Chapter 2 — Anonymous Drawing

Thanh Phat school supplies store is located right on the corner of the street in front of the school gate, displaying in a glass case a set of six Rotring technical pens, priced at eight hundred thousand dong - an amount equal to half a month's market rent for Dieu Linh's family. She saw Khoi Nguyen standing in front of that glass cabinet for nearly ten minutes on a Friday afternoon, his hands in his pockets, neither entering nor leaving, as if performing some silent ritual with himself.

"Are you going to buy it?" she asked, standing next to him without realizing it.

Khoi Nguyen turned around in surprise. "No. Just watching."

"That pen draws very well. I see the twelfth graders in the Fine Arts department often use it." She narrowed her eyes at him. "You really want it, right? You can tell by looking at his face."

"Not to the point of craving." He smiled wryly, walked ahead, deliberately changing the subject. "A pencil and ruler can still draw, it's just that the strokes are not as even."

But Dieu Linh was able to see the way he looked at that set of pens - not the eyes of a greedy child who wanted to own an expensive item, but the eyes of a worker who saw the right tools for the job he was finishing with temporary things. During last week's technical drawing exercise in Technology subject, Mr. Cao Huu Khang privately commented to Khoi Nguyen that his drawing "has better spatial thinking than a specialized student", but unfortunately "the pencil strokes are too blurry, it is difficult to score highly on aesthetics".

That night, Dieu Linh opened the old tin box hidden at the bottom of the closet, where she kept the lucky money and money to help her mother pack sticky rice during Tet holidays, and counted over and over again five hundred and sixty thousand. Not enough to buy a whole set of six, but enough to buy two technical pens of 0.3 and 0.5 strokes, the kind that Mr. Khang said "can be used for a long time, a one-time investment".

On Monday morning, she stuffed a small paper bag into Khoi Nguyen's desk drawer before he went to class. She didn't say anything, just stuck a small piece of paper hastily written: "Lend it. When you have money, pay it back. It's okay if you don't have it."

Khoi Nguyen opened the paper bag during recess, but his hand stopped when he saw two technical pens still in the plastic box. He turned to look for Dieu Linh and saw her pretending to read a book attentively at the next table, her ears red.

"Are you crazy?" he said, his voice small but urgent, walking over to where she sat. "This amount—"

"It's money I saved myself, it wasn't stolen, don't worry," she interrupted, still not raising her head from the page. "If you draw well, you should have good tools. There's nothing you can do too much."

"But—"

"Consider it an investment," she said, this time looking at him, her eyes stubbornly refusing to give up. "In the future, you will become a famous architect. You will design a house for me, using these two pens. Is that okay?"

Khoi Nguyen looked at her for a long moment, feeling something stuck in his throat that he couldn't name. He had never received a gift from someone his age that felt so heavy - not heavy because of the material value, even though he knew that money to his family was just change, but to Dieu Linh it was probably many days of her mother's work wrapping sticky rice - but heavy because he understood, this was the first time in his life that someone gave him something without knowing, without knowing, who he was.

"Okay," he said softly. "I promise."

At that moment, Dang Nhat Huy - the guy sitting at the last table, the son of the owner of the largest grocery store in the market, who always had a few sly jokes ready for anyone who wasn't on the same "class" as him - passed by and glanced at the pencil case in Khoi Nguyen's hand.

"Oh wow, such a good pen," Nhat Huy whistled, picked it up, looked at it, and then put it down on the table a little too hard. "Did you buy it for Dieu Linh? You two are so poor, how luxurious are you? Or are you a couple, buying gifts for each other?"

A few people around laughed. Dieu Linh felt her face heat up, not because she was embarrassed about her love life, but because of the way Nhat Huy emphasized the word "poor" as if it were a weakness that deserved to be made fun of.

"What do you mean by that?" she asked bluntly, standing up from her chair.

"It doesn't mean anything," Nhat Huy shrugged, pretending to be innocent. "I just find it funny. The two of us huddle in a corner all day, one selling sticky rice and the other staying at someone's house. It's a perfect pair."

"What about staying at someone else's house?" Dieu Linh said, her voice stiffened. "What about selling sticky rice? Do you think having money gives you the right to look down on others?"

"Eh, I didn't say anything—"

"You just said," she interrupted, taking a step closer, not flinching even though Nhat Huy was half a head taller than her. "You think being poor is something to make fun of. I tell you, my mother sold sticky rice from three o'clock in the morning to feed me, that's something I'm proud of, not something for you to stand here and laugh at. As for Khoi Nguyen, he's staying at his aunt's house, everyone's family matters are different, it's not your business."

