Chapter 5 — Cartographer of Lost Roads

The application for permission to access records at the Provincial Archives Center fits on an A4 page, but it took Van Khue nearly an hour to compose it, weighing every word as if it were the most important letter of his life. She clearly stated that her purpose was "personal research on the history of urban planning in the riverbank area of Kim Xuyen city in the period 1990–1996", attached a copy of her identification card, and was careful not to mention her current job title in the city center, to avoid the application being compared against what Mr. Khai had instructed.

She mailed the application on Monday morning, then spent the next week waiting impatiently while trying to appear normal in front of her family and colleagues. The map digitization work at the center continued as usual - she finished scanning the 1995 map, noted "missing records" in the inventory minutes as Mr. Khai requested, and did not mention anything else about her findings in the briefings. But every night, after work, she takes the time to review what she took notes, looking for ways to connect the disparate pieces of information into a more meaningful picture.

She also began to learn more about Hai Nguyen Group through public sources - the company website, articles about past and ongoing projects, and the list of board of directors. The company was founded in 2011, initially just a small real estate brokerage business, but around 2015 it suddenly rose to become one of the city's major investors, owning a significant land fund in many areas, including the eastern riverside land - where the company had "quietly completed legal procedures on land origin" for many years before announcing the Kim Xuyen Riverside project three years ago. The phrase "quietly completing legal procedures on land origin" appeared in an interview with Mr. Diep Nhat Binh in a business magazine, which he mentioned as a testament to the company's "perseverance and long-term vision" — but with what Van Khue knew, that phrase now has a completely different, almost ironic meaning.

She also found an old photo in the interview, showing Mr. Diep Nhat Binh standing next to an older man with white hair, thin figure but sharp eyes, captioned as "Mr. Diep Khac Bon, father of the General Director, the person who laid the first foundation for the family's land fund". Looking at the photo, Van Khue felt a chill run down her spine — "the person who laid the first foundation for the family's land fund" was a fancy, almost proud way of saying exactly what she suspected: a plot of land illegally confiscated from hundreds of poor households, then falling into the private hands of the person who ordered its recovery.

That Friday, a call from an unfamiliar phone number startled her in the middle of work. On the other end of the line was the voice of a middle-aged woman, claiming to be an employee of the Provincial Archives Center, announcing that her permit application had been approved, and that she could come to the reading room any working day next week, bringing her identification to register.

"However," the woman added, her voice somewhat cautious, "I must warn you that the records related to the City Land Fund Management Board for the period before 2000 are currently in a state of being rearranged, some have been digitized, some are still in paper form but scattered in many different warehouses due to the process of merging agencies over time. You may have to wait and search for quite a long time to find the right file you need, if it still exists."

"If it still exists," Van Khue repeated in her head after hanging up the phone, that phrase was a silent warning that the road ahead would not be easy. But at least now she had a door to enter, even though that door might lead to an empty room.

That weekend, before going to the Provincial Archives Center on Monday, Van Khue spent time organizing all of her notes more systematically, the same way she does with work projects — a timeline, a list of characters involved, a list of questions to answer. She pasted it all on a large piece of cardboard, propped up in the corner of her bedroom, where her mother rarely went in to clean.

On Sunday, she decided to try a different approach with her grandfather — not asking directly about Van Dang anymore, because she realized that asking directly would only make him more defensive, but instead, she brought the 1987 map that had been scanned and printed out in large format, placing it on the tea table on the porch, where he still sat every afternoon.

"Please take a look at this, grandpa," she said, trying to keep her voice natural, as if she was asking him to evaluate a purely professional matter. "I'm digitizing some old maps. There are some places where the drawing is too blurry. I'm not sure what symbol this is. Please help me look at it."

She pointed to a corner of the map that was completely unrelated to the Van Dang area - a technical symbol for the sewer system in the central area - deliberately putting him on the map indirectly, without defense. Mr. Tuyen put on his glasses, bent down to look at the map, and for a moment, Van Khue saw his eyes light up in a very different way from the usual tension of the past few days - it was the eyes of a skilled craftsman when he saw the work of his contemporaries again, even though it was not drawn by his own hands.

"This is the symbol for a box culvert, a type of precast concrete culvert," he explained, his voice suddenly becoming much more animated. "Back then, the city had just put this type of sewer into use. People used to symbolize it with two parallel lines with a slash in the middle, like this."

He used his finger to draw that symbol on the table, his movements were decisive and precise, without shaking like when he held chopsticks to eat. Van Khue watched his finger move, and in that moment, she suddenly realized something: the man sitting in front of her, even though he was seventy-eight years old, even though his back was hunched and his hands were shaking, he still had intact within him the skills and love of a person who had spent his entire youth drawing the shape of a city. It was not a job he did for simple bread and butter. It was a part of his nature, a part that perhaps the secret he was keeping forced him to bury, to pretend to forget, for so many years.

Taking the opportunity for him to open up, she turned to another page in the printed atlas, where a small corner of the eastern riverbank area appeared at the edge of the page, enough to recognize a few lines of Van Dang Hamlet without being too obvious.

"Grandpa, what about this," she asked, her voice still as natural as before, "these small alleys, I think the drawings are so detailed, they must have been carefully measured to get them right?"

Mr. Tuyen looked down at the corner of that map, and this time, the change on his face was slower but much more obvious than before. His finger, which had just moved flexibly to redraw the sewer symbol, was now motionless on the tabletop. He looked at that corner of the map for a long time, so long that Van Khue began to worry that he had gone too far and had hurt him unnecessarily.

"Alleys like this," he said at last, his voice quiet, almost a whisper, "you have to walk through each alley, measure with a tape measure, take notes by hand, it can take up to a month to draw an area like that. The painter must be familiar with each house, each yard, to draw the right proportions and its soul."

"Have you ever drawn an area like that?" Van Khue asked softly, almost holding her breath.

Mr. Tuyen did not answer immediately. He took off his glasses, folded them, placed them on the table, then stood up, slowly, as if his body had suddenly become heavier in just the past few minutes.

"It's late, I'm going to rest," he said, without looking at her, his voice somewhat muffled. "You should also leave early, you have work tomorrow."

He entered the house, walking more slowly than usual, leaving Van Khue sitting alone on the porch with a printed map spread out on the table, the yellow light shining down on the winding alleys that now, she was almost certain, it was her grandfather's trembling hands that had gone through every alley, every house, to measure, to take notes, to draw them with all the dedication of a young craftsman - before, not long after, those same hands had to draw again. another map, erasing everything I had ever carefully created.

She folded the map, hugged it to her chest like she was hugging something fragile, then sat quietly looking out at the dark yard, where the crescent moon hung above the close-knit rooftops of the neighborhood. Tomorrow, she will go to the Provincial Archives Center, enter an unfamiliar archive, searching for the last pieces of a story that she is increasingly certain is not only the story of a lost fishing village, but also the story of her own family — of a grandfather who has carried a heavy secret for nearly thirty years, and of a granddaughter who, unexpectedly, her daily work will become the key to open that door.

That night, Van Khue wrote one last line in her notebook before turning off the light and going to bed: "Tomorrow begins a new chapter. No matter what I find out, I will not let it sink into oblivion again." She closed the notebook, placed it next to her pillow, and for the first time in many days, she fell into a dreamless sleep, with only the sound of the late night wind blowing through the window, bringing with it the familiar humidity of a riverside city preparing to enter the rainy season.