Chapter 7 — Cartographer of Lost Roads

Kim Xuyen Urban Heritage Conservation Center, where Ta Duy Khanh collaborates, is located modestly on the second floor of an old townhouse that has been gently renovated, keeping the ironwood frame and yin-yang tile roof, only adding an electrical and air conditioning system to suit office functions. Van Khue went there on Wednesday afternoon at Duy Khanh's invitation, bringing with her all the photocopies of documents she had collected, carefully arranged in an old leather briefcase of her grandfather's that she borrowed temporarily without specifying the reason.

The wooden stairs creaked under her feet as she stepped up to the second floor, where a large room was arranged like half an office, half a library, with ceiling-high bookshelves filled with books on architecture, planning, and urban history, interspersed with rolled-up drawing tubes standing in rows in the corner of the wall. A large map of Kim Xuyen city is pinned to the board, marked with different red, yellow, and blue dots — perhaps the classification system for heritage areas that Duy Khanh is researching.

"Van Khue, come in here, come in here," Duy Khanh waved to her from the large table in the middle of the room, where he had spread out several maps and a stack of notes. Next to him, a younger girl with short chestnut-dyed hair was typing quickly on the computer, looking up at Van Khue with curious and friendly eyes.

"This is Chung Bao Nghi, my colleague at the center," Duy Khanh introduced. "Nghi is in charge of communications and community document collection, and is better at finding information on social networks than anyone I've ever known."

"Hello, Ms. Van Khue!" Bao Nghi stood up and shook her hand enthusiastically. "Mr. Khanh has told me everything, the Xom Van Dang incident is truly thrilling. If I were a journalist, I would probably be able to write a series of long-term reports."

Bao Nghi's straightforward excitement made the atmosphere in the room much lighter than the tension Van Khue had been carrying for the past few weeks. She smiled, put the briefcase on the table, began to spread it out one by one, explaining everything she had found - from the 1987 and 1995 maps, the article about the flood protection embankment project, the document delivery record signed by her grandfather and Mr. Diep Khac Bon, to what she overheard in the office canteen about the Kim Xuyen Riverside project.

She deliberately didn't mention that the person who signed "Deliverer" on the record was her grandfather — not because she didn't trust the two of them, but because she wasn't ready to say it yet, wasn't sure what it really meant, and because part of her still wanted to protect him, no matter how involved he was.

Duy Khanh listened attentively, occasionally taking notes in a separate notebook, while Bao Nghi typed continuously on his laptop, seemingly building a digital timeline parallel to what Van Khue told.

"So we have three main pieces of the puzzle," Duy Khanh summarized after Van Khue finished, using a red pen to circle three points on the map pinned to the board. "One, the 1994 flood protection embankment project was used as an excuse to clear Van Dang in an unusually rushed time, but there is no evidence that the embankment was ever actually built. Two, the land status records and original map documents were pulled out of the archives, transferred to the right person in charge of the project, Mr. Diep Khac Bon, and never returned. Third, the land after that, through many layers of transfer, is currently owned by Hai Nguyen Group, led by Mr. Bon's son is the General Director."

"In other words," Bao Nghi interjected, his voice much harsher than his initial cheerfulness, "this is not an ordinary bad planning case. This is a deliberate land appropriation, disguised as a public utility project."

"We need to be careful with how we use words," Duy Khanh said, his voice calm but serious. "What we have now are reasonable clues, enough to raise questions, but not enough to draw firm conclusions. We need more direct evidence — living witnesses, original documents if they exist, or at least accounts that can be cross-referenced."

Van Khue nodded, secretly grateful for Duy Khanh's caution - it was completely different from the impatience she herself sometimes felt in her heart, and also different from Bao Nghi's direct indignation. There was something steadfast in the way he approached the issue, like someone accustomed to pursuing the truth patiently, not letting his emotions get the best of him, though he was clearly not indifferent to this story either.