The whole class was silent. Nhat Huy stood there for a few seconds, his face slightly red from being turned back in front of the crowd, then he smirked, turned back to his seat, and threw back a sentence: "Okay, okay, that's terrible."

Khoi Nguyen sat still throughout the interview, clutching the pencil case tightly in his palm. He wanted to say something, wanted to stand up and defend her, but his throat seemed to be locked - not because he was afraid of Nhat Huy, but because he knew, if he told the truth now, everything Dieu Linh had just said, all her righteous anger, all the pride she had for her mother, it would all turn into a farce when people knew that he - the person she had just risked her life to defend as a person in the same situation - had never actually known the feeling of lacking a meal.

After school, when the two of them walked to the school gate, Dieu Linh was still breathing heavily because her anger had not completely subsided.

"You don't have to do that," Khoi Nguyen said softly, looking down at the sidewalk.

"Doing what?"

"Argued with Nhat Huy. Because of me."

"I don't argue because of you," Dieu Linh said, then stopped and corrected what she had just said. "Well, partly because of you. But mainly because I can't stand people who think being poor is something embarrassing. My mother taught me, being poor is not your fault, only living a bad life is your fault."

Khoi Nguyen was silent for a moment, then suddenly burst out laughing, the first genuine, relieved laugh of the day. "Your mother said it well."

"Of course." She raised her chin, her pride undisguised. "My mother is the best person I've ever known, even though she didn't finish middle school."

He watched her walk in front of him, the afternoon sunlight pouring down on the sidewalk, and thought about his family's story - the board meetings his mother used to sit in with a tense face, the evenings when his father came home late, eating silently alone in the office - and wondered, between a family that has everything but lacks simple words like that, and a family that only has a pot of sticky rice every morning but is filled with pride, what is truly rich.

He had no answer. He only knew that from that day on, every time he opened the box of technical pens to draw, he was a little more careful, a little more meticulous, as if each stroke carried an unspeakable responsibility to the person who trusted it to his hands.

In the evening, Aunt Bay Nha saw him sitting and cleaning two technical pens with a soft cloth, carefully as if cleaning an antique.

"New pen?" aunt asked.

"My friend lent it to me," Khoi Nguyen replied, without looking up. "She saved money to buy it for me."

Aunt Bay Nha looked at him for a moment, then sighed lightly, her voice both warm and a little vaguely worried. "That girl is really nice. But remember, the more you receive such sincere love, the harder it will be to tell the truth later, you know?"

Khoi Nguyen stopped, looked down at the two shiny pens in his palm, unable to answer her aunt's question. He just knew, right now, he didn't want to think about "later" at all.

At the same time, just a few hundred meters from Aunt Bay Nha's house, in an old four-level corrugated iron house deep in Cay Gon alley, Mrs. Ut Thao was counting the profits from her morning sticky rice sale, and noticed that the tin box stored at the bottom of the cupboard was lighter than usual.

"Dieu Linh, where is the lucky money you kept in the tin box?" she asked inside, her voice not blaming, just curious.

Dieu Linh was studying, so when she heard that, she walked out, still holding a pen in her hand. "I bought school supplies, Mom."

"What kind of school supplies cost five hundred or tens of thousands?" Mrs. Ut Thao frowned, not angry, just the habit of an acquaintance calculating every penny. "I bought enough textbooks for you at the beginning of the year."

Dieu Linh sat down next to her mother, knowing she couldn't hide it, so she told the story of buying two technical pens for Khoi Nguyen, including the story of his friend staying at his aunt's house, how well he drew, and how teacher Khang praised him. Mrs. Ut Thao listened, her hands still quickly folding each change, her sun-tanned face gradually relaxed.

"You did the right thing," she said finally, putting down the stack of money and looking at her daughter with eyes that were both serious and affectionate. "But I told you this, remember well. When you help others, you help with all your heart, you don't need them to repay you, you don't need them to remember forever. But never let yourself go empty-handed because you help others, because you also have to take care of yourself. Do you understand?"

"I understand, mom." Dieu Linh nodded, then smiled. "Mom, I think Khoi Nguyen is very special. He paints houses as beautiful as those in magazines."

Mrs. Ut Thao looked at her daughter for a moment, noticing her sparkling eyes when she mentioned her classmate, but she didn't say anything more, just smiled slightly, returned to her stack of change, saving that curiosity for the next day, when everything was clearer.