Chapter 7 — Late Night Radio

For two days after receiving the letter, Vy carried it with her in her purse like an inseparable object, even though she never read it again - she was afraid that if she read it again, she would memorize every sentence to the point that she would no longer be able to maintain her natural look when holding it on air. She thought about the advice at the end of the letter no less than a dozen times a day — "If one day you read this letter on the air, please don't read it all. There are parts I only want you to know" — and each time she thought about it, she found herself facing a problem more difficult than any editing problem she had ever encountered in her career: how to share something beautiful with thousands of people listening, while still keeping the most private part of it for just one person.

Tuesday night, as she sat in her familiar chair in studio B, Vy made a decision. She took the letter out of her pocket and placed it on the table next to the microphone, the old folds now a little worn from having been opened and folded so many times in her mind, even though her hand had only actually touched it once since the night she received it. Hai Duong glanced through the glass, saw a strange piece of paper on the table, slightly raised his eyebrows questioningly. Vy just nodded slightly, signaling that everything was okay, even though inside her heart was beating faster than usual, a feeling of nervousness was almost like the first night she sat in her father's chair, preparing to host the show alone.

The show opened as usual — a familiar greeting, a gentle song, a few short letters from listeners. Near midnight, when the studio atmosphere had calmed down, Vy took a deep breath, pulled the microphone closer, her voice was slower than usual, a bit more reserved than the nights when she had to handle the heaviest stories.

"Tonight, I want to share with you something a little unusual," she said, trying to keep her voice even, even though she could clearly feel every beat of her heart pounding in her throat. "A few nights ago, the program received a letter, not via email, not via fanpage, but someone personally put it in the station's mailbox, no name, no sender's address. I think, many of you who have been listening to the station for a long time have probably guessed that this is a familiar friend of the program, who often calls on rainy nights, calling himself White Night."

She paused for a beat, allowing that silence to have a place in the broadcast space, exactly like the way her father had taught - so that listeners had time to imagine, time to prepare their hearts before receiving what was to come.

"The letter is quite long, and there are parts that I think the writer only wanted to read for me alone, so I won't read them all. But there is one part I want to share, because I think it's not just for me, but for everyone who is doing nameless work tonight, work that no one applauds, no one knows." She picked up the paper, her voice trembled slightly at the first sentence and then gradually stabilized. "'Have you ever noticed that the city at four o'clock in the morning has a very unique beauty, a beauty that only those who are awake can see? I often get off duty at that hour, walk a short distance before getting in the car to go home, and I often stand for a few minutes on a street corner, looking at the city in transition...' " Vy continued reading that paragraph, complete with the image of the man standing between two worlds that do not meet each other - the world of those who have just woken up and the world of you, where a working day has just ended in solitude.

After reading that paragraph, she stopped, deliberately letting the sound of her own breathing blend into the silence on the waves. "I read this paragraph, not to be curious about what her real job is - that, I think, is not as important as the feeling she described. I believe that tonight, many of you are also standing between two such worlds - the world of those who are sleeping peacefully, and the world of you, who must stay awake to keep that sleep complete. Thank you White Night, for trusting me to send these words to the program. And if you are listening, I wanted to say — the rest of the letter I will keep, as you wish, for myself alone.”

She played the next song, a slow, wordless melody, to fill the emotional void that had opened up in the studio. Through the glass, Hai Duong looked at her, his eyes had something both gentle and worried, like a father watching his daughter take the first steps on a new path, not knowing where it would lead.

The anonymous line was not lit that night. Vy didn't know if he was listening or not, if he was standing somewhere during his shift, his headphones echoing her voice reciting the words he wrote, or if he simply couldn't hear because he was too busy with work. But she felt strangely relieved, as if she had just completed an important ritual—not to prove anything to him, but to prove to herself that she could both open up and maintain necessary boundaries, a skill she had never had to practice before White Night entered her fold.

The next afternoon, before the broadcast, Vy stopped by Ms. Xuan's night porridge shop earlier than usual. The sun hasn't completely gone out yet, the small alley leading to the shop still has a bit of orange light from the sunset filtering through the low corrugated iron roofs, different from the quiet night air that Vy is familiar with. Ms. Xuan was sitting on the porch picking vegetables. When she saw her niece arriving early, she was surprised. She put down the vegetable basket and wiped her hands on her apron.

"Why did you come so early today? It's not yet time for me to cook porridge for dinner, I just have some vegetables and some stewed bones."

"I'm not very hungry, I just want to sit down for a while before going to work." Vy pulled out a stool and sat down next to Ms. Xuan, helping her pick up the unfinished spinach. Her fingers were familiar with this job from visiting the restaurant many years ago, when she was a teenager and often followed her father out to eat late at night after each broadcast shift.

