Chapter 20 — Late Night Radio

Sunday morning, Vy woke up before dawn, after a night of almost no sleep, her mind kept spinning around the name "Tuong" and the image of the cafe on the corner of Bach Dang Street that Bich Van had mentioned. She stood in front of the mirror for a long time, wondering what she was doing, blaming herself for letting an unfinished phone call push her into an almost obsessive search, but then still put on her coat and walked out of the house while the streets were still wet with dew and the street lights had not yet had time to turn off completely.

The cafe is located in a small corner, with plastic tables and chairs placed close to the sidewalk, mainly serving workers who get up early - motorbike taxis, vegetable sellers, workers preparing for the morning shift. Vy chose a hidden table and ordered a cup of black coffee. Her eyes never left each man who walked in. Her heart beat faster every time someone thin and quiet walked through the door.

Nearly seven o'clock, a man in his forties, with a stocky build and a booming voice from outside the door, loudly greeted the owner and a few regular customers, sat down at a table next to a few friends, laughing and talking about last night's football match. The shop owner, when Vy ventured to ask, nodded in confirmation - it was Mr. Tuong, a night guard for a warehouse near an industrial park, had been in this area for more than a decade, and everyone knew him.

Vy sat quietly, watching the man laugh and talk loudly, telling stories in a loud, rough voice, without any of the quietness, slowness, and consideration of each word that she had heard over the past seven months on the air. With just a few minutes of observation, she knew for sure, there was no need to come closer and ask any more questions - this was absolutely not the person she was looking for. A feeling of both relief and disappointment came at the same time, like a balloon that had been inflated for many days suddenly deflated in just a moment, leaving an empty space in her chest.

She sat a while longer, watching the coffee cool in front of her, feeling ashamed of herself for letting a name she heard from a strange woman, carrying her own pain, lead her this far — spending an entire Sunday morning stalking an unknown man, just because of a desire to get answers at all costs. She thought of Bich Van's alert, tired face, of the fact that she had reopened a wound that was not hers only to receive an empty clue, and felt a new torment, heavier than the disappointment of not being able to find what she wanted.

The man with the deep voice at Ms. Xuan's porridge shop that day, and any connection between him and Bich Van, is still an open question now, perhaps will forever be open, one of the countless vague coincidences that this city, with thousands of men working the night shift, thousands of deep voices echoing in the darkness, can create at any time, without necessarily having any meaning. Vy stood up, paid, and walked out of the restaurant into the rising morning sunlight, her heart heavy with an unnamed feeling of failure, both for herself and for the woman she had accidentally bothered.

She walked home slowly, no longer in the mood to rush, her mind so blank that she almost didn't realize she had passed by the coastal road, where waves crashed against the stone embankment steadily, calmly, unaware of a heart that was breaking in its silent way right next to her. She stood for a moment, looking out to sea, where there was no real lighthouse, only the early morning sunlight sparkling on the water, and wondered if the "light at the head of the sea" that White Night mentioned every night really existed somewhere, or was it just an image he built up, beautiful but not real, like how she had just made up a whole story about a man named Tuong from just a few discrete details.

In the afternoon, she stopped by the station earlier than usual, still in a heavy mood, and met Hai Duong who was alone in the studio checking the livestream equipment for the evening. He saw the look on Vy's face and didn't ask right away, just poured her a cup of tea and waited for her to sit down before speaking.

"What happened this weekend that makes you look like someone who just lost something precious?" He asked, his voice gentle but full of concern.

Vy hesitated for a moment, then recounted everything - from the meeting with Bich Van, to the morning sitting at the coffee shop on the corner of Bach Dang Street, to the empty feeling when realizing that the man named Tuong had absolutely nothing to do with it. She spoke in a monotone, tired voice, as if she were narrating someone else's story, not her own.

Hai Duong listened to everything, without interrupting. When Vy finished, he sighed, his eyes both sad and a bit stern, which he rarely showed to her. "Vy, I don't blame you, because I understand how tormenting the feeling of needing an answer is. But I think, you need to stop. Not because you're wrong for wanting to know, but because the way you're looking, it's making you hurt yourself, and sometimes even hurt unrelated people, like Bich Van. If it's true, if it's true that person is sincere with you, one day, he will come into the light on his own, without you needing to have to. Follow every vague clue like a desperate detective."

Those words, although gentle, still made Vy feel pain, because she knew they were true. "I know, honey," she said, her voice quiet. "I'm just... I'm so tired, after Thursday night. I feel like I'm in the middle of so many things at once—the program, the six weeks, and him—and none of them I have a solid grasp on."

Hai Duong placed his hand on her shoulder, not saying anything else, just letting the familiar warm silence fill the space between the two of them. Then he stood up, intending to return to work, but as soon as he walked out the studio door, he saw the station's young receptionist coming, holding a small envelope in her hand.

"Miss Vy," the receptionist said, sticking her head in the door. "Someone sent this to you, left it at the reception desk since afternoon, didn't put the sender's name, just wrote 'to Ms. Vy, Waves Don't Sleep'. I thought the letters were from listeners so I planned to put them in the mailbox, but I saw that the envelope was handwritten and carefully handwritten, so I brought it up and gave it to you."

Vy received the envelope, her heart suddenly skipped a beat for an unknown reason, a vague but strong premonition rose in her heart. She turned the back of the envelope, there was no sender's name, only a small handwritten line, the handwriting was slanted, slowly, as if the writer had considered each stroke: "Please don't read it before the broadcast, read it when you're quiet and alone."

