Chapter 1 — Profile 9:17

Ho Chi Minh City welcomes the late autumn rains with a wet and gloomy appearance. On Nguyen Du street, lined with rows of ancient oil trees, yellow leaves fall one after another, sticking tightly to the water-stained black asphalt surface. The sound of car horns was sparse, lost among the steady murmuring sound of the pouring rain that had continued since dawn. Different from the usual hustle and bustle, this morning seems to have a slow, heavy rhythm, exactly like the atmosphere inside Lawyer Trinh Vu's office.

Located on the ground floor of an old French-style villa with faded yellow paint, Vu's office always exudes a solemn, quiet look and smells of years-old archived papers. Trinh Vu, a thirty-five-year-old lawyer with an angular face and bright, calm eyes, is sitting behind a dark oak desk. He had just finished a tense phone call with a client in a civil commercial dispute. Gently placing the stethoscope on the glass table, Vu rubbed his temples. A pair of thin-rimmed glasses were taken off and carefully placed next to a cup of black coffee that had long since cooled.

He stood up, gently pulled the wooden shutter curtain to look out at the white rain outside. Just as his eyes glanced through the gap under the closed ironwood main door, Vu realized there was a strange object lying silently on the classic patterned encaustic tile floor. It's an envelope.

Vu walked slowly closer to the door. The sound of leather shoe soles hitting the tile floor echoed dry sounds in the quiet space. Bending to pick up the envelope, he frowned slightly. Unlike the files or legal transaction letters packaged in standard kraft paper or cardboard envelopes, what was in his hand was an envelope made from Do paper. This type of paper is very thin, porous, has a natural yellow color, and bears the mark of nostalgia and craftsmanship. On the rough surface of the paper, there are tiny black dots of bark fibers that have not been thoroughly ground. The rough feeling passing through his fingertips gave Vu a bad feeling.

The front of the envelope was completely blank, with no stamp, no postmark, and no sender's address. There is only one line of words, neatly written in black Chinese ink, slightly blurred by humidity, lying neatly in the middle: "To Lawyer Trinh Vu - Truth Seeker". The handwriting is slender but powerful, as if the writer had put a lot of thought and caution into each stroke.

Vu turned the back of the envelope. There are no glue or tape marks, the edges of the paper are just carefully folded and inserted together. Someone had personally brought this letter here, slipped it through the door while he was focusing on solving another case file, or maybe it had been lying there since last night without him knowing when he entered the office in the early hours of this morning. Vu took a deep breath. The air carried the strong, burning smell of old ink mixed with the characteristic musty smell of old Do paper. A scent of secrecy and lingering time.

Returning to his desk, Vu carefully used a brass paper cutter to gently slide the folded edge of the envelope to open it, trying not to tear or damage it. damage any detail on the paper surface. Inside the empty envelope contained only a small piece of paper, folded squarely into quarters. It was not a handwritten letter with long lines of complaints or requests for help. It was a piece of banking transaction document printed using outdated dot matrix printing technology.

Vu spread the piece of paper flat on the glass table under the white light of the LED table lamp. Each row of letters and numbers with blue and purple polka dots has faded a lot, but is still sharp enough to be read. Vu's eyes quickly scanned the basic information fields: Bank name, sender account number, recipient account number, transaction amount and time frame for making the transfer order. When his eyes stopped at the number representing the time, Vu's pupils suddenly shrank. A stream of cold air ran down his spine, making all his senses seem to freeze for a moment.

The metallic text appears very clearly: 09:17 AM - October 12, 2016.

Ten years. Exactly ten years have passed since that fateful day. Vu's heart beat faster. October 12, 2016 is not an ordinary day, nor is it a day that any person in this city can easily forget. That was the day the tragic scaffolding collapse of the Tan Cang bridge's pillars occurred, one of the city's most important infrastructure projects at that time, invested by Dinh Phat Group and constructed by Tan Cang Construction Company. At exactly nine twenty-seven minutes that morning, a huge mass of up to fifty tons of concrete, rebar and load-bearing scaffolding system collapsed into the rushing Saigon River.

That tragic accident claimed the lives of four people, including the chief engineer supervising the project Le Van Sang - a man respected by his colleagues for his carefulness and absolute integrity. The investigation by the authorities then took place extremely quickly. With the physical evidence collected at the scene and the technical inspection report assessed and defended by Lawyer Pham Quoc Hoang - Vu's respected teacher - the final conclusion was reached: The incident originated from a technical error in calculating the scaffold load that engineer Le Van Sang arbitrarily changed without reporting to his superiors. The liability verdict is closed, the file is sealed, and the deceased must carry an indelible stain of negligence that caused serious consequences. Dinh Phat Group quickly soothed public opinion with generous compensation, the project was re-established, and everything gradually faded into the past as if nothing had ever happened.

But the piece of evidence lying in front of Vu right now tells a completely different story. The transaction amount displayed on that faint metallic paper is a huge number: 2,000,000,000 VND (Two billion VND). The sender account belongs to a legal entity called Di An Construction and Trading Joint Stock Company - a completely unfamiliar name and not in any list of public bidding or material supply documents of the Tan Cang project that Vu has researched. But what shocked him the most was the name of the recipient. The metallic letters read clearly: BUI VAN DEO.