Ms. Xuan glanced at her niece, her sharp eyes noticed something strange in Vy's pensive look. "What's going on in your heart, son? I see you've been absent-minded lately, not like you were sad like when you first lost your father, but like... thinking about something new."

Vy smiled, a bit confused by her aunt's subtle observation. She told, slowly, about the letter, about how she had read part of it on the air last night, about the feeling of both trepidation and relief after doing so. Ms. Xuan listened, her hands still quickly picking vegetables, nodding occasionally. When Vy finished speaking, she put the basket of vegetables aside, looking far away toward the end of the alley, where the sunset was gradually giving way to darkness.

"You know, this reminds me of something about your father that I never told you." Ms. Xuan's voice slowed down, somewhat lower, different from her usual loudness. "Back then, before your mother was around, your father also had a similar time — not with a caller, but with a letter writer. A girl, a loyal listener of the show in the early years, wrote letters regularly every week, the handwriting was beautiful, I remember your father often reading her letters to her, her voice brightened every time a new letter arrived."

Vy stopped, turned to look at Ms. Xuan, a strange feeling arose in her heart - she had never heard this story, never knew her father, before marrying her mother, there had been such a connection through letters.

"And then what?" Vy asked, her voice soft, afraid of interrupting her aunt's memories.

"Then one day, the letters stopped coming. No goodbyes, no reason. My father was sad for several months. I remember that at one point he was about to ask the radio to check the sender's address, but then he stopped. He said 'If people want to stop, we have to respect it, no matter how much we regret it.' Later, he met his mother and son, got married, had children, and had a peaceful life. That incident gradually fell into oblivion. But one time, many years later, when your mother passed away, your father said something to me that I remember to this day: 'Xuan, people often think there is only one type of love, you have to meet face to face, you have to hold hands, you have to live in the same house. But I think, there are connections that don't need a physical form but can still be real, so real that it teaches you what love is, so that you can bring that lesson into future loves, even though the person who taught you that lesson has long since disappeared.'"

Vy sat quietly, her hands motionless on the basket of spinach, the words Ms. Xuan had just said echoing in her head like an endless ringing of a bell. She had never imagined that her father, who always appeared in her memory as a model of stability, calmness, and dedication to his profession, had also experienced something fragile and unfinished, almost exactly like what she was experiencing now with White Night.

"I don't know about this," Vy said, her voice choked. "Why didn't you tell me sooner?"

Ms. Xuan reached out to gently rub her niece's back, her eyes were gentle but also filled with a distant sadness. "Because when you were little, it didn't mean anything to you. After your father passed away, I also thought about telling it, but I was afraid that you would misunderstand, thinking that your father was never perfect with your mother, when in fact it was only a very small, very old part of his life, happening long before he met your mother. But today, hearing you tell the story of this letter, I thought, maybe this is the right time for you to know. Not for you to compare, but for you to understand - the profession. My job, the job of opening my heart to unfamiliar voices and words every night, has always carried the ability to truly move people, from my father's generation to my generation. That's not something unusual or shameful, Vy.

Vy nodded, tears welled up in the corners of her eyes but did not fall, a feeling of both pain and warmth mixed in her chest. She thought of her father, of the image of him sitting and reading a certain letter from many years ago, his voice filled with joy as Ms. Xuan had just told her, and for the first time, she felt that she was no longer alone in her budding feelings for a man she had never met - she was walking on a path that, although not completely similar, was not unfamiliar to the path her father had traveled, in a lifetime before she was born.

"Miss Xuan," Vy said softly, after a long silence, "do you think, if that old letter writer hadn't disappeared, Dad's life would have been different?"

Ms. Xuan smiled sadly and shook her head slightly. "I don't know, my child. But I think, there is no 'if' in life. There is only what has happened, and what we can learn from it. Don't worry about whether the letter writer will disappear or not, or whether he will meet you or not. You just need to know that, no matter what happens, you dared to open your heart once, really open your heart, without having to play someone else's role again. That's enough courage."

It was completely dark when Vy left the porridge shop, the warm yellow light of the shop cast her long shadow on the empty alley. She walked slowly towards the stage, carrying in her heart a new story about her father, a piece she had never known in the already very full portrait of him in her mind, and a feeling of being understood more deeply than ever - not only from Ms. Xuan, but from her deceased father himself, who turned out to have also stood at an emotional crossroads very similar to where she was standing now, many years ago, under a Cam Duong sky that was perhaps as quiet and starry as tonight.