Chapter 3 — Anonymous Drawing

Teacher Cao Huu Khang has a habit of writing problems on the corner of the board with colored chalk, even though Technology does not require such sophistication. On a Tuesday morning in mid-October, the teacher wrote the words "DREAM HOUSE" in blue chalk, underlined it twice, then turned back to the classroom, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose.

"For this semester's group assignment," the teacher said, "each pair of you design a house, with no area limit, no budget limit. I don't grade based on whether the drawing technique is good or bad, I grade based on the idea - what problem that house solves for the people living in it. You choose your own group mates."

The class was filled with chatter, heads turning back and forth looking for familiar friends. Before Dieu Linh could turn to look for Ho Khanh Thu - her best friend since ninth grade, sitting at the table right behind - she heard the sound of a chair scraping against the floor to her left.

"Can you work with me?" Khoi Nguyen asked, his voice had a rare hesitation.

"Okay." Dieu Linh smiled, not hiding her joy. "I'm really bad at drawing, please take care of the team."

Khanh Thu sat behind and glanced over, winking teasingly, but Dieu Linh pretended not to see, turning completely towards Khoi Nguyen to discuss the topic.

For the next two weeks, every afternoon after school, the two of them lingered in the school library until the security guard reminded them to close the door before returning. Khoi Nguyen proposed an idea that was completely different from what the class usually did - not a dreamy villa with a swimming pool and a large garden like most other groups drew, but a house for a three-generation family living in an area of only thirty-six square meters, exactly like the land type popular in Cay Gon alley.

"Why don't you draw a big, luxurious house, like a villa?" Dieu Linh asked, holding a ruler to measure the scale of the drawing. "Mr. Khang said there is no budget limit."

"Because there's no budget limit, it's easy to draw a big house," Khoi Nguyen replied, his eyes never leaving the strokes of his pen drawing the profile of the stairs. "Anyone can build a big house if they have enough money and enough land. The difficulty is how to make a small house still live comfortably. I think that's the real problem people need to solve."

She looked at him for a moment, feeling that something in those words touched a very private part of her heart - the house she was living in with her mother was only that wide, also cramped, had to put the bed close to the wall to leave a path, and also had to dry clothes right above the stove because there was no backyard. She never thought that one day a classmate would sit here, diligently trying to find a way to solve the cramped situation that she silently endured every day, not with empty words of comfort, but with specific lines on paper.

“You draw like you know my house,” she said softly.

Khoi Nguyen looked up, his eyes flickered with confusion. "I was just... imagining it."

It's not exactly a lie, but it's not the whole truth either. He didn't tell her that, since childhood, his father - no matter how busy he was - always took the time to take him to visit social housing projects that the corporation sponsored to build, always reminding him a sentence that he remembers to this day: "Architecture is not to show off to the rich, but to solve problems for those who need it the most." He didn't say it out loud, just because he didn't know how to explain why a boy living in a twenty-five-story mansion was so familiar with the difficulties of a thirty-six square meter house.

On the Friday afternoon before the submission date, the two sat in the empty classroom after school to complete the final drawing and color the perspective. The afternoon sunlight slanted through the window, shining directly on the page, making the watercolor pencils shine.

"What do you think this house should be named?" Dieu Linh asked, holding a colored pencil and rotating it.

Khoi Nguyen thought for a moment, then wrote neatly in the bottom corner of the drawing: "Tree Gon House."

"Why Cay Gon?" she asked, even though she already guessed the answer.

"Because that's where I met you," he said, not looking at her, focusing on finishing the color of the roof tiles. "The tree stump in the school yard, where you gave me the sticky rice the first day."

Dieu Linh felt her heart beat faster, but she tried to keep her voice calm. "You remember so much."

"I remember everything related to you," Khoi Nguyen blurted out, then immediately blushed because he realized what he had just said. "I mean... because you're my best friend here. At this school."

"YES." She bent down, hid the smile that was spreading on her lips, and focused on pretending to correct the already perfect drawing of the stairs. "Me too."

