Chapter 26 — Late Night Radio

Sunday morning, less than eight hours after the stage lights at Cam Duong Beach Square turned off, Vy's phone vibrated continuously on the bedside table, not because of an alarm, but because of a series of notifications from the program's fanpage, from her personal message box, from strange numbers she had never saved. She rubbed her eyes, still exhausted from having only slept for less than three hours, turned on her phone and was stunned by the number displayed on the corner of the screen: last night's livestream post, as of seven o'clock in the morning, had more than two hundred thousand views, tens of thousands of shares, and an endless stream of comments, most of which revolved around the moment Mr. Phan Dac Ngo stood on stage, and the moment a strange voice rang out in the middle of the square to announce urgent news about clean water.

She sat up, her back leaning against the headboard, scrolling through each comment with a feeling that was both overwhelming and unreal. "After watching it, I cried from beginning to end. It's been a long time since I've seen a radio program do this." "The water plant engineer called at that exact moment, it's more than a movie, it's a hundred percent real story." "My Cam Duong, so proud, thank you Sleepless Wave." There were comments that made her laugh amid her fatigue, there were comments that made her eyes sting again, but what really made her hands tremble was when Thao Nhi called, her voice almost screaming with excitement as soon as she answered the phone.

"Ms. Vy, are you awake yet? Have you seen it? The morning Cam Duong newspaper just published an article about last night, and the provincial newspaper too, they headlined 'Night radio saves an entire residential area from clean water problem', and even interviewed the representative of the water plant! I haven't been able to sleep since five o'clock in the morning, I keep refreshing, the data increases by the minute, I've never seen anything like that."

Vy sat quietly for a while, listening to Thao Nhi continue talking about calls from stations she wanted to interview, about a regional TV channel offering to do a short report, feeling like she was standing in the middle of a wave bigger than anything she had ever imagined as she and everyone prepared for Saturday night. She thought that if she was lucky, that night she would leave a few small articles, a few shares on social networks, enough to add a few numbers to the report presented to Do Bao Toan. She did not expect it to become a story that was passed around by the whole city, then the whole region.

At noon, when Vy came to the station for a quick meeting with Mr. Binh, the atmosphere on the third floor was completely different from usual - the desk phone in the reception room rang continuously, two administrative staff had to take turns answering the phone, recording messages from dozens of listeners who called in just to say thank you, to ask about the water supply situation in Dong Hai ward, to ask when the program would hold another night like this. Mr. Binh stood in the middle of the hallway, holding a stack of printed out emails and messages. His face, although still tired of someone who had stayed up almost all night last night, shone with an excitement that Vy had rarely seen in him since the day her father passed away.

"Come in here," he called Vy into the office, closed the door, and placed the stack of papers on the table. "I just talked to two people in the advertising sales department. They told me that three local brands proactively contacted us to ask about sponsorship packages for the program, this morning. In the past three years, advertising has never come to us, we always have to go and make offers." He stopped, looked at Vy, his voice lowered, carrying a seriousness mixed with hope. "This is exactly what Mr. Toan needs to see, Vy. Not a presentation, not a slide board, but living proof, happening right before everyone's eyes."

"Did Mr. Toan say anything?" Vy asked, her heart beating faster when mentioning that name.

Mr. Binh shook his head slightly. "There's nothing official yet. This morning I met him for a few minutes in the hallway. He asked if the water supply situation had been completely restored, asked about the public's reaction, his voice was quite calm, not revealing much emotion as usual. But I noticed, he was carrying a stack of newspaper clippings from the morning, not just holding it loosely, but reading it carefully, underlining a few places. He said it would take a few days to compile all this week's data, and then there was a meeting. officially with the parent corporation's review board to make a final decision. Maybe it won't be until the end of the week, or early next week."

A few more days. Vy nodded, trying to stay calm, although inside, that waiting both brought hope and prolonged the feeling of uncertainty that had followed her for the past six weeks. But there is something else, something beyond all the numbers, all the reports, that has been occupying most of her mind since last night, something she has not dared to say to anyone but Ms. Xuan in that brief moment in the middle of an empty stage.

Pham Nhat Minh.

All afternoon, Vy tried to focus on her work, on the interview calls from two local newspapers wanting to schedule a meeting with her to write articles, and on rewriting the content of tonight's program so that it could maintain the familiar warmth and skillfully update the water supply situation, which had been completely stabilized, to give listeners peace of mind. But with every small silence between work, those three words appeared in her mind, bringing with them a wave of mixed emotions that were not easy to name — half an almost unbelievable happiness, half a vague fear she had never had to face in such a concrete way as right now.

That night, after the show ended, Vy lingered in the studio with Hai Duong while he packed up the equipment, the familiar soft yellow light falling over the two of them like every night, but this time, the atmosphere between them carried a different heaviness, as if before a conversation they both knew would have to happen sooner or later.

"Mr. Duong," Vy spoke first, her voice soft, "I keep thinking about Saturday night. About that name."

