Chapter 1 — Late Night Radio

At half past ten in the evening, Cam Duong city began to shrink like a wave receding from the shore. Along the coastal boulevard, seafood shops are pulling up their tarpaulins, neon lights casting a pale orange color onto the dew-wet road surface. Farther away, towards the fishing port, a few anchored basket boats swayed with the wind, and the smell of sea salt mixed with moss rose from the stone steps of the wharf, filtering through the glass windows of the five-story building with the sign "Cam Duong Radio and Television Station" standing quietly at the corner of Tran Phu street and Nguyen Tat Thanh street.

Lam Tuyet Vy pushed open the glass door on the first floor and stepped into the hallway with half of the lights turned off. Her clogs clicked steadily on the tiled floor, a sound she knew by heart to the point that she no longer heard it — like one no longer hears the sound of one's heart beating in the middle of the day. Only at night, when the hallway is deserted, does the sound of clogs echo clearly, echoing from both sides of the wall filled with old photo frames: generations of radio announcers, antique microphones, certificates of merit yellowed over the years.

She passed by the photo hanging in the middle of the second floor hallway without looking up, because she knew exactly where it was, knew the exact angle of the face in the photo, the smile slightly tilted on one side of her lips, her eyes squinted as if she was listening to something only he could hear. Lam Trung Hieu. Her father. The man who has sat in the studio for twenty-two years, leading "Sleepless Waves" from the days when the radio still broadcast on tape, until everything went digital, his voice remains the same - low, slow, as if every sentence he said had been considered by him a long time ago, from the nights no one knew he stayed awake to prepare.

Eighteen months ago, he passed away right there. In the middle of a sentence, his voice paused for half a beat - the audience thought it was a technical problem. Only Hai Duong sitting in the control room was the first person to see him slumped over the mixer table, still holding the paper with the narration in his hand. Myocardial infarction. The broadcast was cut off exactly five seconds before the next song automatically played — those five seconds of silence, Vy later learned, were the longest five seconds in the station's history.

Vy stopped in front of studio B's door, placed her hand on the fingerprint lock, waiting for the familiar "click" sound. Inside, soft yellow lights were already turned on by the afternoon shift, soundproofing foam covering the four walls seemed to be swallowing all the excess sounds of the outside world. She put her bag on the chair, then stood for a moment looking at the waiting microphone, the shiny black hanging cord, the old pop-filter screen that was slightly discolored - this microphone her father had used for the last years of his life, she could not bear to change to a newer one even though the technical department had suggested it twice.

Some nights, when sitting down in the swivel chair that had been left in the shape of her father, Vy felt like she was not preparing to go on air, but instead wearing a shirt that was too loose, a shirt that still had the warmth of its previous owner. Everyone who called into the program said her voice was "very similar to Mr. Hieu", "just like listening to the old radio" - they said it with good intentions, as a compliment, but every time Vy heard that sentence, she felt a small pain under her sternum, as if someone gently pressed their finger on the spot where the wound had not yet completely healed.

She opened her laptop, reviewed tonight's song list, the listener mail list sent via the program's email box, and a few Zalo messages compiled by the fanpage admin. Outside, the sea breeze was blowing stronger, she heard it whistling through the third floor window even though the studio was almost completely soundproofed - perhaps it was just her imagination, an old habit from the nights when she sat next to her father, listening to him adjust the mic while talking casually, "The sea is rough tonight, Vy, your voice has to slow down a bit, so people can hear it."

That was one of the last words she clearly remembered him saying to her in the studio. It wasn't anything like a last word — just a normal professional advice from a father teaching his child to keep the microphone. But over time, that sentence grew in Vy's mind, becoming something almost like a gentle curse: slow down, so people can hear. She didn't know if she was slowing down enough, or being herself enough, between trying to keep the show alive and trying to keep her father's voice from fading out on the airwaves.

