Chapter 1 — Climbing Through the Storm

Twelve meters.

Khánh Thi knew that number exactly because she had counted every iron step on the practice pole—counting so she would not have to look down. The morning wind was mild, just strong enough to make the red flag on the transformer station flutter, but by the eighth step the thick rubber gloves on her hands were already soaked with sweat.

"Hook the secondary line before leaving the main hook. Repeat."

Thắng's voice echoed from the ground, not loud, not urgent, just like the sound of tapping. Khánh Thi tightly grasped the horizontal iron bar in front of her, her knees trembled little by little which she tried to hide by spreading her legs wider on the stairs.

"Hook the auxiliary rope to the upper beam, check the safety lock, and wait for the click before opening the main hook," she said, her voice barely audible.

"Let's do it then."

She didn't. Her right hand reached up and touched the iron hook of the auxiliary safety belt, then stopped midway as if someone had grabbed her wrist and pulled her back down. Below, a twelve-meter-high concrete pole stood in the middle of Hải Lộng Electricity's materials yard, surrounded by neatly lined rolls of aluminum cable, ceramic insulators still in green packaging, and three public-service trucks parked diagonally beneath the corrugated-iron roof.

"You're scared."

Not a question. Thắng stood below, his arms crossed over his chest, his helmet tilted to one side from decades of habit. The forty-five-year-old man stood motionless in his boots, his eyes calculating, just as he examined a cracked porcelain insulator to estimate how much load it could bear before breaking.

"I'm not afraid," Khánh Thi replied, then immediately knew she had just lied in front of the person who would discover it the fastest in the world.

"Okay. Then hook up the auxiliary line."

She looked down once, just once, and the yard below suddenly tilted in her eyes as if the entire concrete column was slowly falling backwards. Her stomach tightened, the familiar nausea rising into her throat. She closed her eyes, counted to three the way a psychiatrist at the union clinic had taught her when she first signed the contract, then opened her eyes and looked straight at the iron beam in front of her, looking nowhere else.

Her hand moved. The metal hook touched the iron ring on the beam, and a neat "click" sounded.

"Check again."

She tried pulling the rope, feeling the tension, then used her other hand to open the main hook attached to the lower step.

"Good," Thắng said, just one word, but Khánh Thi heard in it a part of relief that he did not intend to reveal. "Let's get down. That's enough for today."

She slid down each step, her legs shaking so much that she had to hold on tighter than usual, and when her feet touched the ground, she stood still for a moment, still holding the last iron bar as if she couldn't believe she was on the ground.

"Why don't you tell me what I did wrong?" She asked as she took off her helmet, her sideburns sticky with sweat even though it was still early and not very hot.

"Because you didn't make any technical mistakes." Thắng picked up his work notebook, scratched out a line with a ballpoint pen, without looking up. "You're wrong in thinking you can fool me by saying you're not afraid."

Khánh Thi was silent. She was twenty-four years old, had been in the profession for five months, and in those five months she had learned that this man was not the type to scold students in front of others, nor was he the type to pat his shoulder to comfort her. He just said exactly what he saw, so concisely that it sometimes made listeners more uncomfortable than being scolded.

"I'm really afraid of heights," She finally spoke, looking down at her rubber boots covered in red dirt. "Ever since I was little. When I was in middle school, I climbed the campfire watchtower and didn't dare go down, so I had to ask my teacher to carry me."

"So why sign up for this profession?"

"Because the contract salary is almost three times higher than the supermarket sales salary. And because—" She stopped, her fingers tightening the strap of the helmet she was holding in her hand. "I need an official contract after this probationary period, Mr. Thắng. I can't show that I'm scared, because I'm afraid they will transfer me to the office department, and the office salary is not enough."

Thắng closed the notebook and stuffed it into the chest pocket of his orange protective shirt with the Duyên Hải Electricity logo printed on it, which had faded from many washes. He looked at her for a moment, his gaze not judging, just measuring, the way he would look at a newly erected pillar to see if it was standing straight or not.

"Fear doesn't go away because you hide it," he said. "It goes away because you climb enough times until your body gets used to being up high more than your brain gets used to being afraid. Two different things."

"So how long will it take to get used to it?"

"I've been in the profession for twenty-two years, and I still feel my heart beat faster every time I climb a pole over twenty meters high in strong winds." He shrugged his shoulders, a rare gesture for someone who was naturally reserved with his movements. "The difference is that now I know how to make my heart beat faster without my hands shaking."

The whistle signaling break time rang out from the loudspeaker mounted on the flagpole in the middle of the field, followed by the dramatic sound of the rolling door to the material warehouse being pulled up. Cả Xuyên walked out from inside, carrying an aluminum teapot dented on one side, his gait was slightly limp because his left knee was weak from a fall when he was young.

"Where is your favorite student today?" He smiled, revealing his tobacco-stained teeth, poured tea into three plastic cups placed on the lid of the drum.

