Chapter 5 — Debt Book at the End of the Alley

Dieu decided to clean up the entire storage room behind the shop one evening after closing, a task she had been postponing for several days because she was busy with sales and running back and forth to the hospital. The warehouse is small, filled with bags of rice, barrels of fish sauce, bottles of cooking oil, and countless old items accumulated over the years that perhaps even her mother doesn't remember all their uses.

She wore old clothes, tied her hair neatly, started from the farthest corner, pulled out each item one by one, sorting it into a keep pile and a throw away pile. Dust flew every time she moved a pile of old things, causing her to constantly stop and cough, but she persisted in continuing, seeing this as a way to understand more about the life her mother had built over the years.

Nearly nine o'clock in the evening, when more than half of the warehouse had been cleared, Dieu turned his attention to the innermost corner, where there were several large ceramic jars containing rice, an ancient type that few houses still use. She opened the lid of each jar to check, intending to collect all the old rice to use gradually to avoid waste.

The third jar, when she reached in to scoop the rice, her finger touched another hard object mixed in. Curious, she dug deeper and pulled out a small package carefully wrapped in many layers of plastic bags, tied tightly with an elastic band that had become brittle over time.

Dieu sat down on the warehouse floor, her heart beating faster as she carefully removed each layer of plastic. Inside was a worn cloth-covered notebook, along with a small stack of letters also tied with another elastic band, the paper had yellowed over the years.

She opened the notebook first, faded lined pages appeared before her eyes, filled with her mother's handwriting - familiar handwriting but younger and stronger than what Dieu had seen in the recent income and expenditure notebook. Each page contains a list of names, along with amounts, dates, and sometimes a few short notes.

“Uncle Sau Binh — 200,000 VND — March 12 — I'm sick, I don't have money for shopping.”

“Miss Ut Nga — 150,000 VND — April 5 — husband lost his job.”

“Mr. Ba Duoc — 500,000 VND — June 20 — fix leaky roof.”

Dieu flipped through each page, and the more she read, the more amazed she became at the scale of what her mother had been quietly doing for many years - not only lending money to customers on credit, but also lending cash, without interest, without a specific deadline, to almost an entire alley, whenever someone was in trouble.

Some lines are crossed out, with a small hand-drawn star symbol next to them. Dieu observed attentively, trying to find the pattern - were the crossed out lines already paid off, or deleted for other reasons? Star symbols appear irregularly, sometimes several pages apart, sometimes appearing consecutively within the same period of time.

She flipped to the end of the notebook, where on the more recent pages, her mother's handwriting began to show signs of being more shaky — perhaps these were notes taken in the last few months, before she fell ill. The last line, not yet crossed out, made Dieu dumbfounded when he read: "Kim Phat — 80,000,000 VND — urgent loan — don't tell Dieu."

Eighty million dong. A number so large that Dieu had to re-read it three times to make sure he wasn't mistaken. With the scale of a popular restaurant, it was a huge amount of money, and the words "don't tell Dieu" made her heart clench — her mother had deliberately hidden something serious, and now, when she was no longer able to explain, Dieu had only these cold words left to explain for herself. code.

Her hands trembled as she put down the notebook and turned to the stack of letters. She removed the elastic band and carefully opened the first letter. The handwriting on it was completely different - more neat, somewhat youthful, signed "Tu" at the end.

"Hanh, I know you are wondering a lot. I don't blame you if you choose according to your family's wishes. I just hope you know that no matter what you decide, I will always be here, considering you as the most important relative in my life."

Dieu read slowly, feeling like she was invading a deep, private corner of her mother that she had never been allowed to touch. She opened the second and third letters, each with a similar tone — respectful, repressed, like that of someone trying to let go of something important for a reason greater than personal feelings.

Near the end of the letter, Dieu's hand stopped when she read a paragraph: "...I'm glad you chose a decent person to rely on. I just hope the baby grows up healthy and happy, no matter whose last name it has..."

Dieu sat dumbfounded in the middle of a pile of messy furniture in the warehouse, her hand holding the letter shaking. "Baby". She wondered if it was her, and if so, what meaning did that statement carry - why did Uncle Tu mention "whose last name the baby has" in such a meaningful way?

She looked up at the date written at the top of the letter, trying to mentally calculate whether it matched the time before she was born. The number that appeared made her heart pound — the letter was written just a few months before her own birthday.

Dieu sat quietly for a long time in the dark warehouse, the only light from the filament bulb hanging from the ceiling shone down a yellow halo, enough for her to read the words but not enough to dispel the darkness that was gradually covering what she once believed in about her family.

She folded the stack of letters and carefully put them in her pocket, along with the debt book, instead of leaving them in the same place. She didn't know what she should do next - ask Uncle Tu directly, or find a way to ask her mother even though she wasn't strong enough to answer clearly, or simply keep it to herself until she could find more evidence to be more certain.

She walked out of the warehouse, locked the shop door, stood for a long time in the middle of a quiet alley under the pale moonlight, looking towards Uncle Tu's car repair shop, which was now closed and silent. For so many years, she had lived next to such a big secret without even knowing it, and now, with only a notebook and a few old letters, the entire foundation she still believed in about her parents began to shake violently.

That night, Dieu couldn't sleep. She lay on the bed, both hands clutching the notebook and stack of letters as if afraid they would disappear if she neglected, her mind reeling with hundreds of unanswered questions.

Near midnight, she woke up, unable to lie still any longer. She turned on the old desk lamp that was still in the room from her school days, took out the debt book and read it again, this time more slowly and systematically, trying to note down unusual points on a separate piece of paper — a professional habit that emerged even in the most confusing moments.

She listed all the lines marked with stars, compared the dates, trying to find some pattern. After nearly an hour of hard work, she realized one thing: most of the lines with stars fell in the time period close to the days when Uncle Tu was "busy with personal matters". She vaguely remembered what her mother had mentioned in rare phone calls the day before - the times when he temporarily closed the car repair shop for a few days for unknown reasons.

Coincidence, or is there a real connection? Dieu did not dare to jump to conclusions, but she wrote down this hypothesis on a piece of paper, reminding herself that she needed more evidence before believing in anything.

She turned back to the stack of letters, re-reading the letter that mentioned "baby" a few more times, trying to analyze each word as if she were reading a legal contract instead of a personal love letter. Uncle Tu's tone in the letter carries a clear resignation, like that of a person who has accepted to let go of something important out of respect for the decision of the person he loves.

But let go of what? Is it simply an unfinished love affair, or is there something bigger than that — a child that he chose not to adopt, so that he could have a more complete family?

Dieu put the letter down, covered her head with both hands, feeling like her brain was about to explode because there were so many theories piling up on top of each other with no way to immediately verify them. She looked at the clock, it was almost two in the morning, she knew she needed to sleep so she could wake up early to open the shop, but her mind kept racing non-stop.

She took out her phone, intending to text Huong to share, but her fingers typed a few words and then deleted them. This wasn't something that could be encapsulated in a text message, and she wasn't ready to turn these vague suspicions into official words with anyone, even her closest friend.

Finally, she put the notebook and stack of letters in a small box, hidden carefully at the bottom of the closet, the place she believed was the safest place in this small house. She turned off the light, lay down, forced herself to close her eyes even though her mind was still reeling, telling herself that tomorrow, when morning came, everything would probably be less heavy, and she would be alert enough to decide the next step she needed to take - starting with finding out more about the eighty million dong loan named "Kim Phat", which was hanging like a time bomb above the entire life that her mother had built up over the past twenty years, brick by brick. One by one, bowl by bowl of rice, until tonight.