Chapter 1 — Never Blame a Janitor

At five-fifteen in the morning, when the entire small alley behind Sunrise Saigon International School was still covered in thin mist, Champa Dac Long woke up. I don't need an alarm. Eight years of living according to a harsh, self-imposed rhythm had turned his body into a clock that never missed more than five minutes, whether asleep or awake, whether peaceful or troubled.

The two-room apartment he rented was located on the third floor of an old apartment building, two kilometers from the school, close enough for him to arrive in time in any situation, far enough away that no one would be curious to connect the security guard named Tran Van Phuc and the tenth-grade student named Le Anh Thu in the apartment next to his bedroom. He stood in front of the mirror, looking at his face for a long moment. The faint scar on his left temple, a trace of a night he never allowed himself to forget, was still there, fading over the years but never completely disappearing, just like the old part of him.

He put on a moss green security guard uniform, buttoned each button carefully as if it were a suit, then walked into the next room, lightly knocking three times on the thin wooden door.

"Are you awake, Thu?"

There was the sound of stirring, the sound of bare feet hitting the wooden floor, then the door opened, revealing a sixteen year old girl with messy hair, sleepy eyes but a familiar smile.

"Yes, I'm awake, Uncle Phuc."

She had called him "Uncle Phuc" for eight years now, so familiar that sometimes even Dac Long himself forgets what the sound "ba" used to sound like in the old villa. That was the first and most painful price of all the prices he had to pay to keep his daughter alive these past eight years. On paper, there was no Champa Dragon left in the corporate world. There was no Chiem Bao Tran who was the only daughter of the founder of Hac Thinh Group. There were only Tran Van Phuc, forty-three years old, a school security guard, and Le Anh Thu, sixteen years old, a tenth grade student, two people who suddenly live under the same roof for a reason recorded in the temporary residence records as "carefully placed niece".

Anh Thu — a name that has become a part of her for eight years, to the point where she sometimes wonders if Chiem Bao Tran is still her — washes her face, puts on her uniform, puts her books in her bag while Dac Long prepares a simple breakfast: two fried eggs, some boiled vegetables, a glass of milk. He never lets his daughter eat breakfast on the street, even if it's just a sandwich. The habit of controlling every single detail in your life is the only thing left from a Champa Dragon who once managed thousands of employees and could make decisions worth hundreds of billions of dong in just a fifteen-minute meeting.

"There's a Biology test today," Anh Thu said while eating, his voice a bit worried. "I studied until two in the morning."

"Three..." Dac Long paused for half a second, like every time he almost blurted out a word that he had forbidden himself to use for eight years, then continued in a calm voice. "I see you've studied very carefully. Don't stay up too late, it'll hurt your eyes."

Anh Thu looked up at him for a moment, her eyes flashing with something delicate that a sixteen-year-old girl shouldn't have - as if she noticed that pause but chose not to ask, like all the previous times in her life. She doesn't remember her mother's face clearly. She doesn't remember the old villa clearly, only a few vague memories of a large garden with a koi pond and the laughter of a woman wearing a straw hat. But she remembers one thing clearly: since the age of eight, the man sitting in front of her has always had only one look for her - the eyes of a person willing to trade everything he has, including his identity, including his past, so that she can live in peace.

A quarter to seven, the two of them left the apartment, walked to the bus stop, not walking too close together, just like the safety habits that Dac Long had taught his son for eight years - not because of shame, but because of a survival instinct that had been ingrained in his blood since that fateful night. Mr. Thu boarded the school bus, and Dac Long walked another fifteen minutes to the back gate, where he started the seven o'clock shift, switching with an old security guard named Uncle Sau who was on duty overnight.

Sunrise Saigon International School is a modern architectural complex located in the middle of District 2, with three-storey greenhouses, an artificial turf football field, an Olympic-standard swimming pool and a thousand square meter biological experimental garden. The annual tuition here is enough to buy a small apartment in Binh Thanh district. Most of the students' parents are business owners, CEOs, or children of famous families in the Saigon business world. Dac Long knows this school better than anyone, not only because he worked as a security guard here for eight years, but because he, under a different name on legal documents many years ago, was one of the founding shareholders who silently contributed capital to build it - a coincidence that only Dac Long and his lawyer Lam Gia Bach know. He chose this place for his daughter not by accident. This is the only place where he has enough hidden influence to ensure his children's safety, even though that influence is now only old, faded relationships, as well hidden as he is.

The job of a school security guard was nothing worth mentioning. Checking access cards at the gate, patrolling the hallways, handling small incidents like students skipping class smoking behind the bathroom, or sometimes simply opening the door to help a parent carry too many things. Dac Long did all of that with a quiet dedication that made no one in the school, from principal Dao Thi Minh Chau to the young new teachers, had even a single complaint. He rarely spoke, never participated in gossip in the security room, always arrived early and left last. Someone once asked him why he didn't find a more leisurely job at this age. He just smiled lightly, saying he was used to manual work, not suitable for a desk.

