Chapter 1 — Anonymous Drawing

Part I — The Year the Gon Tree Bloomed

The sound of cicadas rang out just as Chu Dieu Linh opened the lunch box, and the fragrant smell of charcoal sticky rice mixed with shredded coconut wafted through the sweltering heat of the schoolyard in September. She sat on the steps behind the tenth grade row, in the shadow of an old almond tree, where few students hung out because it was far from the cafeteria and near the trash can. That was her usual seat during the first two weeks of the school year, not because she liked quiet, but because her lunch - a handful of sticky rice wrapped in banana leaves that her mother had saved from the morning sale - was not something she wanted anyone to see.

She was about to tear off the first piece of banana leaf when she noticed someone sitting not far away, under a stunted cotton tree planted out of line with the almond trees, a notebook open on his knee, a pencil moving steadily on the page. The boy had just transferred to her class exactly five days ago. He was tall and lanky, his hair was cut short in no particular way, and his uniform was so old that the collar was faded. Dieu Linh remembered his name because on roll call, the homeroom teacher read each word slowly as if afraid of reading it wrong: Ngo Khoi Nguyen.

Until then, she had never seen Khoi Nguyen have lunch with anyone. It wasn't because he was ostracized — it was just that he always disappeared right when the bell rang, and reappeared right when the next class started, as if recess for him was an empty space that needed to be filled by hiding somewhere.

Dieu Linh glanced over again. The notebook in his hand was not an exercise book. She saw blocky lines, doorways, spiral staircases, and arrow symbols indicating wind direction that she had only seen in Technology textbooks. Not like a child scribbling away time. Like someone actually drawing.

Her stomach rumbled softly. She looked down at the handful of sticky rice still in her hand, then looked at her friend who didn't bring a lunch box, and didn't even bring change to buy bread in the cafeteria - this she knew because last week she stood behind him in the line waiting to pay tuition, and heard the accountant cleverly remind her, "I'll go home and tell my family to pay the supplement early for me."

She stood up, walked over, without thinking much, the way a child growing up in a poor family does when she sees someone else in need a little more than herself — no pity, just a reflex.

"Do you eat sticky rice?"

Khoi Nguyen looked up. There was a brief moment when he looked at her as if he didn't understand the question, then looked down at the package of banana leaves she was holding out, then looked back at her, his wary eyes flashing quickly before he could hide them.

"There's no need," he said, his voice even. "I'm not hungry."

"Crazy," Dieu Linh replied simply, sitting down next to him without waiting to be invited. "Your stomach just growled louder than a cicada. I stood five meters away and could still hear it."

That's not true, but it made the corner of Khoi Nguyen's mouth twitch slightly, a smile he tried to suppress unsuccessfully. He took the sticky rice, hesitated for a second before taking the first bite, slowly, as if he was trying not to eat too quickly in front of others.

"My mother cooked sticky rice," Dieu Linh said, looking out at the sunny schoolyard. "My mother sells sticky rice at the beginning of Cay Gon alley. She gets up every morning at three o'clock. Charcoal sticky rice with grated coconut is the best-selling dish."

"Delicious," Khoi Nguyen said, and this time there was no politeness in his voice. "It's delicious."

"Of course." She shrugged, trying to hide her satisfaction. "Where do you live? You always disappear at noon? I thought you came home to eat."

There was a very short silence before he answered. "I stay temporarily at my aunt's house, more than a kilometer from school. At noon, I often walk to the park to draw, it's cooler than being in class."

"What are you drawing so hard?" She glanced at the notebook, then shyly pulled her hand back when she realized she was almost leaning over his shoulder to look.

Khoi Nguyen hesitated, but then turned the notebook around for her to see more clearly, as a small test. "House. I like drawing houses."

