Chapter 1 — Contract of the Heart

On Saturday afternoon, the small house on Truc Bach street smelled of green bean tea, freshly brewed lotus tea and another smell that Ngô Thảo Nguyên recognized right from the gate: the smell of an upcoming blind date.

She stopped in front of the door, still holding a schoolbag heavy with manuscripts of this week's school newspaper. Looking through the window, she saw her grandmother busy arranging four blue-glazed porcelain cups in the middle of the table, the type of cups only used when there are distinguished guests. On the table there was also a plate of lotus jam, a plate of green rice cake wrapped in red paper, and — Thảo Nguyên closed her eyes for a second — a vase of freshly cut pink gladiolus flowers, the type of flowers she only buys when she wants to "bring life to the house."

"Here we go again," she muttered, pushing the door open and entering.

"You're back!" Mrs. Xuân looked up, her face beaming as if she had just won the lottery. At nearly seventy, she still maintained a straight figure; her silver hair was tied neatly at the back of her head, and her sharp eyes needed no glasses to read the newspaper. But Thảo Nguyên was too familiar with that sparkling, calculating look at this moment to immediately recognize it as a dangerous signal.

"Grandma, do we have guests?" Thảo Nguyên asked, even though she already knew the answer.

"Yes, you should change into nice clothes. Uncle Tam will bring his son over to visit later. The boy is studying construction engineering, just returned home, very handsome, I've seen his photo." Ms. Xuân said as she rubbed her hands together as if she were preparing an important business deal.

Thảo Nguyên dropped her school bag on the chair, feeling a familiar headache starting to throb behind her temples. This was the fifth blind date in three months. The first was the twenty-two-year-old son of an old friend from her nursing association, who talked about nothing but large-displacement motorbikes. The second was the neighbor's nephew, who worked at a bank and was polite but as bland as water. The third person, the fourth person - she no longer remembers clearly, she only remembers the feeling of sitting still like a statue in the living room, smiling wryly, waiting until the guests returned so she could escape to the room to breathe.

"Grandma, I have to do my paper for Monday, I—"

"Just sit and eat with someone for a while, it doesn't cost anything." Mrs. Xuân interrupted, her voice still sweet but with a firm meaning that could not be denied. "I'm old, I just want to see you at peace before I—"

"Don't say that again." Thảo Nguyên quickly interrupted, her heart tightening. That was always the sentence she used to end all arguments — mentioning age, the day when she would no longer be with her. And every time, Thảo Nguyên had to go along with it, because she knew that behind those words was not just a trick, but a real worry.

Thảo Nguyên's parents had worked in Taiwan since she was in third grade, and came back only once or twice a year for Tet. The person who raised her, took her to school, taught her how to cook, taught her how to iron her white ao dai neatly before each flag-raising ceremony, was her grandmother. This small house, the small garden behind the kitchen filled with herbs, the old bicycle she still rides to the market every morning - everything had been Thảo Nguyên's whole world since she was nine years old.

That's why, every time she mentioned "settle down in the family", Thảo Nguyên couldn't get angry, no matter how frustrated she was in her heart. She was not wrong. She was simply scared—the fear of someone who had spent her whole life taking care of others and now had only one thing left to worry about.

But that fear was turning into pressure on Thảo Nguyên's shoulders every weekend.

The doorbell rang right when she was still standing still in the middle of the living room. Mrs. Xuân hurriedly opened it, and bustling greetings rang out in the yard. Thảo Nguyên had exactly ten seconds to decide: run away and go upstairs, or stay and fight.

She chose to stay. As always.

The blind date took place according to the familiar scenario: Mr. Tâm's son - named Đức Thịnh - was polite, dressed neatly, spoke properly but was clearly forced to come here just like her. For forty minutes, the two only exchanged innocuous pleasantries while the two mothers — no, a grandmother and her friend — kept talking, complimenting each other, and occasionally glancing meaningfully at the two children.

When the guests returned, Mrs. Xuân turned to Thảo Nguyên with radiant eyes. "How does the boy look? He seems gentle and has a stable career."

