures of people, there was no other similarity.
Young, old, male, female.
But every expression was exaggerated
crying, laughing, blushing, terrified.
She frowned, her fingers moving slowly as she turned each piece. Her eyes didn't linger long, yet her brain felt strangely familiar with all these faces.
Each sheet carried the weight of time.
She had seen them all before.
Or rather the version of her before she lost her memory had seen them all.
She stood in the bathroom for a long time, making sure she didn't overlook anything before finally walking out.
To be fair, Wei Dinh Tieu was still polite in this regard.
At least he didn't rush her.
It was already late.
The sky outside was black like spilled ink, not even a star in sight.
He stood by the door smoking his third cigarette.
The faint moonlight fell on him, blending into the pitch-black uniform he wore.
To Giai Moc Vi, he looked like he was wearing mourning clothes for someone.
Wei Dinh Tieu loaded her suitcase into the trunk. She stood by the car and called to him:
"Fake policeman, weren't you part of the First Investigation Unit before?"
Wei Dinh Tieu nodded, pinching his cigarette as he looked at her.
"Why? Did you remember something?"
Giai Moc Vi shook her head.
"No… I just saw a photo of you wearing a different uniform. It didn't look like the investigative unit uniform."
She tilted her head toward the car.
"Get in. Tell me."
He had once been part of the bomb disposal unit under the mobile forces. Three years ago, his teammate died during a bomb defusal mission.
Sitting in the passenger seat, Giai Moc Vi watched him light another cigarette with the lighter she recognized so well.
Curious, she asked:
"So… the explosion we encountered on the Ferris wheel was it caused by the same criminal who killed Du Thua Uy three years ago?"
He nodded.
"Yeah. Three years ago, that guy sent a portrait sketch to the Metropolitan Police before he struck. Three years later, the same sketch appeared again this time with a countdown telling the MPD when the bomb would go off."
"So you transferred from the bomb squad to the First Investigation Unit to catch that criminal and avenge Du Thua Uy?"
His eyes curved with a smile.
"Oh? Why does it feel like your brain works better after losing your memory? Yes, that's right."
Then she thought of something else.
If that photo was taken before he transferred, didn't that mean they had known each other before he changed departments?
"But why would someone like me a tiny trainee lawyer have anything to do with a bomb squad officer?"
It made no sense.
If he were an investigator, maybe. But bomb squad?
And she was only a trainee who had handled exactly one case with Khuong Tich Yen.
Wei Dinh Tieu shrugged.
"Your wallet got stolen at the subway entrance. You were so panicked you started sobbing. My car was in the shop that day, so I happened to take the same train. I helped you with a small matter. That's all."
Sobbing?
Giai Moc Vi shivered.
She felt like Wei Dinh Tieu was deliberately feeding her unrelated stories.
None of these events matched her, yet he kept attaching them to her as if they were truth.
According to him, they had only known each other for about a week
the week before he transferred to the First Investigation Unit.
And in those two short weeks, she had apparently done many things with him.
The most important one was holding hands with him on the Ferris wheel, leaning back in the seat while looking at the endless sky.
He leaned casually against the seat, watching the clouds drift and scatter.
It was the same sky, but different scenery.
Yet the person beside him was still the same.
"To be honest, back then I had decided to give up already. I planned to send the location of the next bomb to inspector Ngan So before the one beneath us exploded. My mission would be done, and so would my life."
His expression softened.
His voice grew feather-light.
"I felt like my whole life was just an accelerator with no brakes. Going straight down like that… didn't seem so bad. And the most important thing was"
He took her hand.
Her heart skipped a beat.
His warmth burned against her cold palm.
His fingers smelled faintly of smoke as they intertwined with hers.
His slightly wavy hair brushed under the dim light, and she could see the shine in his eyes bright like a sparkling star.
"You told me you wanted to watch fireworks with me."
"So I stayed to watch them with you."
He leaned in slightly, their breaths brushing.
She could see the pattern in his pupils, like shifting mountains rising and falling.
"That firework is something we'll only ever see once in our lives.
You must remember it well."