No one knew that those eyes that quietly observed every corner of the school yard once read hundreds of pages of financial reports in just one morning. No one knows that the hand holding the broom to sweep the yard once signed contracts worth trillions of dong. And even more unknown, behind the resigned, patient appearance of that middle-aged guard is a sophisticated vigilance system that never turns off, a survival instinct honed not only from the market, but from his youth years serving in a special forces unit before turning to the business path - an instinct that makes him, with just a fleeting glance in the crowd of students leaving school, be able to immediately recognize strange faces that do not belong here.

This morning, like every other morning, Dac Long stood in a familiar position near the main gate, watching each shuttle bus rolling into the courtyard. He saw his daughter getting off the bus, blending into the crowded stream of students, laughing and talking with two close friends - Dieu Khanh and a boy named Binh, whose faces he had memorized well since the first day Anh Thu entered school because of her habit of discreetly checking the backgrounds of girls' friends. He also saw, not far away, a shiny black car stopping, the car door opened, a teenager got out with the arrogant look typical of children who have never had to earn a single penny in their lives.

Zeng Khai Phong.

Dac Long had noticed him for a long time, not because of any special hunch, but simply because the surname Tang was engraved in his memory like a burn that would never heal. He knew clearly who Tang Phat Group was, and who the head of that group had been in his life. But for the past two years, since the day this teenager transferred to school, Dac Long had kept an absolute distance, not letting any emotions show, just silently observing, silently vigilant, like an old predator who knew how to wait for the right moment.

Little did he know that in just a few weeks, that silent vigilance would no longer be enough to protect his daughter.

The morning passed peacefully like every other morning for eight years. Dac Long patrolled, checked security cameras, and helped a young teacher fix a lab door whose hinge was stuck. When it was time to play, he stood in the corner of the yard, watching Anh Thu sit with Dieu Khanh under the old poinciana tree, the two of them laughing and joking with each other, and in that moment, he allowed himself a rare second of peace - the peace that he had traded an entire empire to have.

But peace, for a person who once stood at the peak of power and then fell to the abyss overnight, has never been something that can be absolutely trusted. Dac Long learned that in the most painful way. And even though he tried to bury that vigilant instinct during eight years of living incognito, he still couldn't help but notice, far away in the schoolyard, Tang Khai Phong was looking at Anh Thu with a look that any father could read immediately - a look of contempt mixed with a dangerous childish malice, a malice that, if not stopped in time, could grow into a storm that no one could foresee.

That afternoon, when his shift ended, Dac Long waited for his daughter at the back gate as usual. Mr. Thu ran out, her face was still tired from a long school day, but when she saw him, she still smiled that familiar smile, the only smile in the world that made Dac Long feel that his eight years of anonymity were not meaningless.

"Uncle Phuc, I did very well on the test," she boasted, her voice full of pride.

"Very good," Dac Long patted his daughter's head, a gesture he only allowed himself to do when no one was around. "Let's go home and cook your favorite food."

Father and son walked side by side in the sunset, amidst the hustle and bustle of people leaving school, among luxury cars lining up in front of the gate. No one paid attention to the middle-aged guard and the small student. No one knows, in the midst of that idyllic scene, there is a father carrying within him the biggest secret in Saigon, a secret capable of overthrowing an entire empire if discovered, and a love big enough that he is willing to trade everything again, if it is necessary to protect his only daughter.

That night, after Anh Thu fell asleep, Dac Long sat alone in the small living room, opening an old wooden box stored at the bottom of the cabinet - where he kept the only things left from his previous life: a yellowed wedding photo, a silver ring, and an old business card with the words "Chiem Dac Long — Chairman of the Board of Directors, Hac Thinh Group". He looked at the business card for a long time, his fingers lightly brushing over each letter, then put it back in the box and closed the lid, like closing a door to the past that he told himself he would never open again.

Outside on the balcony, a late breeze blew through the window, causing the table lamp to sway slightly. His shadow fell long on the damp-stained wall, and in that moment, Dac Long had the strange feeling that he was looking at a stranger - not the resigned Tran Van Phuc of the past eight years, nor the authoritative Champa Dac Long of a lost era, but something in between, waiting for an excuse to choose who he was again. He sat motionless until the lamp went out before realizing he had been holding his breath for some time.

That night, less than ten kilometers from his small apartment, in an empty schoolyard under high pressure lights, a teenager named Tang Khai Phong was sitting in his private car, typing a short message to three close friends, discussing a game that he was sure would make that "good or cool student" no longer dare to raise his head to look at anyone again. He did not know, and Dac Long also did not know, that the name "Tran Van Phuc" was silently lying in another file, far away, on the desk of a man who had never forgotten the eight-year old debt. The door to the past that Dac Long just closed tonight, it turns out, has never really closed.