Chapter 2 — Heir to the Little Station

The first train of thirty days passed through the tea hills when the station was still empty. Mai stood in the ticket office, counting each person on the train.

An old lady holds a medicine bag, two students carry schoolbags, three people pick tea and a man holds a small child. Tung wrote down the tickets, and Mai tried to remember each passenger's face.

Khoa sent a text message asking if she had changed her mind. Mai did not answer. She was watching the man carrying his child running along the platform because the last car had just closed.

Tung pulled the emergency brake. The train stopped more than ten meters from the station platform. The man climbed up, panted, thanked him and then placed the child in the chair.

“If the station is closed, how will they go?” Mai asked.

“The bus takes two hours, on rainy days it may take longer.”

An hour later, the district hospital called. The child with a high fever was brought there in time. Mai doesn't know their names, she only knows that today's train car carries something extra that is not on the revenue list.

In the afternoon, she checked the ticket book. Revenue from trips to the city is recorded for the transfer station, while tickets to the district are recorded for Da Trang. Tea goods sold at the station are also recorded in the section "retail goods throughout the route".

Mai took photos of each page, marking columns she didn't understand. Mrs. Ly, the owner of the restaurant, said that the book had been recorded like that for many years.

“Did your grandfather ever ask?”

"You asked. Then people said the computer system distributed itself."

Mai looked at the old ticket machine without a screen. It cannot do anything on its own.

At the end of the day, Tung placed a faded paper ticket on the table. On the back is his grandfather's handwriting: "Don't count the passengers before knowing what they're carrying."

Mai held the ticket with two fingers. The edge of the ticket is soft, the blue ink is blurred on the flight number. Tung said this ticket belonged to a woman who traveled with her son during last year's flood season. The boy needed medicine, but the bus could not get on because of a landslide. The train was delayed thirty minutes waiting for family members to run down from the other village.

“Did grandpa write down his name?” Mai asked.

“No. You just write down the medicine and the train arrival time.”

"Why?"

“People go to the station to go, not to become someone else's story.”

Mai put down the ticket. She opened the sales book and followed that trip. There were no lines about drugs, just seven passenger tickets and two packages. Late costs are recorded as "operational problems", without recording the reason for waiting for the patient. A story exists outside the board, and the board is used to decide whether the station is worth existing or not.

At noon, Mrs. Ly brought rice to the ticket office. She ordered two bowls, even though Mai said she wasn't hungry yet. In the bowl were fried eggs, stir-fried vegetables and a piece of braised fish that had been soaked in colored water.

“My restaurant sells half of its sales thanks to people waiting for the train,” she said. "But don't write me down as the reason to save the station. I can move the shop to the district if I have to. Patients, students and new tea shops don't have easy options."

Mai asked her if she knew how much the restaurant's revenue would decrease if the station closed. Mrs. Ly laughed loudly.

"I asked again using a spreadsheet. On a market day I sell sixty meals, on a weekday twenty. If there is no train, neighbors can ride motorbikes and buy rice anywhere. But the four villages in the valley do not have roads. The difficulty is not just losing a shop."

Mai took the book but did not open it. “So how should I write it?”

"It's written that the restaurant can't save the station. But the restaurant knows who comes to the station hungry."

In the early afternoon, Tung taught Mai how to use the ticket machine. The machine has no screen, only number compartments and a roll of paper. Pressing the wrong lever will print the wrong throttle, If you want to cancel, you must make a record. Mai tried twice, both were wrong. Tung did not smile. He gave her a blank ticket and told her to write by hand while studying, not to let the machine determine the speed.

An old lady named Nhan came to buy a ticket back to the village. She only had change in a cloth bag. Counting it three times, she was still two thousand short. Mai was about to ignore it, but the old lady pulled her hand.

"Don't give it away for free. Record the debt in the book, I'll pay it next week."

“You don't need to—”

"It's necessary. The station will close tomorrow, no one will know who I'm missing."

Mai wrote down her name, amount of money and appointment date. Mrs. Nhan looked at her handwriting and said it was similar to her grandfather's in that the number seven was very long. Mai never noticed.

The train returned at four o'clock. The man holding his child in the morning stood at the station door, holding an empty medicine bag. His name is Hau, he works as a machine repairman in Mo Dai village. His child's fever has subsided. He wanted to return the ticket money for the train stop, but Tung refused. Mai asked why that amount was not recorded in the support fund.

Tung replied: "If it is written as special support, next time people will have to prove that they are suffering enough. My grandfather doesn't want that."