"Up to the tenth step," Thắng replied, taking the cup of tea. "There are two more steps to the height of the beam supporting the actual medium voltage wire."

"So that's much better than last week." Cả Xuyên patted Khánh Thi on the shoulder, his hands were calloused and covered in old calluses. "When I first started my career, the older guy in the team even threatened that if I didn't dare climb, he would chase the buffalo back. I climbed to the third step and fainted, falling face down in the sand. Luckily the sand was soft." Khánh Thi laughed, the tension in her body easing a little thanks to the old story he had told countless times to so many other students. She took a sip of tea, the familiar strong acrid taste, looking out to the sea in the distance behind the row of casuarinas blocking the wind of the material yard.

Beyond that, the horizon had a long, opaque gray streak, unlike ordinary clouds.

"Have you checked column 42 of Vàm Sương line this time?" She asked, remembering the last time she followed the team on patrol, seeing Thắng standing for a long time at the foot of that pillar, measuring a small crack on the concrete foundation with a tape measure, taking notes in a notebook.

The smile on Thắng's face quickly disappeared, replaced by the expression he kept every time column 42 was mentioned.

"Checked. Reported. Three times," he spoke, his voice deliberately flat. "The sandy soil in that area was eroded by rain water, losing nearly twenty centimeters of the foundation compared to the original design. I proposed to reinforce it last year."

"So what?"

"Not yet approved." Even Xuyên chimed in, his voice losing its joking tone. "This year's maintenance budget was cut by nearly a third compared with the previous three years. The instructions say to prioritize the highest risks first, but column 42 is not at the top of the list."

"So who is the tallest?"

"No one knows for sure," Thắng replied, still looking at the gray horizon. "That's the problem."

The conversation stopped there because of the sound of Thắng's cell phone vibrating in his chest pocket. He pulled it out, looked at the number that appeared as the internal number of the dispatch room, and answered in a completely different voice, much more concise and alert.

"Thắng speaking."

On the other side was the voice of a female staff member on duty, reading quickly and clearly, the reading style of someone accustomed to having to speak accurately in a short time.

"Mr. Thắng, the Center for Hydro-Meteorological Forecasting has just announced that the tropical depression off the coast has strengthened into storm number 11. The current wind speed is level 8, moving in the west-northwest direction, at a speed of about twenty kilometers per hour. It is forecasted that in the next forty-eight hours, it is likely to strengthen to level 12, level 13, heading straight to the Coastal area, the center of the storm may land right in Hải Lộng or nearby."

Thắng stood up straight, the tea cup in his hand placed on the lid of the drum without making a sound, as if all his attention had just been sucked into the voice on the phone.

"Received. Any orders from the branch manager?"

"Yes, there will be an emergency briefing in the technical room in fifteen minutes. All operations team leaders must be present."

He hung up the phone, stood still for a second, then looked towards column 42 even though he couldn't see it from here, he could only see the line of casuarinas starting to stir even though the wind was not yet strong.

"What's the matter, uncle?" Khánh Thi asked, noticing his expression change.

"Storm number 11," he replied briefly, putting the phone in his pocket. "Planned to land directly here in the next two days, level twelve or thirteen."

Cả Xuyên clicked his tongue, poured the remaining tea in the pot into his cup, and drank it in one gulp as if to calm himself down.

"Twelve or thirteen is much stronger than the previous year," he said. "That storm knocked down eight columns across the district."

"This storm, if forecast correctly, will be stronger." Thắng picked up the notebook again and opened it to a page with a map of the Hải Lộng - Vàm Sương line that he personally drew with a pencil, marking high-risk columns with red circles. Column 42 is in the middle of one of those circles, the pen strokes have been filled in over and over again to the point that the paper is slightly torn.

Khánh Thi watched his finger stop on the page, then looked out at the gray horizon that was getting darker and darker even though it was only mid-morning.

"Can we continue studying in the afternoon?" She asked, her voice no longer trembling like when she stood on the pillar, instead there was a new seriousness that she was surprised to hear in her voice.

Thắng closed the book and looked at her for a moment.

"There is no afternoon," he said. "From now until the storm passes, everything you study and do will focus on one thing. Follow me to the meeting room and listen to the situation. Students also need to know the storm duty procedures, sooner or later you will have to participate."

He walked first, his agile gait different from the slowness of training, and Khánh Thi hurriedly followed. Her protective sleeves were still wet with sweat from pole practice and had not had time to dry before she put on a thin raincoat hanging on a hook near the warehouse door.

Behind them, the wind began to change direction, passing through the rows of casuarinas with a light hissing sound that only people with many years of experience like Cả Xuyên could realize was not normal wind.

"God foretold," he muttered to himself, carried the empty teapot and walked into the warehouse, rolling the door down slower than usual, still looking back at the horizon one last time before the darkness in the warehouse swallowed him.