Chapter 8 — Contract of the Heart

On Friday afternoon, the school newspaper held a short interview with the Robotics club on the occasion of preparing an article about the recent regional tournament achievements. Thảo Nguyên, as editor-in-chief, personally came to the club's living room to conduct the interview, bringing along a notebook and an old tape recorder.

The Robotics Club room was located in the last block of the school. The space was messy but had its own order—shelves for electronic components arranged neatly by color, a whiteboard covered with formulas and circuit diagrams, and a short-haired girl diligently soldering a small circuit board under the desk lamp.

"Diệu Anh, Thảo Nguyên from the school newspaper is here for an interview," Việt Anh called out when he saw Thảo Nguyên walk in, his voice natural as if he was introducing two normal friends.

The girl looked up, took off her goggles, revealing a delicate face with bright eyes and a friendly smile. "Ah, hello, I'm Diệu Anh, the club's deputy in charge of technology."

"Hello, I'm Thảo Nguyên," she replied, taking a closer look at the girl that Việt Anh had mentioned several times in the past week. Diệu Anh has a simple appearance, no makeup, neat and practical shoulder-length hair, the type of person who spends most of her time in the laboratory rather than in front of the mirror.

"I heard that you and Việt Anh are getting to know each other?" Diệu Anh asked directly, without beating around the bush, her voice still friendly but her eyes somewhat probing. "He told me."

"Ah, yes," Thảo Nguyên replied, a bit confused by this unexpected frankness, glanced at Việt Anh for help, but he just stood there with a calm expression as if there was nothing worth discussing.

"That's good," Diệu Anh smiled. The smile seemed sincere but also contained something that Thảo Nguyên couldn't read clearly. "Việt Anh needs someone to help him be a little less rigid. Since childhood, he has always been like that, viewing everything as a problem to be solved, including love."

"Diệu Anh," Việt Anh spoke up, his voice slightly warning, "you're making her feel uncomfortable."

"It's nothing, I'm just telling the truth," Diệu Anh smiled, waved her hand, then turned to Thảo Nguyên with a more open attitude. "Let's start the interview, I'll answer with all my heart, and make sure your article is good."

The interview went smoothly, Diệu Anh proved to be a charming talker, recounting the process of preparing for the regional tournament with many interesting details, sometimes adding a few teasing sentences to Việt Anh, making the atmosphere much happier than Thảo Nguyên initially imagined.

"During the competition, Việt Anh was so nervous that his hands were shaking and he couldn't install the last screw," Diệu Anh said, giggling. "I had to take it over for him. He stood there with a pale face. He still refused to admit that he was shaking."

"I'm not shaking," Việt Anh immediately objected, his face rarely showing confusion. "That's because the exam room lighting is not enough, making it difficult to perform precise operations."

"Just like you, there's always a scientific reason for everything," Diệu Anh shook her head and smiled, then turned to Thảo Nguyên as if looking for agreement. "You see, living with this person must be very tiring; everything has to have a formula."

Thảo Nguyên laughed along, feeling much more comfortable than when she first entered the room. Through the way Diệu Anh talked, interacted naturally and somewhat teased Việt Anh, she clearly realized that this was a friendship built over many years, deep enough for the two to understand each other's little habits.

But also during that observation, Thảo Nguyên caught a very fleeting moment - when Việt Anh bent down to help Diệu Anh pick up the pliers that had just fallen to the floor, giving it back to her, Diệu Anh looked at him for a second longer than usual, her eyes held something gentle, different from her usual lively, straightforward look. Just for a moment, then everything returned to normal right after that, so quickly that Thảo Nguyên wasn't even sure if she was seeing wrongly or not.

She put that thought aside, focused on completing the interview, carefully recording the details Diệu Anh and other members shared about the preparation process for the upcoming tournament.

"Ask more about the main robot," Diệu Anh suggested, pointing towards the machine sitting on a display stand in the corner of the room, its shiny aluminum body with six small mechanical arms. "This was the whole team's enthusiasm for four months. The navigation algorithm was rewritten by Việt Anh alone from scratch after the original version failed three days before the qualifying round."

"Three days to rewrite the entire algorithm?" Thảo Nguyên asked, unable to hide her surprise, still continuously taking notes.

"He barely slept those three nights," another team member chimed in, his voice filled with admiration. "We brought food to the computer room for him to eat. On the morning of the exam, his eyes were dark but the algorithm ran smoother than the original."

Việt Anh just shrugged slightly at the compliments, as if it was just a normal job that needed to be completed, nothing worth repeating. "There's just no other choice. If we don't fix it in time, the whole team will lose four months of effort."

"See, he always downplays everything like that," Diệu Anh interjected, her voice both teasing and a bit of sincere respect. "If I were in that position, I would have cried, let alone rewriting thousands of lines of code in three nights."

Thảo Nguyên recorded every detail, gaining a clearer sense of the real person behind Việt Anh's cold, pragmatic appearance - a person willing to put all his strength into what he pursues, quietly and without ostentation, just like the way he told the story of the old toy robot in his scholarship essay.

When the interview ended, Thảo Nguyên packed up her notebook and was about to leave when Diệu Anh called back.

"Thảo Nguyên," she said, her voice still friendly but a bit more serious than before. "Việt Anh is a good person, just a bit clumsy in expressing emotions. Please take good care of him."

"Yeah, I'll try," Thảo Nguyên replied, not sure what meaning to take that statement, she just smiled back and left the club room.

On the way home, she kept thinking about the meeting just now. Diệu Anh seemed happy, open, and completely supportive of the relationship between her and Việt Anh, with no signs of jealousy or discomfort as she had previously feared. But that moment of fleeting eyes from earlier still stuck in her mind, like a small puzzle piece that didn't completely fit into the overall picture she was trying to visualize.

That evening, while rewriting the interview for next week's issue, Thảo Nguyên received a text message from Bích Vân, who was also present in the interview as a photographer.

"Have you noticed Diệu Anh?" Van texted. "I think the way he looks at Việt Anh is a bit different from the way he normally talks."

Thảo Nguyên looked at the message, her fingers hovering over the keyboard for a long time before typing a reply: "I also have that feeling, but maybe I'm just thinking too much. They've been close friends since childhood."

"Maybe," Van answered, "but it's better to be careful. If Diệu Anh really has feelings for Việt Anh, and now sees that he 'loves' someone else, even if it's fake, it won't be pleasant."

Thảo Nguyên put down the phone and looked out the window of her room, where the streetlight cast a pale yellow halo on the wall. She thought about what Bích Vân had just said, about Diệu Anh's fleeting eyes, about the strange sentence "please take good care of him" but she still didn't fully understand the meaning.

If Diệu Anh truly has feelings for Việt Anh, then the fake contract that she and he are maintaining is not simply a harmless lie to her grandmother, but may be unintentionally hurting another person - a close friend who has been with Việt Anh since the first days, much longer than the four short months she and he agreed on in that handwritten contract.

She turned over the interview notebook, re-read the words she had just scribbled about the robot, about the three sleepless nights, and about the way the whole team talked about Việt Anh with mixed admiration and affection. The more Thảo Nguyên learned about him, the more she realized that Đinh Việt Anh was not as simple as the cold, dry appearance she thought when she first started the contract. And that made her even more confused, because now she was no longer sure whether she was trying to protect Diệu Anh from being hurt, or trying to protect her own emotions that were gradually becoming unpredictable from someone who should only be a partner in a fair exchange contract.

She turned off the desk lamp, lay down on the bed but couldn't sleep, the question lingering in her mind was whether she was entering a relationship that was much more complicated than what the four brief terms on the page could predict.