There was a light knock on the soundproof glass frame. Vu Hai Duong stood next to the control room, giving two thumbs up to signal that everything was ready. His salt-and-pepper hair fell over his forehead because he had just been out in the wind. He is the sound technician who has been with the station longer than Vy's career, the one who sat next to her father on that fateful night, the only person who has never said a single word of comfort to Vy, just quietly kept the studio in the best condition every time she entered.

Vy raised her hand to signal back, a brief gesture the two of them had repeated hundreds of nights, then pulled out a chair and sat down, put on headphones, and quietly auditioned. "One two, one two, this is Sleepless Waves..." - the familiar mic test, she still said the same as the first time she practiced leading next to her father, at that time her voice was still shaking, stumbling, and she had to look at him nodding before daring to continue.

Now her voice no longer trembled. But sometimes Vy wondered if that steadfastness was truly hers, or just a shell she learned from observing her father for twenty-six years as his daughter, an imitation so subtle that she herself could no longer distinguish the line between her own voice and the voice she inherited.

Out of the small window above the equipment rack, she saw a strip of city lights stretching toward the harbor, twinkling faintly through the thickening sea mist. Cam Duong at night is a different city than during the day — during the day it is noisy with car horns, sales calls, and the sound of fish grinders at the wholesale market; But after ten o'clock at night, it became quiet and fragile, leaving only those who couldn't sleep, those who had to stay awake for work, and a thin band of FM waves connecting them together through old radios placed in trucks, in hospitals, in cramped motel rooms in the suburbs.

Vy thinks about that every night before going on air: how many people are waiting, quietly tuning in to the radio at this exact time frame, not because they know who she is, but because they need a voice to stay with them during the time no one else is willing to stay awake with. That thought both gave her strength and made her afraid — afraid that one day she would disappoint them, would reveal that she was just a shadow trying to fill the void a man had left behind.

Cao Viet Binh, head of the content department, stuck his head through the glass door from the hallway, tapped twice out of habit, then held up his watch to signal that there were five minutes left on air. He was an old professional friend of Vy's father, the person who stood up to defend her before the board of directors when she asked to take over the program just a few weeks after the funeral. At that time, many people still doubted that a twenty-four-year-old trainee editor could handle a program that had been branded for twenty-two years. Mr. Binh never said it out loud, but Vy knew he still watched every night of her broadcast like a second father, silently and unobtrusively.

She took a deep breath and watched the digital clock on the wall change to 10:58 p.m. Hai Duong raised her hand to count down through the glass, her five fingers gradually folded: five, four, three... Vy closed her eyes for a second, letting all the noise in her head - the longing for her father, the fear of not being good enough, the roaring sea wind outside - subside, leaving only a necessary silence before speaking.

The "ON AIR" light above the door turns bright red. Hai Duong raised his index finger and pointed straight at her through the glass.

Vy lowered her voice, slow and warm, just as her father had taught her, so that the opening greeting rang out in thousands of dark rooms in Cam Duong city tonight.

"Hello everyone who is awake with me right now. This is Sleepless Wave, broadcast live from Cam Duong Radio and Television Station. I am Tuyet Vy, and like every night, I am here, with you, until one o'clock in the morning."

She left a short silence after the greeting, a silence she learned not from any MC textbook, but from the way her father had been doing it for twenty-two years — letting the audience take a breath before moving on into the night, letting them know that on the other side of the wave, there was someone who was truly listening, not in a hurry, not superficially, ready to stay with them until morning.

Outside the window, sea mist has covered the low roofs around the station. Cam Duong gradually sank into another night, exactly like hundreds of previous nights, and Vy had no reason to think that tonight would be different. She only knows that, somewhere out there, between the yellow-lit streets and the factories that are still lit because of the night shift, there are always people waiting for a voice to speak on time, as regular as a breath that cannot be missed. And tonight, like every night, she will be that voice - not knowing that in the coming weeks, among hundreds of familiar calls, there will be a completely strange voice entering her waves, slowly and mysteriously like a rain that comes without warning, then stays long after the call has ended.