"In two years of independent research, I have encountered many cases where people hastily concluded and then had to correct, apologize, and even lose the trust of the very witnesses they were trying to protect," Duy Khanh added, his voice lowered as if recalling an unhappy memory. "Once I wrote an article about a row of ancient streets being demolished, blaming all the responsibility on one individual based on a single person's story. Later I learned that the truth was much more complicated, there were at least three parties involved, and the person I blamed was actually just a small link, and was himself forced. That article caused that person's family to be unfairly attacked for many months. Since then, I have always reminded myself that rebuilding the truth of a community is a heavy responsibility. We can't do anything rashly, we can't ignore the necessary caution because we're eager for justice."

That story made Van Khue look at him with a new respect. She realized that behind Duy Khanh's calm appearance was a person who had fallen, had to pay the price for his own impatience, and that was why he became so cautious — not because of a lack of enthusiasm, but because he had learned the price of lacking it that comes with certainty.

"So what's the next step?" she asked.

"I texted Kha Duy Thinh, the manager of the group 'Memories of Van Dang'," Duy Khanh said. "He agreed to meet with us this weekend. I think you should come with me, because as someone who directly works in the archives, you can help authenticate and compare what he shares with official sources."

"Can I go too?" Bao Nghi asked, his eyes bright. "I want to record an interview video, maybe in the future I can do a report."

"Not in a hurry to shoot a video yet," Duy Khanh said, his voice a bit more stern with his young colleague. "We need to build trust with the community first, we can't just point a camera at people when we meet. Many families have been hurt by this, they need time to feel safe to share."

Bao Nghi pouted but still nodded in agreement and returned to his work typing on the computer. Van Khue looked at the way Duy Khanh handled the situation — both respecting his colleagues' enthusiasm and upholding his own principles — and felt her trust in him grow with each small detail like that.

The afternoon passed quickly in a focused working atmosphere. When it started to get dark, Bao Nghi asked permission to go home first because he had an appointment with a friend, leaving Van Khue and Duy Khanh alone in the room, the table lamp shining down on the pile of documents still scattered on the table.

"Thank you," Van Khue said suddenly, while putting documents back into her briefcase. "Over the past few weeks, I thought I was alone against a wall of silence. When I met you and Nghi, I felt much better."

Duy Khanh stopped, looked at her, his eyes softened. "Me too. I've been doing this research alone for two years, most of the time it's just been me with old documents and brief interviews with strangers. Having people dig deep into a story, understanding why it's important, is not easy to find."

There was a short silence between the two of them, not awkward but not entirely comfortable either—the kind of silence typical of those moments when two people just realize they might be starting to care more about each other than is necessary for a purely business relationship, but neither one wants to be the first to admit it yet.

"I should go home," Van Khue said, breaking the silence, slinging her briefcase on her shoulder. "Thank you for this afternoon."

"Let me see you off," Duy Khanh said, standing up.

The two of them descended the wooden stairs in silence, their footsteps blending together in a strangely natural rhythm. At the door, Duy Khanh stopped, seemingly wanting to say something more, but then just smiled.

"I'll meet Kha Duy Thinh this weekend. I'll text you the specific address later," he said. "Thank you for trusting me to share everything you found. I know it's not easy to do, especially when this seems to involve your family members."

That sentence made Van Khue pause a bit - she had never told him clearly about her grandfather, only vaguely mentioning that her family "seemed to know something". But perhaps, with the sharpness of someone who has spent many years listening to difficult stories, Duy Khanh herself realized it from the way she told the story, from the hesitation in her voice every time she mentioned her family.

"Yes," she simply replied, without further explanation. "See you this weekend."

She cycled home in the orange sunset across the city sky, her mind filled with thoughts about Van Dang Hamlet, about her grandfather, and even about the man who had just left a surprisingly deep impression on her after only two meetings. She told herself not to let her personal feelings interfere with such an important investigation, but her heart, as always, never listened to reason easily.