"Grandma." Thảo Nguyên rubbed her temples, the feeling of pent-up fatigue for three months suddenly rising to her throat. "I beg you, please don't arrange more sessions like this?"

"Why not? I'm twenty-two years old—"

"I'm eighteen, grandma." Thảo Nguyên laughed bitterly. "I haven't graduated from high school yet."

"Eh, well—" Ms. Xuân paused slightly, then immediately regained her composure. "Well, I prepared it for you in advance, so it's okay. In the past, when I was your age, I was—"

"I know, I know, in the past she was already a bride, right?" Thảo Nguyên waved her hand, trying to keep her voice gentle even though her heart was on fire. "But now it's different, grandma. I still have to study, I still have to take the university entrance exam, I still have—"

"She knows, she knows everything." Mrs. Xuân sat down in the chair, her voice suddenly lowered, no longer the nervous tone from before. "But dear, you're only half a year away from graduating, then you'll go to college, and maybe you'll work far away in the future, like your parents. I'm just afraid..." She hesitated, looking far away at the window, where the afternoon sunlight was dyeing the small yard yellow. "I'm just afraid that when I'm no longer here, you won't have anyone to rely on, to love you like I did."

The words made Thảo Nguyên's chest choke. She sat down next to her grandmother, holding her wrinkled but still warm, familiar hand.

"Don't say that. You'll live well with me for a long time."

"Who knows, my dear." Mrs. Xuân smiled sadly and patted her granddaughter's hand. "I just want before I celebrate my seventieth birthday to see you have a really good person by my side, so I can feel secure."

Happy seventy years old. Thảo Nguyên remembered, it was the end of the semester, about four months left. All her relatives would come home; it would be the biggest party her family had held in many years.

And she was placing a heavy expectation on her shoulders, right before that important threshold.

"Grandma," Thảo Nguyên heard her own voice tremble, not knowing why she blurted out those words at that moment, perhaps because she was too tired, too wanted this blind date to be the last, too wanted to see her worried eyes soften even just a little. "I... I have a boyfriend."

The air in the living room seemed to freeze.

Mrs. Xuân turned sharply to look at her, her eyes opened so wide that the wrinkles around the corners of her eyes almost disappeared. "What did you say?"

"I... I have a boyfriend." Thảo Nguyên repeated, her voice fading, her heart pounding in her chest. The lie had slipped out of my mouth, there was no way to take it back. "She goes to the same school as me, in the same class."

"Oh my god!" Mrs. Xuân clapped her hands together, her face lit up as if she had just heard the happiest news of her life. "Why did you hide it from me for so long? Who are you? What's your name? Are you good at school? Where is your home?"

Each question poured in like a shower, making Thảo Nguyên dizzy. She bit her lip, her mind racing to find a way to defend the lie she had just blurted out, while she still had no time to understand what she had just done.

"Her... her name is..." She glanced around the living room as if the answer would appear from somewhere on the wall, until her eyes accidentally stopped at the stack of last week's school newspaper on the table, where there was an article about the city-level Robotics competition, with a photo of the club captain standing next to the robot model, his face so serious that it was almost cold.

"Việt Anh," Thảo Nguyên heard herself say that name, almost uncontrollably. "Đinh Việt Anh. He is the captain of my school's Robotics club."

Ms. Xuân covered her face, her eyes filled with tears from emotion. "Oh my god, he's so talented! When will you bring him home to play with me so I can see him?"

Thảo Nguyên looked at her, a forced smile on her lips while inside she was in extreme panic. She had just turned an impulsive lie into a concrete promise, with a specific name, a specific face — of someone she, to be honest, had never spoken to more than three sentences in the two years she had been in the same class.

"Yes... let me ask her first, ma'am," she replied softly, already starting to calculate in her head how much trouble she had just gotten herself into.

Outside, the afternoon sunlight was fading behind the trees, leaving a pale orange halo in the sky, as if signaling that something was about to change - although Thảo Nguyên, at that time, had not yet imagined that she was about to face knocking on the door to find Đinh Việt Anh, the person she had just turned into her "boyfriend" in just one spontaneous sentence, to convince him to participate in the biggest lie of her life.