Chapter 6 — Anonymous Drawing

In March of my eleventh grade year, Truc Giang's weather began to turn to scorching sun, signaling the coming of summer. One Wednesday afternoon, Khoi Nguyen was sitting in a Math extra class held right in the school's classroom when the old "brick" phone he used to communicate vibrated in his pocket - a call from an unfamiliar number.

He walked out into the hallway to answer the phone, the voice on the other end was low and urgent: "Boss, the president told me to come pick you up right now. There's an urgent need for you to return to the company."

"Uncle Tai, I told you not to call me 'master' here," Khoi Nguyen lowered his voice, his eyes quickly glancing towards the classroom door behind, where his classmates were still busy doing their homework. "What's so urgent, uncle?"

"The legal department needs you to sign some documents related to the account in your name. The president said it can't be delayed, it must be done this afternoon." Uncle Tai's voice - the family's longtime private driver - still retained the familiar respectful tone even though he had been told many times to keep this a secret. "I'm parking my car a little way from the school gate, waiting for you to come out."

Khoi Nguyen hesitated. He knew, if it was a truly urgent matter related to the pending lawsuit for nearly a year between his family and a group of opposing shareholders - those who once threatened his mother's safety to apply pressure in the dispute over control of the corporation - he could not hesitate.

"I'll be right out," he said, then turned back to the classroom and asked the tutor for permission to leave early because "there's an urgent matter at home".

He hurriedly walked out the side gate of the school, where few students passed by, but did not expect that at that moment Dieu Linh was also on her way out of the library, coincidentally passing by the side gate area to pick up her bicycle parked nearby. She saw a shiny black car, with a special license plate, parked close to the curb, and Khoi Nguyen was walking towards it.

"Khoi Nguyen?" she called, surprised.

He turned around in surprise and saw her standing not far away, her suspicious eyes looking from him to the car and then back to him.

"Dieu Linh," he said, trying to keep his voice normal even though his heart was pounding. "Are you leaving?"

"YES." She stepped closer, never taking her eyes off the car. "Whose car is that? Where are you going to drive such a luxurious car?"

Uncle Tai, sitting in the car, promptly opened the door and got out, bowed his head politely but said nothing more, just stood and waited.

"Ah..." Khoi Nguyen was confused for a few seconds, his mind racing to find a reasonable explanation. "The car belongs to an acquaintance at my aunt's house. He works as a driver for a company, so he stopped by to pick me up today for something to do."

"What do you need to drive a luxury car for?" Dieu Linh continued asking, her voice still a bit curious but without any deep doubts.

"Go... go see your aunt," Khoi Nguyen said, the lie coming out almost instinctively, making him feel disgusted with himself in that moment. "My aunt is not feeling well these days. This driver is kind and helpful."

"OH." Dieu Linh nodded, a worried look flashed across her face. "What's wrong with your aunt? Is it serious?"

"It's not too serious, just a routine checkup," he quickly reassured, feeling each lie piled on top of the previous one making him more and more suffocated. "I have to go now, I'll see you in class tomorrow."

"Yeah, be careful. Text me and let me know if aunt is okay." Dieu Linh waved goodbye, then turned to get her bike, without any further doubts.

But when she got home on her bike, she couldn't stop thinking about it, to the point that she had to call Ho Khanh Thu to tell the story that night, her voice still a little confused.

"What car is so luxurious?" Khanh Thu asked over the phone, her voice full of curiosity. "What series is the special license plate, do you remember?"

"I didn't pay close attention, I just saw the car's black, heavy doors. When closing, I heard a soft 'thump', different from a bus or a tricycle transporting goods in the market." Dieu Linh lay with her legs crossed on the edge of the bed, looking at the ceiling. "He said it was an acquaintance's car at his aunt's house. He went to see a doctor for her."

"Yeah, that's probably true," Khanh Thu said, but her voice was still somewhat joking. "Who knows, maybe Khoi Nguyen is a hidden young master, running away from home to live in a boarding house to give him a taste of everyday life, like those popular TV shows."