Hai Duong stopped, turned to look at her, his eyes did not seem surprised, as if he had been waiting for this story for a long time. "I guessed it too, from the moment I saw your face after the call ended. What are you going to do?"

"I don't know," Vy admitted, sitting down in her familiar swivel chair, her hands clasped together in her lap. "I have his name, I have the place where he works. I can, if I want, drive to the water plant tomorrow, wait in front of the gate, ask the security guard who is Pham Nhat Minh. That's not difficult, brother. But I keep thinking about the night he wrote to me, the night he said he was afraid his real self wouldn't be worthy of the image I had for him. If I rush straight to his workplace now, stand and wait in the middle of the day, in front of him. his colleague, I'm afraid it will be more like an ambush, than a meeting. I don't want him to feel cornered, I don't want to turn what has been beautiful for the past seven months into a moment where he will be embarrassed by being exposed in the middle of the workplace."

Hai Duong nodded slowly, pulled another chair closer, and sat down opposite her. "I think you're right. If it were me, I wouldn't do that either. People need a door to walk through, not to be pushed through that door." He stopped, looked at her for a moment, then asked again, his voice gentle but encouraging. "But you can't just sit still and wait anymore, right? After last night, after everything that happened, I think you know, everything has changed. He revealed his real name, even though it wasn't intentional. The biggest secret that kept the two of you at opposite ends of the wave, now only lies with you."

Vy was silent for a moment, looking out the small window above the equipment rack, where the city lights still sparkled faintly through the night fog. "I think," she said slowly, as if she were organizing her thoughts as she said them, "I don't want to meet him in a way that makes him have to choose, to decide right then and there, on the spot, whether to step out or not. I want to give him a door, just as you said, a door he can walk through on his own, at his own pace, like we've been doing for the past seven months — not pushing each other, just opening and waiting."

"How are you going to do it?"

Vy thought for a long time, her eyes gradually brightened as an idea began to take shape, an idea that had been simmering in her since listening to Mr. Ngo tell stories on stage last night, from the moment she remembered all the times White Night mentioned "the light at the head of the sea" as an appointment that never had specific coordinates. "I thought about going on air, reading a message, but without saying his name, without revealing to anyone else who it was for. Just mention that song, mention that line — 'see you again, at the light of the sea' — with a specific place, a specific time. If he still listened to the radio every night like he promised, he would immediately understand that it was for him. As for all the other listeners, it would just be like a song. normal narration, a beautiful detail in the program, no one suspects anything."

Hai Duong looked at her, a smile slowly appeared on his lips, his eyes shone with the pride of a brother watching his sister grow through each challenge. "Vy, that's exactly the way 'Sleepless Waves' has always done everything — no fanfare, no noise, just a sincere voice sent into the darkness, believing that the person who needs to hear it will hear it. I think, that's the most correct way, true to the spirit of this show, true to both of you."

Ms. Xuan, when Vy stopped by the restaurant the next morning, gave the same answer, although in much simpler language. She was ladling porridge for a regular customer, her hands were restless but her ears were still fully listening to the story Vy told, and when Vy finished, she put down the porridge ladle and looked straight at her granddaughter.

"You know, Vy," she said, her voice carrying a rare certainty, "when your father was still alive, he once told me that the best thing about this late-night radio career is that you never force anyone to listen, you have to answer right away. You just speak up, honestly, at the right time, and then let people decide for themselves whether to come forward or not. You do the same thing with Mr. Minh, you're doing exactly what your father has been teaching you all along. years, even though you're no longer here to say it out loud."

Hearing those words, Vy felt a strange warmth in her heart, as if her father, even though deceased, was still showing her the way through her aunt's voice. She sat at the bar for a while longer, sketching out each word in her head for tonight's message, carefully considering which place would be both meaningful to the two of them, and a real place, easy to find, not too far for either of them to reach. She thought of the small lighthouse located on a cliff jutting out into the sea in the north of the city, a place the locals used to call Cam Duong Cape, not far from the square, where on clear nights one could see its lights flashing steadily from afar, guiding the fishing boats returning after a long night floating offshore.

That was the image she imagined every time White Night mentioned "the light at the head of the sea" - not an empty metaphor, but a real place, a real light, standing quietly waiting in the middle of the night sea. If she had to choose a place to stand face to face for the first time, in the middle of the day, with no microphones, no invisible waves separating her, she couldn't think of a more suitable place.

That night, before going on air, Vy sat longer than usual in the studio, writing and rewriting the quote on a small piece of paper, erasing, rewriting, until she found the words that were just vague enough for no one else to recognize, just clear enough for only one person, listening somewhere in this city, to understand that they were just for him. She folded the piece of paper and placed it next to the microphone, her hands trembling slightly as she watched the digital clock move toward eleven o'clock at night, knowing that, after tonight, after months of waiting in the darkness of the waves, she was about to send her first, truly first invitation, straight into the light.