Episode 2

Chapter 2: Thirty Years Wasted

Albert's words didn't end in that bedroom. They followed Liana down into the next morning, clinging to her skin like the smell of smoke that refused to fade.

She hadn't slept all night. She sat on the edge of the guest bed with her phone in her lap, opening the photos again, then closing them when her chest grew too tight. Outside the window, the streetlights of the BSD City neighborhood blinked out one by one. The house she had always called home still stood in perfect order, but every corner of it looked foreign now.

At six in the morning, she went into the kitchen anyway.

Not because she had forgiven him. Not because she had given up. Her body simply moved along the grooves of thirty years of habit. Cook the rice. Reheat the side dishes. Fill the water bottles. Wipe down a table that was already clean.

Albert emerged from the bedroom just after seven. His shirt pressed, his hair combed, his briefcase in hand. His face showed no sign of remorse. If someone had looked in from outside, they might have mistaken it for an ordinary morning in the Phua household.

Liana stood near the dining table, watching his back.

"I'm heading to UI," Albert said flatly.

No apology. No explanation. Not even the effort of pretending to feel sorry.

"We're not done talking," Liana said.

Albert stopped at the door but didn't turn around. "I have a meeting."

"Thirty years of marriage matter less than a meeting?"

Only then did he glance back. His eyes were cold. "Don't start this early in the morning. I don't want the neighbors hearing."

Liana held his gaze. Once, a line like that would have been enough to make her swallow every word. The family's good name. What the neighbors might say. The shame of being seen. All of it had always mattered more than the wounds she carried.

"What's shameful isn't my voice," Liana said quietly. "What's shameful is what you've done."

Albert's jaw worked. He wanted to fire back, but chose instead to open the door.

"Think carefully. If you insist on being stubborn, you're the one who'll lose."

The door closed.

Liana stood there for several seconds after Albert's car pulled out of the garage. The sound of the engine faded, leaving behind a house that was far too quiet.

On the dining table, the lunch she had packed for Albert sat untouched. He had forgotten to take it. Or left it behind on purpose.

Liana stared at the lunch box. Thirty years of her life felt gathered inside that small container. Rice measured to Albert's preference. Side dishes not too spicy because of his sensitive stomach. She remembered every dietary restriction in the household, while her own body was rarely asked about.

She sat down slowly.

Her hand touched the surface of the table. This was where Jason had once learned to write. In the chair beside hers, Kim Hwa had sat with a sour expression, ordering Liana to fetch her medicine, warm water, plain congee without salt. For ten years, Liana had lifted that woman from bed to wheelchair, wiped her sweat, cleaned up her vomit, endured her insults.

And before all of that, she had once had dreams. She had nearly made it to university, had kept a brochure for the language department tucked in her drawer, imagining herself working as a translator and coming home with money she had earned on her own.

Then she married Albert.

Little by little, every dream was folded up and put away, until she herself forgot she had ever had them.

Her phone buzzed.

Jessy's name appeared on the screen.

Liana stared at it the way someone stares at an emergency exit in a burning room.

"Lia?" Jessy's voice came through immediately, tight with worry. "What's wrong? Last night I saw you online until dawn. I texted you, and you didn't reply."

For the first time since the night before, something in Liana's chest cracked open.

"Jess," she managed. Her voice broke slightly. "Can I come to your place?"

"Right now?"

"If you're not busy."

"Are you out of your mind? Don't even ask. Come now. I'll be waiting."

Jessy's house was only a few blocks from the Phua residence, still in the same neighborhood. Liana walked because she didn't want to take the car. Every gate she passed, every sound of a housewife sweeping her front yard, reminded her how easy it was for other people's lives to look normal from the outside.

Jessy opened the door before Liana could even press the bell.

She was wearing a house dress, her hair clipped up haphazardly. The moment she saw Liana's face, she didn't ask a single question. She just pulled Liana inside, shut the door, and gripped her shoulders.

"Sit down first."

Liana sank onto the living room sofa. On the table sat two cups of hot tea and a plate of fried bananas that had clearly been made in a rush.

"Now talk," Jessy said. "Take your time."

Liana took out her phone. Her hands had mostly stopped shaking, but when she opened the evidence folder, her breath still came short.

She showed Jessy the first message. The photo of Yuni. The photo of Jayden. The monthly transfers. Golden Crown Apartments. Conversations that stretched back years.

Jessy didn't speak right away. Her face shifted from confusion to shock to anger. Real anger. The kind of anger that nearly made Liana cry, because finally someone wasn't telling her to be patient.

