Chapter 3 — Never Blame a Janitor

It all started with a Math test.

Three weeks ago, during the mid-term exam in Advanced Math, the teacher read the scores in order from high to low to the whole class, a habit that many parents still complain about but the school has never changed. Anh Thu achieved the highest score in the class, nine and a half points on a scale of ten, while Tang Khai Phong, who was always proud of being at the top of the class in terms of academic achievement thanks to a private tutor since childhood, only scored seven points - the first time in the two years he studied here, he was surpassed by a student who was not famous, had no family background, and was even rumored to be a "poor family with a scholarship" even though Anh Thu actually paid the full tuition with Dac Long's secret savings.

For a child like Tang Khai Phong who had been pampered since childhood, failure was not simply a score. It was a wound to his self-esteem built up over sixteen years of constant flattery from servants, teachers, and even friends who surrounded him because of his family's money and power. Right during recess that day, Khai Phong deliberately walked past Anh Thu's table, "accidentally" knocked her glass of water down on her Math notebook that had just received a high score, and then let out a sneer: "If you study well but don't know how to keep your notebook, it's a waste of your teacher's praise."

Mr. Thu, who was naturally calm, just quietly wiped his notebook and did not respond. That silence, instead of calming the situation, made Khai Phong even more uncomfortable. He was used to people reacting, being afraid, bowing down to his threats — no one had ever chosen to ignore him like that. In the immature and privileged mind of a sixteen-year-old child, Anh Thu's silence was interpreted as a form of implicit challenge, an "ignorance" that he determined could not leave alone.

From there, the bullying began, much more sophisticated and organized than what adults often imagine about "children arguing". Khai Phong didn't take action directly — he was too smart to personally tarnish his reputation in front of security cameras and teachers. Instead, he used his group of close friends, including three other students in the class — children whose family circumstances depended on business relationships with Khai Phong's father's Tang Phat Group, making them not dare to refuse any request from him even though they were somewhat hesitant.

At first, it was just small isolation games. Khai Phong's group spread rumors that Anh Thu "studied well thanks to cheating", even though there was no evidence. They intentionally let her sit alone during group activities, removed her name from the Science collective project list and then blamed her for "not cooperating". One time, they hid all her school supplies in her desk drawer, forcing her to borrow them from around the classroom during test time, subject to the scrutiny of even unrelated students.

Mr. Thu, although hurt, never told Dac Long a word. She understood, even at a young age, how fragile the lives of her father and son were. She was afraid that if she caused trouble, if the school had to intervene and invite parents to work, the true identities of both father and daughter could be scrutinized more closely, revealing the loopholes that they had tried to absolutely hide for the past eight years. She chose to suffer in silence, only confiding in her only close friend, Dieu Khanh, and sometimes writing short diary pages that she always hid at the bottom of her suitcase, not letting her father see.

But mental bullying is gradually no longer enough to satisfy Khai Phong. When he saw Anh Thu still maintain high scores and still top the class in the next test, the bitterness in his heart became even greater. He began to move on to more sophisticated and malicious tricks — intentionally ruining Anh Thu's presentation by deleting data on the class' shared computer before the important presentation, forcing her to stand in front of the class empty-handed, embarrassed while the teacher looked visibly disappointed. Another time, they intentionally leaked a fake message in the class chat group, making up a story about Anh Thu gossiping behind another classmate's back, causing her to be shunned by many classmates for nearly a week.

Dieu Khanh, the only close friend who still stood by Anh Thu, repeatedly advised her to inform her homeroom teacher or at least her family members.

"You can't keep enduring like this," Dieu Khanh said one afternoon when the two of them sat alone to eat in the corner of the backyard, away from the watchful eyes of Khai Phong's group. "I think they're getting more and more extreme. You have to tell Uncle Phuc."

"No way," Anh Thu shook his head, his voice small but determined. "He has a lot of things to worry about. Besides, I don't want to make a big deal out of something small. Maybe they'll get bored and stop."

But they are not bored. On the contrary, the fact that Anh Thu did not protest or denounce, made Khai Phong believe that he could go further without suffering any consequences. In his eyes, Anh Thu's patience is not tolerance, but weakness that needs to be trampled more thoroughly. That is one of the most dangerous features of school bullying that many adults do not foresee: it does not stop naturally, but only escalates exponentially if not stopped in time.

What no one in that group of students - including Khai Phong - knew, was that behind the bullying that seemed to stem only from childish jealousy, another hand had begun to silently watch. A few weeks ago, during a family dinner, Tang Bach Nguyen accidentally heard his son complaining about "the girl who studies well or is arrogant" in class. The name Le Anh Thu caught his initial attention. But when he happened to look through the school's admission records - which he could easily access thanks to his position as a major sponsor - and realized that this student was sponsored by a guardian named Tran Van Phuc, who worked as a security guard at that very school, a vague but persistent premonition began to form in his mind.

Tang Bach Nguyen is the most skeptical person in the business world, a skepticism forged from the fact that he understands better than anyone the cost of betrayal, because he himself was a traitor. During the past eight years, although all evidence showed that Chiem Dac Long had completely disappeared from the business world, living in seclusion somewhere, and there were even rumors that he had passed away due to depression, Tang Bach Nguyen was never completely at peace. He still maintains a small team that quietly monitors all movements related to the Chiem family, even though for many years he has not found any suspicious traces.

The name "Tran Van Phuc" was initially just a small detail among the countless things he paid attention to. But when he silently asked his people to check this guard's background more closely — his age, figure, and start time at the school suspiciously matched the time the Chiem family "disappeared" from Saigon — a chilling suspicion began to form. He did not dare to confirm for sure, but decided to quietly monitor her more closely, and at the same time, intentionally or unintentionally, not intervene in his son's bullying of Anh Thu - because, if his suspicions were correct, letting his son continue to put pressure on her, even if it was just childish games, could be an effective way to make "Tran Van Phuc" reveal himself and react in a way that a normal guard would never do. can now react.

It was a chillingly cold calculation, turning his own son into an unwitting pawn in a chess game much larger than the sixteen-year-old boy could have imagined.

And while Tang Bach Nguyen silently laid the trap, while Khai Phong continued his increasingly bold bullying with the confidence of someone who had never been punished, Anh Thu still returned home every day with a forced smile, hiding all the hurt behind a facade of calm, unaware that she was standing at the center of an impending storm - a storm that would force her anonymous father to reveal his true nature much sooner than he had thought. What have you ever prepared?

There were only a few days left until the annual picnic of the tenth grade, held at an ecological area in the suburbs with a large artificial lake - a place that, neither father nor son could have predicted, would become the scene of the most horrifying event that nearly took Anh Thu's life, and the final boundary that pushed Champa Dac Long back to his true self after eight years of hiding.