Chapter 4 — Never Blame a Janitor

Anh Thu tightened her backpack strap, stood at the end of the line of students lining up to board the bus in front of the school gate, her eyes secretly glanced at Tang Khai Phong's group laughing a few steps away - that kind of laughter, to her, was never a good omen, even though she couldn't exactly name the uneasiness rising in her chest. Lam Vien ecological area, where the entire tenth grade class was about to go on a two-day, one-night field trip, was located nearly two hours by car from the city center, famous for its more than three-hectare artificial lake designed to serve controlled kayaking and swimming activities for students. This year's annual picnic for the tenth grade was organized by the school for two days and one night, with full team building activities, camping and a campfire party on the first evening.

According to school regulations, parents or guardians were not allowed to go on field trips, only the homeroom teacher and a team of medical and rescue staff were hired separately. This caused Dac Long, even though he tried to get permission from the school board to participate in the name of a security guard providing logistical support, only to receive a refusal because "there were enough personnel in charge". He had to let his daughter go alone, even though he couldn't help but feel uneasy - a vague feeling of insecurity that he couldn't clearly explain, a feeling that years of living in danger had forged him, even though it had been eight years since he used it.

"Remember to keep your phone with you. If there's anything unusual, call me immediately," he told me over and over again before Anh Thu got on the school bus.

"I know, Uncle Phuc," she smiled, although she was still a little worried about having to stay close to Khai Phong's group for two days and one night without the safe distance of a regular classroom.

The first day of the picnic passed relatively peacefully. Khai Phong's group, perhaps because they had to share a common living space with the whole class under the strict supervision of the teacher, did not have the opportunity to cause trouble directly. Anh Thu fully participated in the activities, setting up a tent with Dieu Khanh, participating in a tug-of-war game, and having a fun evening around the campfire. She even texted Dac Long, along with a photo of the sparkling campfire scene, making him feel more secure.

But by noon on the second day, when the schedule changed to kayaking on the lake, things started to go wrong.

Before going to the lake, students had a thirty-minute break and were free to drink water and snacks that were available on a long table next to the lake. This was the time when Khai Phong's group, which had secretly prepared in advance, carried out the plan without fully realizing the serious consequences. One of the three students in the group, under the direction of Khai Phong, secretly put a small amount of a mild sedative - a drug he stole from his mother's medicine cabinet, used to treat insomnia - into Anh Thu's personal water bottle while she was busy chatting with Dieu Khanh in the distance.

Khai Phong's original intention, according to later testimony, was simply to want Anh Thu to "fall asleep and be embarrassed in front of the whole class" during outdoor activities, a cruel joke, but in the shallow thinking of a sixteen-year-old boy who had never been responsible for anything in his life, he did not consider that the dosage of medicine, combined with the hot afternoon sun and strong physical activity on the water, could cause life-threatening consequences.

Anh Thu drank nearly half a bottle of water before getting into the kayak with Dieu Khanh. At first, she only felt a little dizzy, thinking it was due to the heat and fatigue after two days of continuous activities. But when the boat reached the middle of the lake, about fifty meters from the shore, the dizziness hit her much more intensely than she could bear. Her limbs began to numb, her vision blurred, and before she could scream for help, she lost her balance and fell over the side of the boat into the deep water.

Dieu Khanh screamed in panic, trying to reach out to pull her friend, but the small kayak wobbled violently, nearly capsizing them both. Other students rowing boats nearby turned to look, but most of them froze in panic, no one was calm enough to react in time. Even though the rescue worker on shore immediately discovered the situation and rushed into the water, it still took nearly a precious minute to swim to the spot where Anh Thu sank - a minute that could be the boundary between life and death for a body that is gradually losing consciousness under the effect of sedatives in deep water.

Right at that moment of life and death, something that no one at that picnic could explain happened.

Dac Long, even though he was not officially allowed to be present in the picnic area, silently drove his motorbike behind the school bus group since early morning, keeping a distance far enough away to not be detected, just to safely observe from afar according to the uneasy feeling that had motivated him all night before. He parked the car about five hundred meters away from the ecological area, sat in a roadside stall where he could see part of the lake area through the thin B40 mesh fence, his eyes never leaving his daughter's figure since morning.

When he saw Anh Thu's kayak wobble, saw the small figure falling into the water, his body reacted faster than his conscious mind. Eight years of training to suppress instincts, eight years of living like a faint shadow in the crowd, all disappeared in an instant. He jumped over the B40 fence more than a meter high without slowing down, rushing across the grass at a speed that stunned those around him, and before the professional lifeguard could reach the middle of the lake, he threw himself into the water from the nearest edge of the shore, swimming with a speed and technique that no ordinary school security guard could possess - the tactical rescue swimming technique he learned from his years serving in a special forces unit in his youth, having been dormant for nearly twenty years. years but never really disappeared from his body.

Dac Long reached Anh Thu's location almost at the same time as the rescue worker, but it was he who dived in, found his daughter's motionless body sinking to the bottom of the lake nearly four meters deep, and pulled her to the surface in just a few seconds. He carried her to shore with surprising strength and speed, laid her down on the grass, and immediately performed CPR skillfully, with exacting precision to every detail—chest compressions, breaths, counting rhythms—as if he had done this hundreds of times in his life, even though on paper he was just a school custodian who had never had any extensive medical training.

After nearly a minute of intense resuscitation, Anh Thu coughed, vomited a significant amount of water, then gradually regained consciousness amid Dieu Khanh's choking cries and the surrounding students' shouts of joy and panic. But she was still in a drowsy state, her arms and legs twitched slightly due to a reaction to the sedative, and needed to be taken to the emergency room immediately.

The entire scene — the middle-aged security guard jumping over a high fence, swimming at professional speed, performing CPR like an experienced emergency doctor — took place before the eyes of dozens of teachers, students and rescue workers present at the scene. Not one of them, including the trembling homeroom teacher who called to report to the school, could help but ask: who is this man, and why could a normal school security guard react like a well-trained rescue expert?

Dac Long, in the moment of holding his daughter who had just woken up in his arms, had no mind to worry about his identity being revealed. All eight years of caution, all the meticulous calculations to keep the cover absolutely safe, in that moment became meaningless before the extreme fear of a father who almost lost his only child left in the world.

"Dear, can you hear me? Open your eyes so I can see," he said, his voice shaking so much that he didn't even realize he was crying.

An ambulance was called immediately afterwards, taking Anh Thu to Tam Duc International General Hospital - the nearest large hospital with full intensive pediatric resuscitation equipment. Dac Long insisted on accompanying him in the ambulance, despite the medical staff initially only allowing immediate relatives. Only when he shouted, with a sudden authoritative voice that made even experienced medical staff pause for a few seconds — "I am her father, I have the right to go with my child" — did everyone quietly give way, no one dared to hinder the man with that terrifyingly intense gaze for another second.

On the ambulance speeding away with sirens blaring amid the traffic, Dac Long tightly held his daughter's cold little hand, looking at each heartbeat index dancing on the monitor screen, and in his heart, a determination that he had tried to suppress for eight years now burned more fiercely than ever. No matter who did this to his daughter, no matter what the cost, he will never let it go.