Chapter 1 — Forest Keeper

The fog had not yet cleared when Nong Thien Khue left the station, the backpack on her back still smelled heavily of wind oil and the rice balls her mother packed last night. At four o'clock in the morning, Thousand Cloud Forest was still bathed in a gray-green light, a light that only those who had lived with the mountains for a long time could distinguish between the upcoming dawn and the lingering clouds. The trail leading up to Nam Dam stream was drenched, each leaf of the dong forest drooped under the weight of steam, touching Khue's trouser leg, which was wet and cold as if someone had just splashed water.

She goes alone. It's not because the station is short of people - Ma Van Loc, the station chief, always advises that there must be two or more people on patrol, especially on remote routes like the Nam Dam route - but because this morning is the fifteenth day, the day Khue has set for herself eight years ago: the day she went alone to the section of forest her father used to patrol the most, walking slowly, looking closely, as if she went slowly enough, carefully enough, she would find something that people had missed eight years ago.

Mr. Nong Van Thai, her father, used to be the deputy station ranger at Ngan May. People said he was the best in this area at reading animal tracks, so good that just by looking at a patch of crushed grass, he could guess how long the animal had passed, how heavy it was, whether it was in a hurry or leisurely. Such a person, according to the official conclusion of the investigation team that year, slipped and fell down a rock crevice near the top of Pu Cai on a rainy night, while patrolling alone. The minutes clearly state: occupational accident, no criminal elements.

Khue never fully believed in those words. It wasn't because she was a daughter who didn't want to believe her father could fall. But because the night before he died, he sat at the dinner table, looked at her mother for a long time, and then said something that Khue still remembers clearly to this day: "I discovered something big, let me see to make sure, then I'll report." He didn't say anything. Three days later, people found him under a rock crevice, nearly a kilometer from the familiar patrol route.

The morning wind blew through the canopy of the ancient trees, carrying the damp smell of fallen leaves and another, faint smell, causing Khue to slow down. She stopped and took a deep breath. Twelve years as a forest ranger — including two years of apprenticeship before officially joining the staff — had given her a hunting dog's nose for things that didn't belong in the forest. The smell of blood. Not fresh blood, but dried blood, mixed with dirt and fur, wafted from the northeast, where there was a gentle slope covered with vines.

She left the trail and crept through a clump of wild myrtle trees, walking slowly and lightly as if she had been trained since childhood, not in school but by her father, who in the afternoons took her up the mountain, teaching her how to place her feet so as not to break a single dry branch. Ten steps. Twenty steps. Then she saw it.

An adult white-rumped langur, jet-black fur with a distinctive white stripe around its waist that had been stained with blood, hung suspended between two tree trunks by a thin cable, shining in the light filtering through the foliage. Not the kind of rudimentary forest wire traps that villagers sometimes make themselves to catch wild boars or civets. This is a professional trap — a plastic-coated steel cable with a self-tightening lock, the kind one can only buy from hunting equipment suppliers, not the hand-woven stuff in the village.

Khue stood still for a moment, a familiar feeling rising in her chest - the feeling every time she faced a death in the forest, no matter what animal, no matter how many times she had witnessed it. The mother langur had been dead for several hours, her body was stiff, her eyes were still open, looking towards the slope as if trying to see something for the last time.

Then she heard a noise. Very softly, a small, trembling "crack" sound came from a low bush about three meters away.

She put down her backpack, walked closer, gently brushed away the branches and leaves. In there, curled up in a hollow of tree roots, is a baby langur, probably less than four months old, the orange-yellow fur typical of newborn langurs has not yet completely changed to the black of an adult langur. It trembled, its tiny arms hugged itself tightly, its black eyes looked at Khue with pure, heartbreaking fear.

"Shh, shh, it's okay," Khue whispered, her voice automatically lowering to the soothing tone she used when approaching injured wild animals. She sat down, keeping her distance, letting the animal get used to her presence before doing anything else.

