Chapter 4 — Old Street Corner Gold Shop

Three days after Hao Kim opened, a strange call came into the shop around noon. Vy was diligently polishing the wedding rings of Mr. and Mrs. Van Thinh - Ngoc Hoa when the old landline phone placed on the counter rang, the sound was shrill in the quiet space.

"Hello, Tan Phat gold shop," she picked up the phone, her voice still familiar with the way her grandfather taught her to greet customers since childhood.

The other end of the line was silent for a moment, then a middle-aged man's voice rang out, slow and somewhat solemn, unusual compared to normal order calls. "Excuse me, may I ask if this is the gold shop founded by Mr. Khuong Tan Phat?"

Vy was a little taken aback by the strange way of addressing her - no one called her grandfather by his name like that, regular customers usually just said "Mr. Phat's shop" informally. "Yes, that's right. My grandfather passed away in 1998, now I'm the granddaughter, taking over the shop. What do you need to ask?"

"Ah, it's not urgent," the man's voice was a bit evasive. "I'm just learning about Mr. Phat's family history. Thank you very much." Then he hung up, not having time for Vy to ask for more names or specific reasons.

Vy put down the phone, a vague feeling of discomfort spread in her heart. She didn't think much about that call at the time, thinking it might be someone researching the history of the old town, or a reporter looking for material for an article about old gold shops. Ngan Lu street was once mentioned in several articles about "a disappearing traditional craft street", so such calls for inquiry are not unprecedented.

But in the afternoon, another incident made her pay more attention. A strange man, about fifty years old, dressed neatly like someone who had been away from work for a long time, stood in front of the store for a long time, looking inside through the glass without entering. Vy noticed him out of the corner of her eye while serving another customer. The man's posture exuded a mixture of curiosity and reserve, as if he was considering something.

When the other customer left, Vy looked up to invite the man into the shop, but he turned and walked quickly toward the end of the street, without looking back. She stood there hesitantly for a moment, wondering if she was imagining things too much, but the feeling of insecurity still lingered.

That evening, after closing the shop, Vy sat down to eat with her father, intending to tell the story of the strange call and the man standing in front of the door, but before he could speak, Mr. Thinh spoke first, his voice seemed unusually heavy.

"Has anyone called the store today to ask about your grandfather?" he asked, his eyes not looking directly at Vy but glued to the bowl of rice in front of him.

Vy was stunned. "How do you know? There was a strange call, asking if it was Mr. Khuong Tan Phat's shop. I also saw a strange man standing and looking into the shop in the afternoon."

Mr. Thinh put down his chopsticks, sighed deeply, his left hand clasped the edge of the table. "Dad also received a similar call, this morning, while you were busy with guests." He hesitated, as if considering how much to say. "They asked me if I remembered anything about... something that happened a long time ago, when your grandfather was young."

"What's going on, dad?" Vy asked, her voice filled with worry.

"I don't know clearly, Vy," Mr. Thinh replied, but his eyes avoided his daughter's question in a way that made Vy feel like her father was hiding something, even though he probably didn't fully understand it himself. "When I was little, I heard your grandfather mention a 'difficult night' from a certain year, apparently 1979, but he never gave details. Every time I asked, he would just say 'it's an old story, no need to repeat it,' and then move on to something else. I also grew up with exactly that much information, and never knew anything more specific."

Vy remained silent, trying to piece together disparate pieces of information. A call asking about my grandfather, a strange man standing by the shop, and now my father telling me about a "difficult night" in 1979 that my grandfather never wanted to talk about again. All of those details were like pieces of an incomplete picture, but they were enough to make her feel insecure.

"Do you think there's anything serious?" she asked, trying to keep her voice calm.

"I don't know," Mr. Thinh shook his head, his voice tired. "But you know, when your grandfather first opened the shop, it was a very difficult time. After the war, the economy was subsidized, gold and silver were strictly controlled, many families had to find ways to go abroad. Perhaps there was something related to that period that he did not want to tell because it was associated with a lot of sadness."

After the meal, Vy went down to the store alone and searched in an old wooden cabinet in the back corner of the warehouse - where the family's old papers and books were kept that no one had touched for a long time. She found several order books from the 1980s, an old yellowed business license, and a small tin box containing a few black-and-white photos of her grandfather as a young man standing in front of the store, with a few unnamed friends.

She flipped through each page of the old notebook, her grandfather's neat handwriting but faded with time, meticulously recording each order, each amount of gold imported and exported. But the records from 1979 are missing a short period of time — the last few months of the year have no record, as if a gap was intentionally or forcefully omitted. Vy frowned, her feelings of curiosity and worry growing stronger.

She held the tin box containing old photos, sat down at the workbench under the pale yellow light, looking at each photo. In one photo, the grandfather stands with a young woman in front of the store, both smiling brightly, behind them is a brand new sign of Tan Phat Gold Shop, the red paint has never faded. On the back of the photo is a faint handwritten note: "With Doan, spring 1978, before opening day." Vy had never heard her father mention anyone named Doan in the family or her grandfather's close friends.

She put the photo aside and continued searching, but couldn't find any clearer clues. At the bottom of the tin box, she found a small, yellowed piece of paper, carefully folded into four, with a handwriting that was much more shaky than the other pages of the notebook — not her grandfather's handwriting, but like someone's hastily scribbled in a panic. The piece of paper could only read a few words: "...please send it back...when you return...hope the store will keep it for you..." The rest was completely faded, unreadable even though she tilted the paper under every angle of light. She turned over the back, there was no signature, no date, just a patchy ink stain as if it had been wet and then dried many times.

Vy carefully placed the piece of paper in a small plastic bag to prevent it from rotting further, feeling both curious and apprehensive. She wondered if this piece of paper had anything to do with the "difficult night" her father had just mentioned, with the woman named Doan in the photo, or with the strange call that morning. It felt like she was holding in her hands the fragments of a story much larger than what she had ever known about her family, but not enough to piece together a complete picture.

That night, Vy tossed and turned, unable to sleep. She lay upstairs, listening to the sound of the wind blowing through the old window, the sound of traffic fading on the street, and her mind kept echoing the man's question on the phone: "Is this the gold shop founded by Mr. Khuong Tan Phat?" That seemingly simple question now carried an unusual weight, as if opening a door to a dark room that her family had deliberately locked for decades.

She thought of the photo of her grandfather standing with a woman named Doan, of the mysterious gap in the 1979 books, of her father's averted eyes when talking about the "difficult night" that year. Each individual detail seemed harmless, but when put together, they created a vague sense of unease that she couldn't name, like there was a storm silently brewing on the horizon, still far away but certain to come.

She turned over and looked up at the ceiling, which was mottled with familiar mold stains, something she had looked at thousands of nights since she was a child and had never found it so strange. Memories of her grandfather appeared in her mind — not the image of a mysterious old man hiding anything, but the gentle man who often patted her head every time she broke a practice item, who often told fairy tales before bedtime in a warm voice. She didn't want to believe that the grandfather might be involved in something shady, but she also understood that the memories of a child raised with love did not necessarily fully reflect what adults had experienced before that child was born. There are burdens that people carry all their lives but never reveal to their children and grandchildren, just because they want to keep their childhood pure, free from the past.

She didn't know that the man who called today, and the person who stood looking into the shop that afternoon, were just the first signs of a much bigger storm about to hit her normally peaceful life - a storm named after a debt that had been dormant forty-five years, waiting for this exact moment to awaken.