Mai does not completely agree. A transparent fund can help more people, as long as the conditions do not turn into interrogation. She jots down the idea, marking it as undecided.

In the afternoon, Vy appeared with a small camera and an old ticket book. She asked permission to take photos of the schedule board, not the passengers' faces. Mai asked if she knew how the gas data was calculated. Vy said the math teacher once asked the class to do a statistics exercise, but no one explained why the departure and return tickets going through the same station were divided into two places.

“You want to help?” Mai asked.

“I want to know if the numbers in my post are real.”

Mai doesn't promise anything. She gave Vy a copy of the allocation regulations, hiding her name and phone number. Vy read each line, marked the areas she didn't understand, then asked again. Tung shook his head because the regulations had a lot of words, but Mai said they had to read them all if they wanted to object.

That night, Khoa texted again: "I can send you an estimate of the transit vehicle. At least you know how much the land sale plan will replace." Mai replied: “Send assumptions and support timelines, not just numbers.”

I sent it ten minutes later. The estimate says the car will run for two years, two trips per day, and maintenance costs are not included after the first year. Mai looked at the board and attached it to the file. An offer is not bad just because it comes from someone who wants to buy land; it only becomes dangerous when people don't ask for the conditions attached.

Before returning to the room to rest, Mai checked the first day's revenue table. Eleven tickets, three bags of tea, one patient, one bowl of unpaid rice and a debt of two thousand. She wrote the total in the main column, then added a line in the margin: “The train has carried what the board does not know how to count.”

The next morning, Mai started by questioning those who didn't get on the train. The security guard said he opened the gate for people to send goods from five o'clock, even though the first trip left at six forty. The woman selling fruit used the station platform as a sorting place, but did not buy tickets. A boy went with his mother to see his father off to the district, stood near the railroad tracks for nearly an hour and then returned.

“Do these people count on gas flow?” Mai asked Tung.

“Not following the system.”

“So who is responsible while they are here?”

Tung looked at her. "Ga agrees. But the report doesn't say it."

Mai set up a "use without giving out tickets" board, do not attach names if the person in it does not agree. She writes down the quantity and item destination and time period. Tung reminded her not to turn the station into a place to spy on people. Mai agrees, just keep the total number and clearly state the counting method. She wanted the data to expand but didn't want to change a reporting vulnerability into a privacy vulnerability.

In the morning, a mother came to ask for a seat for her car-sick child. She didn't take the train, she just waited for the bus on the street below. Tung allows people to sit in the waiting room, but the system does not have a section "people waiting for other vehicles". Mai asked if the station should be closed if it officially stops. Tung said then they would stand outside in the rain. The answer prompted her to ask another question about the minimum obligations of a station, even without trains.

Phuc, the lawyer, called to ask if she had received the handover yet. Mai said the list of supplies was missing. He said the will only asked to maintain the train, not to fix everything on the first day. Mai replied that she did not want to sign over the property without knowing which bolt was missing. Phuc laughed and said that his grandfather chose the right heir: always making others read one more page.

The Faculty sends the shuttle bus estimate. Mai discovered that fuel costs are calculated based on dry season distance, not including tires and spare parts. She asked him, he admitted that the team that created the table wanted to make a quick comparison so they left out the fluctuation part. He edited the file, checking the boxes that were not certain. Mai begins to see that the debate is not between "realists" and "dreamers"; Both sides can choose favorable numbers if no one forces them to open the vacant boxes.

In the afternoon, Tung showed Mai the warehouse. One corner contained unclaimed sacks, several boxes of expired medicine and a forgotten bicycle. Grandpa used to keep them because he hoped the person who lost their belongings would come back. Mai asked how to handle it. Tung said regulations require making records, but the station has few people so everything flows according to habit.

Mai decided not to clean it up right away. She made a list, announced it on the waiting room board, and set a deadline for receiving it back. Ms. Ly said the bicycle may have belonged to a boy who dropped out of school. Mai did not ask further, just wrote "recipient needs to prove ownership". The station will not turn into a derelict warehouse in the name of kindness.

At night, she returned with a faded ticket. The back has grandfather's handwriting, but next to it there is a red dot. Tung said that sign means the ticket has been refunded. The patient that year did not have to pay for the train waiting for him. Mai thinks about how a small amount of money can be considered lost revenue, while it keeps a person safer.

She added a column to the table: “decision not to collect money, reason and approver”. If a support fund appears, it will have a name, limit and review date, and will not turn into benevolent items that no one dares to ask about.