While waiting, she observed the scene with a professional eye. The cable is strung at a high enough height to trap a medium-sized animal, not a conventional foot trap placed on the ground but a hanging trap, requiring the setter to clearly understand the movement habits of langurs - they often follow fixed "paths" in the tree canopy, from one root to another. Whoever set this trap was not an amateur hunter. That person knows exactly where the mother langur will go.

And this layout, this spacing, even this type of cable — there's something very familiar. Khue frowned, trying to recall his memory. She had seen similar traps somewhere, not in recent incidents but in old photos, documentary photos from when her father was still working, photos he took as evidence before reporting to superiors. She shook her head, pushing that thought aside - perhaps it was just a trick of her memory, it's been eight years, how can she still remember every little detail so clearly.

The baby langur trembled a little less, only making a soft cry, almost like a sob. Khue slowly reached out his hand, not touching it right away, but placing the back of his hand near the mouth of the root cavity, so that it could smell the scent and get used to the human scent first. This is a process she has learned on her own over many years of rescue - there is no formal school that teaches all these things to a ranger at a remote mountain station like Ngan May, most of which is self-study, reading documents, and learning from painful failures.

After a few minutes, the baby langur stopped avoiding it. He moved closer, then suddenly hugged Khue's arm tightly, his tiny fingers clutching the sleeve as if afraid of being let go again. Khue felt its small, rapid heartbeat beating through her shirt, and a familiar feeling rose in her heart - the feeling she always had every time she saved a small creature from what humans had done to the forest.

“Okay, come with me,” she whispered, gently picking up the langur, wrapping it in the bandana she always carried in her backpack for situations like this—though she never thought she would need it so early in the day.

Before leaving, Khue turned back to look at the mother langur's body one more time. She pulled out her phone and took photos of the scene from many angles - the trap location, the type of cable, the layout, even the human footprints imprinted on the wet soil nearby, the footprints of at least two people, wearing army shoes, a pair of shoes much larger than what villagers usually wear. She was careful not to step on or destroy any traces, even though she knew there was a high possibility that no professional investigation team would come here to take fingerprints or analyze DNA - at a mountain ranger station like Ngan May, much of the investigation work still relied on rangers like her.

She removed the cable from the two trees, carefully rolled it up, and put it in a separate plastic bag - evidence. Then she dug a small hole and buried the mother langur right under the tree where it died, as a habit she has kept since the first day of her career, even though she knew it was not an official process at all. She just couldn't bear to let a creature who once lived, who was a mother, who tried to protect her child until the last moment, be left in the middle of the forest for ants and crows.

The sun had begun to rise higher, passing through each gap in the leaves, illuminating dappled light onto the wet forest floor. Khue stood up, brushed the dirt off her knees, and hugged the baby langur tightly to her chest, looking for warmth. She looked towards the distant peak of Pu Cai, still hidden behind a layer of silver clouds, where her father had "slipped" eight years ago. A vague but persistent thought arose in her heart, the thought that had haunted her all these years: if this kind of trap, this elaborate arrangement, had appeared in her father's old photos, then perhaps what was happening now was not a new beginning. Maybe it's just a continuation of something that never really ended.

She pulled the walkie-talkie out of her breast pocket and pressed the call button to the station.

"Listening station, it's Khue," she said, her voice regaining the familiar calmness of a ranger on duty, even though her heart was still chaotic. "Discovered a cable trap that killed an adult white-rumped langur in the northeastern area of Nam Dam, about five kilometers from the station. A baby was rescued and is on the way to bring it back to the station. Please report to Mr. Loc, and... please allow me to check the old field records in the archive when I return."

There was a hissing sound on the other end of the line, then Ma Van Loc's voice rang out, deeper and more reserved than Khue expected. "Got it. Go back to the station and report the details. The old file... let me take a look." There was a short silence, enough for Khue to realize there was something different in his voice, even though she couldn't name it yet. "Be careful on the way back."

Khue turned off the radio, tightened her grip on the sleeping baby langur in her arms due to exhaustion, and began to walk down the mountain, carrying a question that she knew she would not be able to let go: why did the station chief's voice change so much just by mentioning the old file?