"Eleven years?" Jessy repeated, her voice low.

Liana nodded.

"And the child is ten?"

"Yes."

Jessy covered her mouth, then punched a sofa cushion. "That bastard. Albert is an absolute bastard."

One tear finally fell from Liana's eye. Just one. She wiped it quickly with the back of her hand.

"He said if I divorce him, I won't get anything."

"Does he think he owns this country?" Jessy scoffed. "Lia, listen to me. Divorce him. You have to divorce him."

The word sounded different coming from Jessy. Not like an explosion of emotion, but like a rope thrown to someone about to drown.

Liana lowered her head. "I'm scared."

"Being scared is normal."

"I'm fifty. I don't have a job. I don't even know where to start."

Jessy took her hand. "Start by leaving the house that's killing you slowly."

The sentence made Liana go still.

A house that's killing you slowly.

She thought of Dede's room.

The small room near the staircase that had since become a storage closet. Its walls had once been covered in star stickers. On the highest shelf of the wardrobe, Liana still kept an old photograph -- Dede at six years old, wearing the blue sweater she had knitted herself. The boy grinned with his baby teeth showing, one hand clutching a cheap toy car from the night market.

The day Dede disappeared, the rain had been torrential.

Kim Hwa had said Liana was careless. A mother who truly loved her child couldn't possibly lose him, she had said. That accusation had chased Liana for twenty years. Every night she asked God where her hands had let go, at what moment she had failed.

"Lia?" Jessy called softly.

Liana raised her face. "I lost Dede. I stayed because I thought at least I still had to hold together what was left of my family. But it turns out that while I was punishing myself, Albert was building another family."

Jessy drew a long breath. Her eyes reddened, but her voice stayed firm. "You don't deserve to be punished for the rest of your life."

Liana's phone rang before she could respond.

Kim Hwa's name lit up the screen.

Liana's body went rigid. Jessy saw it too, and her expression hardened.

In the background of the call, a nurse at the nursing home could be heard paging another patient.

"Answer it," Jessy said. "Put it on speaker."

Liana pressed accept.

Kim Hwa's voice erupted without so much as a greeting. "Liana! You ungrateful woman! Albert told me you're asking for a divorce. Have you lost your mind?"

Liana closed her eyes for a moment.

"I'm perfectly sane, Mother."

"Don't call me Mother if you're going to destroy my son!"

Jessy straightened, but Liana raised a hand, signaling she would handle this herself.

"I'm not the one who destroyed this marriage."

"Men face temptation outside -- that's just how it is! You've been living off the Phua family for thirty years. Now, the moment Albert slips up a little, you want to run? Who do you think would want an old woman like you?"

Once, those words would have made Liana shrink.

Today, she only felt tired.

"Kim Hwa," she said quietly.

On the other end, Kim Hwa's voice stopped. Perhaps because for the first time, Liana hadn't called her Mother with the usual obedience.

"What did you just say?"

"I said, Kim Hwa. I've been your daughter-in-law long enough. If Albert was allowed to stop being my husband eleven years ago, then I'm allowed to stop being the daughter-in-law you walk all over."

Jessy watched her, eyes wide with pride.

Kim Hwa shrieked, "How dare you! After everything this family gave you, this is how you repay us? Dede went missing because you were incompetent as a mother. Now you want to fail as a wife too?"

The name struck like a blade.

Dede.

Liana gripped the phone tighter, but her voice stayed level. "Don't use Dede to silence me."

"It's the truth!"

"If it's the truth, then why do you get angry every time I ask for details about that day?"

A beat of silence fell on the other end of the line.

Very brief. But enough to send a chill through Liana's blood.

Kim Hwa hurried to snap back. "Don't twist things around! Come home right now. We'll talk at the house. Stop airing our dirty laundry to outsiders like some cheap woman."

Liana looked at Jessy. Then she looked at the phone screen, as though she could see the face of the old woman who had controlled her life for so long.

"No."

"What?"

"I'm not coming home to be berated."

"Liana!"

"I'll come home when I'm ready. And from today on, don't call me just to hurl insults."

Liana ended the call.

Her hands trembled afterward. Not from fear, but because something long locked away had finally shifted.

Jessy sat beside her and wrapped an arm around her shoulders.

"Lia," she said gently, "you know, I've always felt something was off about what happened to Dede."

Liana's breath caught.

Jessy met her eyes, dead serious.

"Are you really sure Dede went missing that day because you were careless?"

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