"Nonsense," Dieu Linh laughed, lightly punching the pillow. "He's poorer than me. I even had to lend him money to buy books and school supplies. Young master, why are you so miserable?"

"I'm just kidding," Khanh Thu chuckled. "But I admit, sometimes I think there's something strange about him, the way he speaks and behaves more maturely than his age, like the children of a well-educated family. But never mind, it's okay if people are poor but polite, they're even more precious."

"That's right," Dieu Linh nodded, although there was a small ripple in her heart that she couldn't name, then quickly dismissed it, telling herself she was thinking too much. "Okay, let's not talk about this anymore, we have to take the Chemistry test tomorrow."

She hung up the phone and lay silently for a long time in the dark, the image of a shiny black car kept flashing in her mind, along with Khoi Nguyen's unusually awkward appearance as he explained. But then she shook her head, blaming herself for being suspicious, reminding herself that the friend who had shared so many secrets with her for nearly a year had no reason to hide anything important from her. She fell asleep with that thought, not knowing that her initial intuition, although vague, was much more accurate than she thought.

Khoi Nguyen watched her shadow disappear behind the corner of the school wall, then returned to the car, sitting silently all the way to the group headquarters, his heart heavy with a feeling of guilt he had never experienced before. He lied to her a second time — not to protect her like the "study promotion fund" time, but this time to protect his own secret, and it made him feel different, as if he had just taken a step further into territory he could no longer control.

At the group's headquarters, his father — Mr. Ngo Bach Son — was sitting in a private meeting room with the chief lawyer, his face more tense than he had seen in many months. When he saw his son enter, he stood up and gave his shoulder a rare squeeze.

"Sign here," he said, pushing the file towards him. "The matter of authorizing account management, in case it needs to be handled urgently and you are not there in time. Sorry for having to call you home so suddenly."

"Is the matter with that group of shareholders not over yet?" Khoi Nguyen asked, holding a pen to sign in the pre-marked places.

Mr. Bach Son sighed and sat down in his chair, fatigue clearly visible on his face, which always remained calm in front of outsiders. "Soon. The lawyer said the court will have a final verdict in about a month or two. After the verdict, everything will stabilize and you will be able to go home."

"I'm not in a hurry," Khoi Nguyen said, and realized he was telling the truth. "I... I think it's fine there."

Mr. Bach Son looked at his son for a moment, there was something searching in his eyes. "Do you have good friends there?"

"Yes," he replied, not saying more, but the corner of his mouth curled up slightly, making his father immediately recognize him.

"That's good," Mr. Bach Son said, his voice rarely softened. "But remember, when everything is over, you will have to return to your rightful place. I don't want you to forget that, no matter how many good friends you have there."

That sentence, seemingly just a normal reminder from the father, was like a heavy rock falling into Khoi Nguyen's heart all the way back to Cay Gon alley that night. He looked out the car window, watching the luxurious streets gradually give way to narrow alleys and shabby roofs, and wondered, when the "his place" his father mentioned finally came, whether the friendship — or perhaps more than friendship — he had with Dieu Linh, would still be intact.

That night, a text message from Dieu Linh came to his phone: "Are you okay, aunt? Do you need me to bring anything over?"

Khoi Nguyen looked at the text for a long time, her fingers hovering over the keyboard, feeling that every word she typed was filled with sincere concern, and he, who had just responded to that sincerity with a lie, didn't know how to respond properly. Finally he just typed: "I'm fine, thank you for asking." Then turned off the phone screen, lay down and looked up at the dark ceiling, my mind filled with unanswered questions.

He thought of his father's words in the afternoon - about the "position" he would have to return to - and of Dieu Linh's radiant face every time the two of them worked hard on a new drawing. Those two images, in his mind, could never be put into the same picture, like two drawings built on two different scale systems, no matter how hard he tried to overlap each other, they could never completely match each line.