Chapter 5 — Elections and Hearts

While Ngoc and Khang gradually built an unexpected harmony, on the other side of the school, Lam Gia Huy sat alone in a small room he rented near the school - Huy's parents worked as workers in an industrial park nearly twenty kilometers from school, and could not afford daily transportation, so they had to let him take care of his own accommodation since the 10th grade.

On the phone screen, Huy scrolled through the campaign's social networking site, where the post recording the moment Ngoc and Khang answered questions together at booth No. 3 gained more than five hundred likes after just one evening. The comments below are filled with compliments: "These two people are great to work together", "This is the type of school leader I need", "I wonder how Huy is doing these days, I haven't seen him stand out in a long time".

Huy tightened his grip on the phone in his hand, a familiar feeling rising in his heart - the feeling of being left behind, of being forgotten, just like in middle school when he was ridiculed by his classmates because of his worn out shoes, because of his school bag that was patched over and over again. At that time, he promised himself: one day, he would have enough power and enough position that no one would dare look at him with pity or contempt anymore.

The doorbell rang. A classmate, Phan Duc Anh — the only member of Huy's campaign team — walked in, holding a bag of bread.

"Have you eaten anything yet? I bought you one more," Duc Anh said, placing the bag of cakes on the table.

"Thank you," Huy replied curtly, his eyes still not leaving the phone screen.

Duc Anh glanced at the screen, saw the viral post, and sighed. "Don't worry too much. It's only been a week, there's still a long way to go."

"It's only been a week and you've left me like this," Huy smiled faintly, his voice full of bitterness. "I don't have a politician father, no touching scholarship stories to tell. I only have myself, and clearly myself is not enough."

"Don't say that," Duc Anh frowned. "You have many good ideas. Your proposal for an anonymous suggestion box was liked by many people."

"I like it, it's not enough to win," Huy shook his head, stood up and walked to the window, looking out at the dark alley outside. "I need something different. Something that makes people pay attention to me, instead of just looking at that perfect couple."

"Couple?" Duc Anh raised his eyebrows. "What are you talking about, they're just election opponents."

Huy turned around, his cold eyes flashing. "Don't you see? The way they look at each other, the way they stand next to each other answering questions as if they've been in sync for a long time. If these two continue to be close like that, soon the entire school will see them as an unbeatable alliance."

Duc Anh was silent for a moment, seemingly uncomfortable with his friend's direction of thinking. "So what are you going to do?"

"I don't know," Huy replied, his voice low, his eyes looking far away into the darkness outside the window. "But I will find a way."

In the days that followed, Huy began to spend more time wandering around student forums and private chat groups at the school, silently observing and collecting every little piece of information about Ngoc - not to understand her better, but to look for a weakness, a loophole that could be exploited.

During an afternoon wandering around the area near the library, Huy overheard a conversation between two 10th grade students studying. post.

"Hey, I heard that the scholarship Ms. Ngoc talked about at the launching ceremony, it seems like it's not completely free."

"Really? I thought it was the school's charity fund."

"I don't really know. I just heard from my cousin, who was in the same course as Ms. Ngoc, that there was some drama back then regarding who received a scholarship and who didn't. It sounds like there was some bias."

Huy stopped walking, his ears pricked up to listen to the whole story even though he didn't know the truth or not, and didn't know if the source was trustworthy or not. But in his mind, an idea began to form — an idea that he knew, if implemented, could completely destroy the perfect image that Ngoc had built over the past week.

He took out his phone and opened an anonymous application that school students often use to post stories and rumors without revealing their identities - the famous "Confession NTT" page with thousands of followers. Huy's fingers hovered over the keyboard for a long time, hesitant.

"No," he told himself, turning off the phone screen and stuffing it into his pocket. "Not right now. I need more solid information before doing anything."

That night, returning to the motel room, Huy lay down on the rickety bunk bed, looking up at the moldy ceiling, his mind reeling with a series of conflicting thoughts. A part of him — the part that still remembered the twelve-year-old boy who cried alone in the school bathroom because his friends snatched his old honeycomb sandals and threw them into the pond — knew clearly that what he was planning was wrong. But another part, the part that has learned to survive through toughness over the years, whispers that the world is unfair, and if you don't take your place, no one will do it for you.

The phone vibrated, a text message from Huy's mother: "Have you eaten enough? This weekend, our parents are working overtime, so we probably won't be able to come visit you. Take care of your own food, call us if you have anything."

Huy looked at that message for a long time, typing and deleting a few times before sending back a simple word: "Yes." He put down the phone and sighed. There were things he never dared to tell his parents - about the nights he cooked instant noodles alone in a cramped rented room, about the feeling of being lost every time he saw his friends being picked up by their parents, and lovingly asked after each class. All of these things have silently built up in him a desire to be recognized so strongly that sometimes he himself does not realize when the line between legitimate ambition and unhealthy calculations has been blurred.

The next morning, in class 12A3, Huy still wore his familiar friendly face, smiling and talking with his friends as if nothing had happened. But in his mind, the half-fictional, half-true story about Ngoc's scholarship was still smoldering, waiting for the right opportunity.

But the seeds of doubt were sown, and in the following days, Huy continued to quietly probe, piecing together disparate pieces of information, waiting for the right moment to turn them into a story powerful enough to destroy — not knowing that his actions would soon spark a storm that could wipe out not only Ngoc's campaign, but the very path he was trying to protect at all costs.

Meanwhile, at booth No. 3, the first weekend campaign ended with results beyond expectations. Ms. Ha, standing from afar observing the entire session, taking notes in his small notebook with comments about the attitude and behavior of each candidate - an unofficial but important assessment for the upcoming preliminary round.

"These two," she whispered to herself, her eyes following Ngoc and Khang who were cleaning up the booth together, laughing and chatting happily, "are probably on their way to becoming something bigger than a simple election."

She closed the notebook, not knowing that behind the smiles of both of her students, an underground wave was silently rising, waiting to explode.

Last Sunday, Ngoc and Trang worked together to rewrite the content of the campaign's social networking site, preparing for the upcoming second week of campaigning. The page scrolled through the comments section, suddenly stopping at a strange comment, posted from an unknown anonymous account.

"Hey Ngoc, try reading this," Trang said, her voice a bit halting, showing her phone to her friend.

Ngoc held the phone and read the short but meaningful comment: "I wonder if that year's scholarship was really as fair as said? Everyone has their own story to tell when necessary."

Ngoc frowned, a feeling of discomfort flashed through her heart. "It's probably just someone jealous," she said, trying to brush off the insecurity that had just arisen. "Delete it, don't mind it."

"Yeah, probably," Trang nodded, deleting the comment, but her eyes still showed a bit of worry. "But if more comments like this appear, you have to be careful, Ngoc. Our school's social network is sometimes very cruel."

Ngoc nodded, not knowing that that small comment was just the first drop of water signaling a much larger storm that was silently accumulating, waiting for the day to come and challenge everything she had worked hard to build over the past weeks, along with the trust she had just begun to put in someone she never expected.