Chapter 5 — Forest Keeper

Monday morning's station meeting took place in the common office room, where all six rangers of Ngan May Station sat around a long wooden table, cups of hot tea steaming in the chilly mountain air. Ma Van Loc stood in front of the map of the conservation area hanging on the wall, holding a wooden ruler, his serious voice was different from the shyness Khue had seen a few days ago.

"I reported to the Department about the cable trap and illegal logging site that Khue discovered," he said, pointing a ruler at the northeastern area of Nam Dam on the map. "The department asked us to increase patrols in this area, and at the same time coordinate with the district police to further investigate the origin of the means of transport."

Khue sat silently, clutching his cup of tea, waiting for him to say something more about the felled trees or about the possibility of an organization behind it. But Loc just stopped there, moving on to assigning next week's patrol schedule, as if the incident was simply a normal forest law violation, nothing to worry about further.

"Mr. Loc," Khue spoke up when the meeting was almost over, "I think we should propose coordinating with the province's mobile team, because the scale of the mining site is quite large, and it is likely to involve many people and specialized vehicles. If only our station handles it, I'm afraid there won't be enough force, but we will alert them, make them alert and then disperse the evidence."

Loc gently tapped the ruler on the table, his expression thoughtful. "The branch has noted that there will be a suitable plan. Don't worry about doing your job well first, don't be in a hurry."

That answer made Khue unsatisfied, but she understood that further debate in the general meeting was not a wise way. She nodded, silent, but in her heart told herself that she would continue to quietly collect more evidence, not waiting completely for the official process, which could be slow, or worse, could be deliberately slowed down by someone.

After the meeting, when everyone had dispersed to do their tasks, May pulled Khue to the corner of the yard, his voice whispering even though there was no one around. "Did you notice, when you suggested coordinating with the mobile team, Mr. Loc's face changed slightly."

"I see it too," Khue replied, looking towards the office where Loc was still sitting alone, head down on a stack of papers. "But it's not enough to draw any conclusions. Maybe he's just being cautious, afraid of making a big deal and not being able to control it."

"Or..." Cloud hesitated, then lowered his voice even lower, "...maybe he was afraid something would be revealed."

The two looked at each other, no one dared to say more, because they both understood that once they suspected the head of the station they were working at, everything would become much more complicated and dangerous than just searching for a group of anonymous loggers in the deep forest.

In the afternoon, Khue took advantage of her free time to sit with her father's notebook, trying to decode the remaining pages. Most of the content is daily notes — dates, weather, patrol routes, animals observed, sometimes with a few quick sketches of the shape of animal tracks for later comparison. But in the last few pages, before the section was torn away, she noticed that her father's handwriting began to change - more hurried, with lines crossed out, as if he was writing in a hurry and nervous mood.

One line of notes made Khue read over and over again: "June 20 - detected truck tracks near the checkpoint, not in the briefing book. Asked Mr. L. and said he didn't know. Strange." The word "Mr. L." makes Khue's heart beat faster. Loc, full name Ma Van Loc, was then a ranger at the station, even though he had not yet become station chief. Will "Mr. L." In dad's note, is it Loc?

She didn't dare jump to conclusions—the "L" could have been anyone else on the station at that time, and eight years was long enough for memory and assumptions to fool someone desperate for answers. But still, this was the first concrete clue she'd had since she'd begun re-examining the case — a name, even if it was just an acronym, to start.

She closed the notebook, put it in a small tin box with the photos of the cable trap scene and the illegal lumber yard, hidden in the bottom drawer of the closet in her room — not because she thought anyone would search her room, but because a cautious instinct was gradually forming in her, an instinct that warned that from now on, she needed to be more careful with what she knew, and with whom she shared it.

She took a blank piece of paper, hand-copied all the legible notes in the notebook, including seemingly irrelevant paragraphs — dates, coordinates, initials — and then put the copy somewhere else, completely separate from the original. If unfortunately the real notebook is lost or someone takes it away again, at least she can still keep a copy as a basis. She also started a new notebook of her own, recording every minute detail of the investigation—date, time, location, dropped sentences, avoided looks—with the idea that if one day she encountered the same misfortune as her father, at least there would be a trail left for others to follow.

Doing that made her both feel a little more secure and at the same time feel her heart heavy with a vague fear that she had never allowed herself to think about before: that the path she was choosing was not only the path to find the truth, but could also be the path that led her closer to the very danger that took away her father.

In the evening, she went to the rescue barn to feed Brown at the end of the day. The baby langur is now much larger than the first day it was rescued. Its orange-yellow fur is starting to have the first patches of black fur on its shoulders and back, a sign of the natural color change process as it matures. It has learned how to cling to small tree branches that Khue placed in the cage to practice movement, although it is still clumsy. Sometimes it slips and falls down onto the dry leaves lining the bottom of the cage, making Khue unable to stop laughing.

"You're growing up so fast," she whispered, reaching out to caress Brown's head as he crawled closer, snuggling into her palm looking for familiar warmth. "Grow up quickly, be healthy, then I will take you back to the forest, back to where you belong."

Saying those words, Khue suddenly realized a strange similarity between Nau's journey and her own journey. Both of them lost an important part of themselves suddenly and violently, at the hands of those who considered the forest just a resource to exploit, not an ecosystem that needed to be respected and protected. And both, in their own ways, are finding their way back — Brown finding his way back to the canopy, to his herd; As for Khue, he finds his way back to the truth and justice for his deceased father.

The phone in Khue's pocket vibrated. It was May, calling from the station office even though it was only a few dozen meters from the rescue cage.

"Sister, I just received the official notification from the Department," May's excited voice rang out over the phone. "The veterinarian will come to my station this Thursday. His name is Dinh Vu Nguyen. I heard he graduated from abroad and specializes in primate wildlife, exactly the expertise I need for Nau's case."

"Thursday," Khue muttered, looking at Brown gnawing on a branch of young leaves in the cage, completely unaware of the conversation that was partially determining his future. "Okay, it would be nice to have someone to provide professional support."

"Prepare yourself," May chuckled over the phone, "I heard he's young and handsome. The ladies at the Branch have been talking about it for a week now."

Khue laughed and waved her hand even though she knew May couldn't see through the phone. "I only care about whether people are good at their profession, I don't care about those other things."

But when she hung up the phone, standing alone in the sunset that dyed a corner of the western sky orange, looking at the majestic Ngan May mountain range silhouetted against the changing sky, Khue couldn't help but wonder if the appearance of an outsider, someone who did not belong to this station's intricate network of relationships and long-buried secrets, could bring a new perspective, a necessary help for the journey she was pursuing.

She turned to look at Nau one last time before leaving the cage. The baby langur was fast asleep, curled up in a small blanket, breathing steadily and gently. On the desk in my room, my father's notebook still lies silently in a tin box, carrying secrets that have not yet been deciphered. And on top of Pu Cai in the distance, hidden behind a layer of silver clouds that are gradually turning to the dark purple of sunset, a truth is still waiting, as patient as the forest itself that has quietly witnessed it all for the past eight years.

Khue took a deep breath, letting the fresh air of the mountains and forests fill her chest, then turned back to the station, carrying a newly strengthened determination: no matter how difficult the road ahead was, even if she had to face people she once trusted, she would go to the end, to find the truth, to protect the forest that her father had spent his whole life preserving, and to finally be able to light a stick of incense on his altar without having to carry unanswered questions. replied.