The two were silent for a while, only the sound of pencils rustling on paper and the late summer cicadas calling outside the window. It was one of those moments that Dieu Linh will remember forever — not because anything special happened, but because of the simplicity of it, two children toiling over a drawing, sharing a common dream that they both believed was true.

Their article "The Tree House", when submitted, made teacher Huu Khang stop and read the other articles more carefully. The teacher called them both to the teacher's desk after class and pointed to the cross-sectional drawing where Khoi Nguyen had carefully calculated the ceiling height to optimize convective air flow.

"Did you come up with this yourself?" The teacher asked Khoi Nguyen, his voice mixed with surprise and curiosity. "This is the principle of natural ventilation that people use in tropical architecture, not everyone knows at your age."

"I read it somewhere," Khoi Nguyen replied, avoiding his teacher's eyes.

"Where did you read it?"

"I... don't remember clearly."

Teacher Khang looked at him for a moment, as if realizing there was something this student did not want to say, but did not ask further. "Okay. Anyway, very good idea. You have real talent, Khoi Nguyen. If you study architecture in the future, I believe you will do something great."

Standing next to Dieu Linh, seeing Khoi Nguyen's ears turn red from the compliment, her heart also swelled with a joy that was hard to name. She didn't know that Mr. Khang's words, although a sincere compliment, accidentally touched on a truth he was trying to hide - that "something big", for his family, was not a distant dream, but almost a path that had been planned since he was born.

The following week, Mr. Khang spent an entire class period listening to the groups present their work. Dang Nhat Huy's group went up first, presenting a drawing of a three-story villa with an infinity pool, private tennis court and four-car garage, drawn with graphics software he asked his brother to do for him, flashy colors, eye-catching perspective. The whole class was amazed by the magnificence, Nhat Huy happily puffed out his chest and received each round of applause.

"What is your group's functional idea?" Mr. Khang asked after the presentation ended.

Nhat Huy paused for a second. "Yes... it's a big, luxurious house, for rich families to live in."

"What problem does it solve?" The teacher continued to ask, his voice still calm.

The group looked at each other, no one could answer. Teacher Khang nodded, did not criticize harshly, just gently took notes in the gradebook and invited the next group.

When it was Dieu Linh and Khoi Nguyen's turn, they both stepped up to the board, pasted the drawing of "Tree Gon House", and this time it was Dieu Linh who presented, because Khoi Nguyen insisted that she spoke better than him.

"This is a thirty-six square meter house for a family of three generations," she began, her voice trembling slightly with nervousness but clearly. "The problem we want to solve is how to make the small house still bright and airy enough, so that the elderly do not have to climb high stairs, so that children can have a quiet corner to study even though the house is cramped. We put a skylight in the middle to get natural light, put the stairs to one side to save space, and..."

She glanced at Khoi Nguyen, he nodded slightly in encouragement, and she continued the rest fluently, as if she were telling the story of the house she was living in, except that the house in this drawing had a way out of the crampedness, while the real house did not.

The class listened silently, there were no sounds of admiration, but when Dieu Linh finished presenting, Mr. Khang was the first to clap, slowly and firmly, then the whole class followed suit, even a few of Nhat Huy's friends had to nod in recognition.

"This," Mr. Khang said, looking around the class, "is true architecture. Not a big house or a small house, but a house that solves the real problems of the people inside it. I give this group a score of ten, and I hope the rest of you learn something today."

On the way home, Dieu Linh hugged the drawing of "The Cay Gon House" tightly in her briefcase, as carefully as hugging a treasure.

"In the future, when you become a real architect," she said, "don't forget to build a house just like this for me. With skylights, a backyard with trees, and a place so my mother doesn't have to dry laundry on the stove anymore."

"I promise," Khoi Nguyen said, and this time his voice was more certain than any promise he had ever made in his life, although he did not know that to keep that promise, he would have to go a much longer way than she imagined.