On the page was a narrow tube house, the facade was only about four meters wide, but he had drawn a skylight in the middle, the stairs were placed off to one side to avoid taking up space in the living room, and a small yard behind was planted with climbing plants. Dieu Linh did not understand all the technical symbols, but she immediately realized that this was the same type of house as the houses close together in her Cay Gon alley - the only difference was that the house in this drawing had light, wind, and room to breathe, while the real house in real life was dark and stuffy all year round because the neighbor's house was built close to the wall without leaving a setback.

"Who are you drawing for?" she asked, sounding genuinely curious.

"Not for anyone." Khoi Nguyen lowered his eyes to the page, his fingers gently rubbing the pencil line as if afraid of making it blurry. "It's just... I like to think, if the house is cramped, how can the people living in it still feel comfortable? I want to study architecture in the future."

"Architecture costs a lot of money," Dieu Linh blurted out, then immediately felt embarrassed because the statement sounded like it was about money in front of someone who was probably poorer than her family. "I mean... college tuition in general, everything costs money."

"Yes," Khoi Nguyen just replied, closed the notebook, and said no more.

She didn't know that short answer was not because he was upset about money, but because he didn't know how to explain a truth that was the exact opposite of what she was thinking - that the cost of architecture tuition, for his family, had never been a question that needed to be asked. His difficulty did not lie in a lack of money. It lay in the fact that he was sitting there, eating sticky rice from a new friend, and could not tell her that his father is the head of a corporation that builds dozens of buildings every year, that just three months ago he was sleeping in a room with a window overlooking the panoramic view of Truc Giang city from the twenty-fifth floor.

He didn't speak, not because he despised her, but because his father had told her again and again, his voice so serious that he had never seen it: "Don't tell anyone who you are. It's not about pretending to be poor. You just need to live like a normal student, and keep quiet about the rest. That's not lying. That's keeping yourself safe."

Khoi Nguyen gave her the piece of banana leaf she had just finished eating, folding it neatly like a habit forged since childhood. "Thank you. The sticky rice is really delicious."

"I'll bring more tomorrow," Dieu Linh said, standing up and brushing off her pants. "My mother cooks leftovers all the time. It's a waste if no one eats it all."

It was a white lie — her mother never cooked extra, each grain of sticky rice was calculated to sell in the morning — but Khoi Nguyen didn't know that, and didn't ask again. He just nodded, watching her walk towards the classroom, still holding the drawing book, a strange feeling arose in his heart that during the fifteen years of living in a mansion full of maids, he had never had the opportunity to experience: the feeling of being given something not because he was a rich child, not because he was a "little master", but simply because he was a hungry child.

That afternoon, after school, Khoi Nguyen walked back to Cay Gon alley following the shortcut through the market, where the stalls had begun to clean up at the end of the day. Aunt Bay Nha — his mother's youngest sister, a skinny woman who worked as a seamstress at home — was sitting in front of the door mending an old shirt when she saw him coming home.

"Did you have fun going to school today?" she asked, not raising her head from the needle and thread.

"I met a friend," Khoi Nguyen replied, sitting on the doorstep next to his aunt, taking off his shoes. "She gave me sticky rice."

Aunt Bay Nha stopped, looked at him for a moment, then smiled slightly, a smile that was both warm and a bit sad but he didn't fully understand the meaning at that time. "Is that so? Remember, here you are just Khoi Nguyen, no one else. Just live normally like that, you will be fine."

He nodded, not asking more questions, because he was used to the adults around him always saying half-hearted sentences like that — enough to reassure, not enough to explain. He only knew that his father was busy dealing with something very serious at the company, that a stranger had called threateningly on his mother's private phone number before their parents decided to live separately, that he was brought here, to this small Cay Gon alley, as a way to hide him until everything calmed down.

He didn't know how long it would take for things to calm down. He only knew that night, when he opened his sketchbook under the weak light of the study lamp hanging above his bed, he did not continue to draw the tube house with the skylight. He drew a cotton tree, its branches spreading wide, and underneath the tree, two figures sat next to each other, sharing a small package of banana leaves.

You didn't sign your name on that drawing. He didn't know, it would be many years later that drawing would have the name it deserved.