Chapter 1

My boyfriend spent three years undercover in northern Myanmar before finally returning home safely.

On our wedding night, while we were making love, he suddenly asked, “Tell me, what rabbit walks on three legs?”

My heart nearly stopped.

It was a secret code Chu Tu Dã and I had devised. The rabbit meant danger; the number that followed indicated how severe it was.

A three-legged rabbit meant the highest possible alert.

Something seemed to explode inside my head.

A moment later, I suppressed my terror and let out a slow, breathless sigh.

“Really? You have to ask me riddles now?”

Chu Tu Dã lifted his head from my neck and gave me a light nip.

“I heard someone ask it at the reception. Nobody could answer. I thought my clever wife would get it right away.”

Of course I knew.

The riddle had no answer.

Three years earlier, he had been assigned to work undercover in northern Myanmar. There was no telling whether he would come back alive. On the night he left, I had suggested a code only we would know.

“The rabbit’s three legs mean danger, because rabbits react so quickly when they sense a threat. And three because a clever rabbit keeps three burrows. A three-legged rabbit means the most serious danger of all.

“A Dã, that way, if you’re in trouble, I’ll know.”

He had not laughed at my naïveté. Instead, he solemnly hooked his little finger around mine.

“All right. Then I’ll wait for my lady wife to come and rescue me.”

Yet the Chu Tu Dã in front of me seemed to know nothing about it.

It had only been three years. Could he really have forgotten?

His expressions, his voice, even his habits and the order in which he touched me were exactly as before.

Still unable to shake my unease, I stopped his impatient hand.

“Wait, Tu Dã. I think my period’s started...”

“So soon?”

A flicker of suspicion crossed his eyes.

“Didn’t we choose the wedding date to avoid it?”

I put on an apologetic expression.

“Work’s been hectic. I stayed up late all week to get everything done before my wedding leave. It must have thrown my hormones off.”

He cupped my face with concern.

“Work isn’t more important than your health, silly. I’ll have to keep a closer eye on you.”

Seeing what looked like simple, genuine concern in his eyes, I quietly relaxed.

Perhaps I was being too suspicious.

After three dangerous years undercover, living on the edge of death every day, forgetting an old joke was hardly surprising.

Soon he brought me a hot-water bottle and thoughtfully made me ginger tea.

“Drink a little. It’ll warm you up.”

I accepted it with a sweet smile.

The first sip sent my heart plummeting.

There was brown sugar in it.

I was severely allergic to brown sugar. Once, at university, I had accidentally eaten brown-sugar tapioca pearls in milk tea and broken out in a rash from head to toe. Chu Tu Dã had spent the night taking me to the hospital.

There was no way he did not know.

Wrong.

Something was terribly wrong.

This man was not Chu Tu Dã.

I stared at the dark ceiling, my heart hammering as though it might burst out of my chest.

We had held the wedding at his old family home in the village.

His parents had died when he was young, and the neighbors had helped feed and raise him. At the reception, he had recognized every relative correctly. He had even remembered that his second uncle, who once injured his leg doing farm work, could not eat ginger.

How could two people in this world be so alike?

Fear spread through my veins.

Had he been hypnotized?

Or bought off? Had he turned traitor?

Impossible.

No one valued loyalty more than Chu Tu Dã.

He had taken part in earthquake rescue operations. He had always been full of passion and conviction. Otherwise, he would never have been selected for the most dangerous assignments.

I quietly rolled over and opened his social media profile.

He was reserved by nature and rarely posted. His latest update was from three days earlier.

A photograph of the two of us.

We stood outside our old university gates holding flowers, smiling at each other.

The caption read:

“My girl, let’s stay together until our hair turns white.”

Perfectly normal for a man about to get married.

The comments were all congratulations.

I frowned slightly.

No. That was wrong, too.

We had an agreement.

His work did not allow him to appear publicly. He had always been extremely cautious.

“I’ve made a lot of enemies, Đóa Đóa. You have to be careful, too.”

Once, I had taken a selfie that accidentally included half his face in profile. He insisted I delete every copy.

I had been genuinely angry.

“I waited three years for you! For three years I couldn’t tell anyone where you were. You never come to my gatherings or meet my friends. People think I made up my boyfriend!

“The drug ring in northern Myanmar has been wiped out. Can’t you relax a little?”

But he would not budge.

“The monsters over there are much worse than we can imagine. I’m afraid some might have escaped. Don’t blame me for being suspicious, Đóa Đóa. Caution is what kept me alive these past three years.”

Biting my lip, I scrolled farther down.

Half a month earlier, he had returned to the village to renovate the old house for the wedding.

On April 26, he had posted a photograph of the newly painted gate, together with a page from a book on Marxist philosophy.

We had left that book here during the summer of our third year at university, the first time I came home with him.

But why post that picture?

Suddenly, I remembered that summer.

One day he had decided to teach me the basics of cryptography.

He liked writing codes on my palm and making me work out the pattern.

I was ticklish. Every time, I would dissolve into giggles and hide in his arms.

“Chu Tu Dã, are you abusing your position for personal gain? Are you actually trying to teach me?”

With a grave, serious expression, he wrote three numbers on my palm.

“Numbers can stand for letters. Decode it the way I showed you.”

I thought for a long time before blurting out, “I... I love you?”

The moment I said it, I knew I had fallen into his trap. I thumped him indignantly.

His chest shook with laughter, his eyes bright with the delight of having teased me successfully.

“Exactly. ‘I love you.’ Congratulations, Miss Trang Đóa. You’ve learned it.”

The memory sharpened.

My heart pounded.

I kept enlarging the photograph of the page.

Line by line, I compared, separated and rearranged the text.

Tu Dã, wait for me.

You have to wait for me.

Following the method he had taught me, I first took the opening character of each paragraph. Then I shifted the second paragraph back one position, the third by two, and continued in sequence.

At last, I extracted eighteen characters from the dense text.

[THE RABBIT HAS HUMAN EYES.]

[TRUST NO ONE. NOT EVEN ME.]