Chapter 10 — A Sweetness Forgotten

In her first year, Diệp Chi learned to swallow her tears.

The twelve square meter rented room in the suburban industrial park had no windows overlooking any tamarind trees, only a small window looking straight at the brick wall of the neighboring apartment block. Diệp Chi applied for a job as a kitchen assistant at a popular restaurant near an industrial park, working from five in the morning until late at night, in exchange for a salary enough for mother and daughter to last through the day and gradually pay off the remaining debt after the bank repossessed the house.

She did not take the university entrance exam. Her diploma with honors, the title of valedictorian, all the things that were once her pride, now lie at the bottom of her suitcase, a memento of a life she was forced to put aside.

"Aren't you sorry?" Mrs. Ngọc Lành asked, one night when she saw her daughter sitting quietly looking at her diploma under the dim nightlight.

"I don't have time to be sorry, Mom," Diệp Chi replied, her voice much older than her eighteen years after just a few months. "Now the most important thing is that I can live."

But every night, after her mother fell asleep, she quietly opened her mother's recipe book to read, not to cook, but to feel a little of the warmth of the old days - yellowed pages meticulously recording each sweet soup recipe, each small note about sugar ratio, fire level, and how to choose coconut. It was the only thing left intact from the Lá Me tea shop, the only thing she was able to bring with her when she left.

***

In the second year, another incident quietly came, without warning like a debt, but silently like a disease gnawing from the inside.

Ms. Ngọc Lành started coughing persistently in the winter, but because she didn't want to spend money on medical examination, she only bought cold medicine at the pharmacy and took it herself, trying to go to work every day. Only when the cough lasted more than three months, accompanied by dull chest pain, did Diệp Chi force her mother to see a doctor.

The result was not what mother and daughter expected.

"End-stage lung cancer." The doctor spoke in the familiar deep, sad voice of someone who had to deliver this news countless times in his career. "It probably developed silently a few years ago, but because it wasn't discovered in time..." Diệp Chi stood dumbfounded in the hospital hallway, not hearing clearly what the doctor said next, only feeling that the whole world was spinning, collapsing again, more painful than the time she lost her home.

The next eight months were a time when Diệp Chi never wanted to remember the details - the nights on duty at the hospital, the times she had to borrow money to pay hospital fees, the mornings she still had to get out of bed at four o'clock to go to work, and then at night she rushed to the hospital to take care of her mother until late.

Mrs. Ngọc Lành died on a rainy night in July, when Diệp Chi had just turned twenty years old. The last words she said, her voice so weak that it was almost just a breath, still echoed in Diệp Chi's head many years later.

"The recipe book... keep it. There's a recipe I haven't finished yet, that last page. I was planning to add a new flavor to taro sweet soup, but before I could fully test it..." She gasped, her thin hand holding her daughter's hand. "If you have the chance in the future, please help me perfect it. I've named it 'Third Flavor', the only thing missing... is the last flavor I haven't found yet."

"I promise, mom." Diệp Chi choked and squeezed her mother's hand. "I will definitely complete it."

Mrs. Ngọc Lành smiled, a rare smile of relief amid the painful last days of her life, then closed her eyes and passed away peacefully in the arms of her only daughter.

***

After her mother's funeral, Diệp Chi fell into an empty period that lasted nearly a year, only focusing on her job as a kitchen assistant, no longer thinking about anything other than surviving each day.

The turning point came one afternoon, when she accidentally tasted a cup of sweet soup at Uncle Bảy Thông's shop - a small but famous sweet shop in the area, famous for its three-generation family recipe. The taste of the sweet soup that day made Diệp Chi burst into tears right at the table, not because it was bad, but because it reminded me so much of the taste of her mother, of the old afternoons in Lá Me alley.

"What's wrong with you?" Uncle Bảy Thông, a man in his fifties with calloused hands from cooking all his life, came out to ask after seeing a stranger sobbing in the middle of the restaurant.

"Nothing, it's just... your tea is so delicious, it makes me miss my mom." Diệp Chi wiped her tears and briefly told her story.

Uncle Bảy Thông listened, his face gradually softening and full of sympathy. "Your mother must be a very good cook. Do you want to learn how to cook sweet soup? I need a helper, and am also looking for someone to pass on the profession. None of my children or grandchildren follow this profession."

That was the beginning of three years of systematic apprenticeship under the tutelage of Uncle Bảy Thông - who not only taught Diệp Chi professional cooking techniques, how to manage a restaurant, how to calculate ingredient costs, but also taught her how to stand up after losses, how to turn pain into motivation instead of letting it drown her.

"If you cook with your hands, anyone can do it," he often said, every time he saw Diệp Chi cooking in a hurry because he was tired or sad. "But cooking with all your heart can only be done by people who have experienced real suffering. You already have that, you just need to learn more techniques."

At the age of twenty-four, with the capital saved after many years of hard work and a small loan that Uncle Bảy Thông sponsored, Diệp Chi opened her first sweet soup shop - a small shop with only eight tables, modestly located on a not very busy street, but with the name she had long cherished: "Ngọt Xưa".

"Why did you name it that way?" Uncle Bảy Thông asked on opening day, looking at the brand new sign.

"Because I want to retain the sweetness of the old days, uncle," Diệp Chi replied, looking towards the small photo of her mother placed solemnly on the shelf near the cashier. "No matter how many years have passed, I still don't want to forget it."

On the opening day, she stood in front of the sign, remembered her mother's faded handwritten sign, and told herself that no matter how difficult the road ahead was, she would never let this brand disappear again, never let anyone take it away from her like the way Lá Me tea shop was taken away.

"Ngọt Xưa" shop struggled at first like any other small shop - the first months were slow, the nights when Diệp Chi sat alone calculating the accounts, worrying about whether she would be able to survive until next month or not. But thanks to the recipe inherited from her mother, improved by techniques learned from Uncle Bảy Thông, and meticulous attention to every small detail, the restaurant gradually began to have regular customers, then the good news spread far and wide, and then people came to ask about franchising.

Diệp Chi invited Doãn Tường Vy - a close friend who had regained contact after many years of disappearance, and now works in marketing for a small company - to be the operations manager. Two old friends, now together, rebuild something from the ashes of the past, step by step, not hastily, but surely.

"You know, back then I wanted to die looking for you," Tường Vy recounted on the first evening the two of them met again after nearly six years of no news, tears welling up in both joy and anger. "You disappeared like you evaporated, without a single goodbye."

"I'm sorry." Diệp Chi bowed her head, her voice choked. "At that time, I didn't have the courage to say goodbye to anyone. I was afraid that if I said it, I wouldn't have the strength to walk away."

"I understand, stop explaining." Tường Vy wiped her tears and smiled wryly. "I'm so happy to see you again. From now on, no matter how difficult it is, don't be foolish enough to disappear alone like that again, you hear?"

Diệp Chi nodded, squeezed her friend's hand, feeling that a part of the warm past was gradually being reconnected, although there was still another important piece that she was not brave enough to touch.

By the age of thirty, "Ngọt Xưa" had eleven branches spread across the city, becoming one of the most popular dessert and dessert brands among young people, famous not only for its rich old-fashioned flavor but also for the emotional brand story behind it - the story of a girl who lost everything and then rebuilt it from scratch.

But there was one page in her mother's recipe book that Diệp Chi never dared to open again — the last page, titled "Third Taste", where her mother's handwriting stopped midway, leaving behind a promise she still owed, and a vague fear that if she completed it, it would mean she would have to truly close the final chapter of her past, including those related to a name she had tried not to mention for twelve long years.