Chapter 7 — Music Sent After School

Logo under a layer of dust

Rumors about Ha Audio spread to the class before Nhien did. During math class, a person sitting at the back desk sent her a photo of the logo on the player. Below is the line: **Rich kids go to school to steal other people's songs.**

Nhien deleted the photo, but couldn't erase the feeling of being seen through her uniform.

When she entered room 3C, Lam was using a towel to wipe off all the logos on the equipment box. Khang stood next to him, holding a bottle of bleach solution.

“Don't delete,” Nhien said.

Lam turned back. “I thought you wanted to hide it.”

“Wanting to hide is different from erasing evidence.”

Duy placed the player on the table. He removed the case, took pictures of each component, and wrote down the serial number. Beneath the layer of dust there is an additional leaf-shaped stamp, not part of Ha Audio. Nhien recognized it as the mark of Moss Records.

“A device has two sides,” Khang said. “Like someone who works on a project where two people take credit for it.”

“Not every company competes for credit,” Nhien replied.

Lam glanced at her. “This sentence sounds like someone who has heard adults meeting.”

Nhien did not reply. She knew that Ha Audio and Reu Records had collaborated on a community sound project. Her father told very little; he said the project failed because the partners lacked discipline. But in the warehouse records, Duy's father was the one who handed over the equipment, and his tape was lost. The two versions cannot both be correct.

Ms. Mai requires every member to sign a data preservation commitment. She did not prohibit the club from investigating, but prohibited posting evidence online before verifying it. Lam complained of having to read six legal pages, Duy read them all in four minutes, Khang only signed after asking "if I spill tea into the machine, will I be compensated?"

“Yes,” Ms. Mai said.

Khang put the tea cup two meters away.

In the afternoon, Nhien called his father's assistant using a secondary number. She asked for code H-AU-17-04. The assistant was silent for three seconds then said the code had been canceled from the system in 2014. Nhien asked why. The answer: “Equipment error in testing.”

“Are there any records?”

“You shouldn't ask about the company.”

“I'm asking because the device is in my school.”

The other person hung up.

Nhien walked out into the hallway and saw Duy standing against the wall. He didn't ask who she called. He just said: "If you want to know, you have to find the original file."

“Where is the original file?”

“Moss Records.”

“They are closed.”

“Closing doors doesn't mean papers disappear.”

The two returned to the old address, this time with Ms. Mai. She has a school recommendation. They found the new owner of the house, a man named Bay, who said he bought the property of Moss Records but had not cleared the second floor. There was a musty smell in the warehouse and many cartons were not labeled.

Lam wears gloves and reads each box. "Bills, cables, test tapes, an invitation to someone's wedding. People's lives are messier than headphone wires."

Khang found an old computer with no screen left. Nhien removed the hard drive and took a photo of the stamp. Duy opened a file box and took out the 2014 contract. Project name: **After School Frequency**. Goal: record student audio after school and create a community track.

Signatories include Ha Audio, Moss Records and Truong Binh Minh. Main artist: Le Quang Huy. Person in charge of copyright: Ha Minh Quang.

Nhien looked at his father's signature. The signature is firm and decisive. Next to it is Duy's father's signature, slightly tilted.

The contract addendum reads: “All recordings must be returned to the creator prior to commercial release.”

The back page was torn off.

“Who tore?” Lam asked.

"Are not know,” Ms. Mai said.

In the bottom drawer, Nhien found an unlabeled tape. There are three dashes on the shell. Duy didn't touch her, just looked at her.

“Don't open it here,” he said.

“Why?”

“Because if it were the original, everyone in the room would be pulled in before we knew how to protect them.”

Nhien understands. The club is more than just a place for investigation. They are responsible for the people whose voices are on the tape: a child, a father, and even the strange students who contributed their voices to the project.

They brought the tape back to room 3C, established a process: backup the original, listen on a device not connected to the network, note every sound, do not edit the original. Khang wrote the process on the wall. Lam named it "Four No's": don't listen alone, don't cut and paste, don't guess the sender, don't turn pain into content.

The tape opens with the sound of a hallway in 2014. There are the sounds of shoes, the sound of chairs being pulled, and the sound of a little girl saying "I can't count the rain." The baby's voice sounded more like Nhien than she wanted to admit.

Then came the sound of Huy's guitar. The track is nearly four minutes long, with a complete chorus. In the middle, Minh Quang said in the background: "If included in the project, the company will take care of the distribution."

Huy replied: “I don't want to release it. I want to return it to those who contributed.”

Another person sneered: "If we don't release it, how will we have a budget?"

The sound of a chair being pulled. Huy said: “Budget cannot buy the right to tell stories.”

