Chapter 11 — Fascinated by the Rooster Farmer Raising His Children

Ms. Chu Le Phuong sat in her private tea room, flipping through the group's last quarterly business report, but her mind was occupied by a small news article on the local economic page that the secretary had just shown her: "Binh Xuyen Farm signs a long-term supply contract with Xanh Viet supermarket chain - The story of an agricultural engineer leaving the city to return to the countryside attracts attention."

Her secretary stood next to her, silently waiting for her boss's reaction to this unexpected news.

She read the article over and over again, her eyes stopping for a long time at the paragraph about Khanh Vy - the co-founder and in charge of the farm's business strategy. The article describes a beautiful story about the combination of agricultural knowledge and modern business thinking, about a couple who were gradually changing the thinking of an entire rural area.

"No way." She muttered to herself, placing the newspaper on the table. "Can that girl do anything in that remote place?"

She called her personal secretary and asked to learn more about the actual situation of Binh Xuyen farm. A few days later, the report was presented to her desk — not only confirming the information in the press was accurate, but also showing that the farm was growing at an astonishing rate, attracting the attention of many neighboring farmers who wanted to learn from the model.

What surprised Ms. Le Phuong the most was the report about Khanh Vy's spiritual life. The reporter, an acquaintance in the area whom she asked to discreetly monitor, described a completely different Khanh Vy — radiant, happy, deeply attached to both her husband and his stepchild, completely different from the image of her tired niece, forced to accept her fate on her wedding day.

*

That night, Ms. Le Phuong could not sleep. She sat alone in her room, looking back at the decisions she had made throughout her life - the arranged marriages she had arranged for her children and grandchildren, always based on calculations of family interests, never really caring about the true feelings of the people involved.

She recalls her own marriage, also an arranged marriage from when she was young. She had lived her entire life in a loveless marriage, with only mutual respect for the common good, and she believed that was the only way for a large family to survive and thrive. But looking at what was happening with Khanh Vy, she began to doubt the beliefs that had been ingrained in her mind for decades.

"Maybe I was wrong." She whispered in the darkness, a rare thing she had never allowed herself to admit. "But if I'm wrong, then swapping the marriage contract between the two grandchildren... is it a more serious mistake than I thought?"

That thought made her uneasy for many days afterward. She began to notice signs of instability in Nha Dinh's marriage - the times her youngest niece visited her with tired eyes, the roundabout questions about the possibility of an "honorable annulment" if the marriage had serious problems.

She summoned her private secretary, asking him to discreetly learn more about the true financial situation of the To Thi Group, the family she once valued so highly that she did not hesitate to marry her youngest and most beloved granddaughter to their son. When the report was presented, the debt figures were so high that she was shocked.

"So I misjudged both of them." She muttered, her face hard with disappointment. "The person I thought was the most worthy turned out to be just a guy pretending to be rich to hide his debts, and the person I once looked down on is proving his true worth every day."

That ironic contrast caused Ms. Le Phuong's lifelong belief in judging people by appearance and assets to begin to shake violently, leading her to decide to witness the truth with her own eyes, instead of continuing to believe in the initial one-sided assessments.

*

One afternoon, Ms. Le Phuong decided to personally visit Binh Xuyen farm, without prior notice, just accompanied by her private driver. She wanted to see her granddaughter's life with her own eyes, instead of just listening to reports.

When the car stopped in front of the farm gate, she saw a scene that stunned her: Khanh Vy, in simple work clothes, was with Vinh Khang instructing a group of elderly farmers how to use the automatic humidity sensor system. Tieu Yen ran around nearby, holding a small basket full of ripe red tomatoes, smiling brightly and calling "Mother Vy" every time she found a big tomato.

The word "Vy's mother" made Ms. Le Phuong pause. She stood silently looking at that scene for a long time, witnessing the way Khanh Vy gently praised Tieu Yen, the way Vinh Khang occasionally looked at his wife with affectionate eyes that were not fake.

"Paternal grandmother?" Khanh Vy was the first person to recognize her, her voice mixed with surprise and caution. "What are you doing here?"

Ms. Le Phuong was silent for a moment, her eyes still lingering on the image she had just witnessed. "I just want to see how you live." She replied, her voice somewhat softer than usual. "It seems you're doing better than I thought."

"I live very well, grandmother." Khanh Vy replied, not hiding the pride in her voice. "So much better than I ever imagined."

Ms. Le Phuong nodded, did not say anything more, just quietly observed Vinh Khang explaining in detail to the farmers the operating principles of the automatic drip irrigation system. His confidence and expertise were completely different from the image of "undervalued farmer" that she once assigned to him.

An elderly farmer in the group, recognizing the luxurious guest watching from afar, approached to greet him politely. "Are you from Mr. Khang's family? He's very good, grandma. Since the day he showed us how to grow vegetables in a new way, our entire family's income has almost doubled."

Ms. Le Phuong smiled wryly and responded lightly, but in her heart, those genuine compliments held more weight than any financial reports she had ever read throughout her business career. She realized that the value that Vinh Khang created did not stop at personal success, but spread to an entire community in need of support.

Before leaving, she stopped and looked at Khanh Vy for a long time. "I won't apologize right now, because I'm not ready to admit my mistake publicly." She said, her voice still retaining its inherent pride. "But I acknowledge that perhaps life doesn't always work out as we plan."

It was the closest thing to an apology that Ms. Le Phuong had ever uttered in her life, and although Khanh Vy did not immediately completely forgive her for what she had done, she recognized this as the first sign that maybe one day, the truth would be fully recognized.

Vinh Khang, standing not far away, quietly observed the conversation between the two grandchildren without intervening. When Mrs. Le Phuong was about to get in the car, he approached and bowed politely. "Thank you for coming to visit. I hope you will come back more often, to see Tieu Yen grow up every day."

Mrs. Le Phuong looked at him for a moment, her eyes for the first time no longer had any contempt like the meeting last year. "I will consider that." She replied, then got into the car, leaving behind a silence full of echoes for both young couple.

On the way back to the city, sitting in the car, Ms. Le Phuong looked out the window, green fields passing by her eyes. She did not expect that a decision she once considered the wisest - marrying Khanh Vy to the "least valuable" person to serve the interests of the land - was gradually becoming the clearest evidence that the values she had pursued all her life might have been wrong from the very beginning.

She remembered the image of Tieu Yen running around in the tomato patch, the child's clear laughter echoing throughout the field, and the affectionate eyes Vinh Khang gave Khanh Vy every time he thought no one was paying attention. Those were the most authentic images of happiness she had ever witnessed in her entire life, more authentic than any flashy party she had ever organized to broker marriages for her children and grandchildren.

She pulled out her phone, intending to call Mr. Trong Nghiep to discuss what she had just witnessed, but then put the phone away, deciding to reflect further on her own before making any decisions that could affect the entire family. For the first time in her life, she felt she needed time to reconsider all the values she had imposed on her descendants over the years.