She held the envelope in her hand all afternoon, not daring to open it right away, both out of respect for the instructions and also out of a vague fear of not knowing what was inside, after everything that had happened on Thursday night. She put it in the desk drawer in the studio, trying to focus on preparing for tonight's show, but her eyes kept gliding towards that drawer, like an invisible magnet pulling her attention towards it endlessly.

That evening's program went on as usual, the anonymous line unlit — which, instead of disappointing Vy like it had on previous nights, now brought a strange, almost relieved feeling, as if she needed some quiet to prepare herself for whatever awaited her in that envelope. When the program ended, Hai Duong and Thao Nhi had left, the station was quiet except for the hum of the air conditioner. Vy took the envelope out of the drawer, sat down in the familiar chair in front of her father's microphone, turned on the small table lamp, and slowly opened it.

Inside are two handwritten pages, the handwriting is steady and slow, each letter seems to be carefully crafted, different from the haste often seen in modern handwriting - it has the look of a person who is used to writing slowly, writing little, but writing with all his heart.

"Miss Vy,

I wrote these lines after three nights without being able to sleep, just lying there, thinking about the way I told her on Thursday night, about the way I opened a door and then immediately slammed it shut in her face, like a coward. I know, maybe you're angry at me, or worse, you're thinking I'm just toying with what we've built together over the past seven months. I'm writing this letter, not to ask for your immediate forgiveness, but just to let you know that my fear that night was real, and I'm sorry for letting it control me, instead of letting you see the person I really want to become when I'm with you.

I'm not a person who is good at expressing emotions with direct words, you know, maybe that's why I always need a distance, a phone line, an invisible wave, to be able to say the things I never dare to say in front of someone. But writing, for me, is another way, slower, but perhaps more honest, because I have time to think, to erase what is not true, to keep only what I really want you to know.

I want you to know that what I said that night — that I wanted to see you — was not an impulsive statement on the spur of the moment. I thought about that many nights, many long shifts, standing alone among silent machines, imagining how many times we would sit across from each other, not through radio waves, not through anonymous lines, but as two real people, looking straight into each other's eyes. But every time I imagine going there, I feel afraid — afraid that the real me, with all my flaws, my awkwardness, the parts I'm not proud of, won't live up to the image she gave me over seven months of listening.

I cannot promise you a specific date, a specific place, for us to meet. I ask you to forgive me for that, because I know it's not fair, when I both want to keep you close and don't have the courage to completely step out of the darkness I've been used to hiding in for so many years. But I promise you something else, more certain: no matter how long it takes me to find the courage, I will never let you disappear from my life. I will still call every night I can, will still be the person you can trust, until the day I have the courage to stand in front of you, not as an invisible voice anymore, but as a complete person, no matter how many scars and imperfections that person has.

The light at the head of the sea, Vy, probably never meant that a meeting had to happen immediately. Maybe it just means that, no matter how far the ship goes, no matter how dark the night, there is still a steadfast light waiting for it to return, not urging, not demanding, just quietly burning there, believing that one day, that ship will find its way back. I want to be that light for her, and I also hope that she will still be that light for me, even though I know I'm asking for too much patience from her.

Sorry about Thursday night. Sorry for this clumsy letter. But please don't doubt that I mean it.

People are still awake, still listening, still waiting, every night."

Vy read the entire letter, then read it a second time, a third time, each time she read it, more tears fell, not because of pain, but because a feeling of being understood and appreciated rose strongly in her heart, erasing much of the fatigue and self-pity that had accumulated over the past few days. She pressed the letter to her chest, sitting quietly in the soft yellow light of the studio, clearly feeling that even though he was not yet ready to step into the light, even though she still did not know his real name, his real face, what they had together was still a real thing, not an illusion, not a dream she made up to fill her loneliness.

She thought of this morning, of the coffee shop on the corner of Bach Dang Street, of the empty feeling when she realized she had gotten lost following a meaningless clue, and told herself, maybe Hai Duong was right — not by following the same voice among the thousands of men in this city, but by being patient, believing, holding on to what she had, she could go until the day he was truly ready to step out.

The following Monday, during the meeting with Mr. Binh to report on the progress of preparing the plan to submit to Do Bao Toan, Thao Nhi, after presenting the positive growth numbers from the two weeks of livestream testing, suddenly came up with a new idea, her eyes lit up with excitement. "Mr. Binh, Ms. Vy, I think we need something bigger, a real event to prove the power of the program, not only through data on the screen but through real people, right in front of Mr. Toan and the whole city. I'm thinking of organizing a special broadcast night, right at the central square, inviting listeners to come live, combined with livestream, so that everyone can see with their own eyes, 'Sleepless Waves' is not just a line of numbers in the cost sheet, but hundreds, thousands of people who are really attached to this program."

Mr. Binh pondered for a moment, then nodded slowly, his eyes shining with a new hope. "That might be the 'can't be dismissed easily' thing that Ms. Loan and I once told you, Vy. A real event, a real crowd, no one can deny it on the chart."

Vy sat quietly, feeling in her heart, amidst all the fatigue, hurt, and unfinished business of the past week, a new determination was growing, more certain than ever - not only the determination to keep the program, but also the determination to keep the faith in what was growing between her and the man behind the wave, even though the road ahead was long, with many unknowns, she knew she would not let go, not because she knew anything for sure, but because she had learned. that there are lights that don't need to see the destination, still burning bright, still waiting, and sometimes, that is the most enduring form of love that one person can give to another.