The tape is noisy. When the sound became clearer, Minh Quang's voice was lower: "If you keep this copy, it will stay in the box forever."

Huy replied: "It's better to stay in the box than to have your name changed."

Duy turned off the phone. He sat still, eyes red.

Nhien found herself wanting to tell her father that she had no bad intentions, but those words were both terrible and meaningless. The people in the gang were not the people she met at the dinner table. They are versions of Huy and his father competing for decision-making power.

“There's the last part that I haven't heard yet,” Lam said.

“Let's hear more tomorrow,” Duy replied.

Khang's phone vibrates. A hidden account just posted a photo of the contract page online. The signature is clearly visible. Below is the caption: **Ha Audio has owned the song from the beginning.**

Looking at the number of shares increasing rapidly. Those who haven't listened to the tape have already drawn conclusions.

Lam closes the laptop. “If they don't respond, they will continue writing.”

“We can't put the ice up,” Ms. Mai said.

“So we have to bring up another truth,” Duy replied. “The contract is not enough. We need to know what the torn equipment says.”

Nhien looked at the two company logos under the light. The dust has been wiped off, but the scratches remain. There are traces that don't disappear just because someone covers them with a layer of shine.

At home, her father sent a single text message: **Tomorrow I want to talk to you about SoundSeed.**

Soon after, the hidden account sent another line to the club:

**If Ha An Nhien was still there, the radio room would never be reopened.**

Nhien read the threat three times. She wanted to delete it, but remembered the process so she saved the photo, recorded the time and sent it to Ms. Mai. Ms. Mai did not ask Nhien if she was afraid; she asked what she wanted to do next.

“I want to broadcast an episode about data being used to exert pressure,” Nhien said.

“Don't mention names.”

"Yes."

Lam wrote a script in which a student tells the story of receiving a text message that scared him, then finding a trusted adult instead of responding alone. Duy added the sound of slow running footsteps, without using suspenseful music. Khang checked for no information sender identification.

The program attracted fewer listens than the rain number, but more responses. A 12th grader sent: "I was threatened with private photos. I don't know who to report." Ms. Mai forwarded the letter to the school counselor, keeping her name anonymous.

Nhien understands that the radio room is not just a place to tell stories; it can be the first point for a person to seek help. She suggests adding a secure contact list at the end of sensitive numbers. The principal approves and exempts the program from turning into a place for professional consultation on behalf of the school.

In the Moss Records archive, the torn contract page had a staple mark in the corner. Khang used a magnifying glass to see that the remaining paper had a green ink mark similar to Bao's signature. Bao went to the school and confirmed that he had held the contract but did not tear it up.

“I was quiet,” he said. “Being silent is also a way to help others hide.”

Duy asked if he kept a copy. Bao replied yes, but the copy was at home and needed time to find. Ms. Mai asked him not to send it online, but only deliver it in person when there is a record.

Before leaving, Bao looked at the Ha Audio logo on the player. “This device does not play songs. It only opens access to old memory.”

Nhien asked: "Who established that road?"

Bao looked at her, then said: "You know room 3C used to have a side door."

Room 3C does not have a side door on the current drawing. Khang started looking for old diagrams.

Khang looked in the administrative cabinet and found a drawing folded into quarters. On the back is a diagram of the audio line, with a branch going through the wall of the council room and down to the warehouse. That branch has been covered with mortar but the junction box is still there.

“The side door is probably a technical door,” he said.

Ms. Mai asked permission to open the box during security hours. Inside there is only one jack head, but around it there is still dust that has just been wiped away. Nhien did not conclude who touched it; she just recorded it.

Lam suggested letting the students listen to the technician repairing the wire, but Nhien reminded them to ask first. Khang recorded his own hand sound, then played it for a test drive. The sound is small and dry, but has a steady beat. Duy said it was like someone knocking on the door without knowing who was inside.

They decided to name the first atlas “Engineering Doors”. Listeners send the sound of locks, hinges, sliding doors. No sound is associated with sin; each hour is just a part of the school.

In the old diagram, the branch leading down to the warehouse had a point marked in red ink. Khang measured the distance and saw that it was right behind the wall of room 3C. Ms. Mai allowed a brick to be opened for inspection, but inside was only a layer of cut wire.

Duy is not disappointed. He recorded the sound of the brick being reset, noting "not found". Nhien realized it was important to record the failure: it prevented others from repeating a fruitless search and prevented the story from expanding with the imagination.

Lam played an old string sound in the weekend number, asking listeners if they had ever looked for something that didn't exist. One person replied that sometimes it helps me understand what I really need.