Bui Van Deo. Vu muttered this name in his mouth. Memories of ten years ago came back clearly. Bui Van Deo was the Captain of the construction team directly in charge of the Tan Cang bridge pier subdivision on the morning of the accident. This man was lucky to escape death by asking to go to the bathroom right near the time the scaffolding collapsed, but was also disabled in one leg due to being hit by a flying steel bar. During the trial that year, Deo's testimony became the decisive evidence, confirming that engineer Sang directly ordered the removal of a number of load-bearing tie bolts to speed up the concrete pouring process.

A transaction of two billion dong was carried out at exactly 9:17 a.m., just ten minutes before the scaffolding collapsed. Two billion dong was transferred to the account of the construction team leader, who then provided testimony that determined the crime of the dead chief engineer. This cannot be a coincidence. Vu clasped his hands together, resting his chin on his thumb, his eyes as sharp as daggers staring at the fragile piece of paper. If this document is true, then the conclusion that an industrial accident was caused by a technical error is just a perfect drama elaborately staged to cover up a heinous crime. A case of attempted murder of witnesses and intentional destruction of buildings.

The brass doorbell rang loudly, interrupting Vu's endless thoughts. He looked up at the door. Under the torrential rain, a figure wearing a convenient transparent raincoat was standing trembling on the porch. Vu quickly put the documents into a do paper envelope, slid it into the top drawer of his desk and said: "The door is unlocked, please come in!"

The wooden door opened slightly. A cold wind blew into the room, bringing with it mist and the lingering smell of rainwater. The woman walked in, quickly took off her wet raincoat and hung it on the clothes rack in the corner of the room. She was a girl in her late thirties, with a thin and slender figure but exuding a strangely tough and determined look. Her waist-length black hair was partly wet, lightly sticking to her cheeks, pale from the cold. Her eyes were big and black but contained deep dark circles from many sleepless nights. She clutched a frayed black leather briefcase to her chest, as if it were the most valuable possession in the world.

"Hello, Attorney Trinh Vu," the girl said. Her voice was a bit hoarse and a bit shaky, but her timbre was extremely clear and distinct. "I'm Le Nhu Van. You probably don't know me, but I've been following the cases in which you participated in protecting vulnerable people in the news for the past three years."

Vu stood up, walked around the desk, pulled out a leather chair and invited the girl to sit down. He went to the corner of the room, poured a glass of warm water from a thermos and placed it gently in front of Van. "Hello Ms. Van. Please drink some water to warm yourself up. Please stay calm. If you need my help with anything, please speak slowly."

Van put her thin hands around the glass of warm water, the rising heat blurred her glasses for a moment. She took a deep breath, seemingly gathering her courage to utter her next words. "I am the only daughter of engineer Le Van Sang. The person who was convicted by the court and public opinion was the cause of the Tan Cang Bridge scaffolding collapse ten years ago."

The name Le Van Sang coming out of Van's mouth made Vu feel like There was an electric current that passed through his body. He slowly sat down in the chair opposite, his eyes unable to hide surprise mixed with defense. Just five minutes ago, he had received a piece of evidence directly related to her father's death, and now, the daughter herself appeared right in his office.

"Miss Van," Vu spoke up, maintaining the utmost composure of a professional lawyer. "Your father's case had an investigation conclusion and a final court verdict ten years ago. The file has been sealed. Re-litigating a legally effective case with such a large time delay is almost impossible if there are no particularly serious new circumstances."

"I know!" Van replied, her voice suddenly rising a notch, filled with years of suppressed resentment. "For the past ten years, my mother and I have had to live in estrangement from relatives and the torment of people who don't understand. My mother got cancer out of frustration and just passed away last month. My father was an extremely principled engineer. He could check a screw three times before installing it. Never... never did he arbitrarily remove the tension bolt to speed up the process like their testimony!"

Van placed the old leather briefcase firmly on the glass table. Her trembling fingers struggled to open the rusted brass lock. From inside, she pulled out a file of documents carefully wrapped in many layers of waterproof plastic bags. She pushed the file towards Vu.

"Last week, when cleaning up my mother's relics in preparation for moving house, I broke the plaster underneath my father's altar," Van explained, staring at the file. "My father hid these things before he went to the construction site that fateful morning. Inside were handwritten copies of the construction log, secretly taken photos of batches of materials of unknown origin, and... an audio recording."

Vu looked at the file in front of him, feeling the terrible weight of the truth waiting to explode. He gently pushed his glasses, his eyes highly focused. "Miss Van, before we review this file, I have a question for you to answer honestly." Vu stopped for a moment, opened his desk drawer, took out a Do paper envelope and placed it right next to Van's leather briefcase. "This envelope... was it brought here by you this morning?"

Van opened her eyes wide, surprise evident on her pale face. She leaned forward and looked closely at the words written in Chinese ink on the paper. "No... I never wrote this, nor have I ever seen it before. This morning I took the bus from Binh Duong straight up here. What's in it, lawyer?"

Vu carefully pulled the transaction document out of the envelope and spread it flat next to Van's file. He turned the paper around so Van could read the faint writing. When Van's eyes glanced over the numbers, especially the time 09:17 and the amount of two billion VND transferred to Bui Van Deo, her face suddenly changed. The extreme shock made her lips tremble, unable to utter a word. Tears began to flow from the corners of his eyes, rolling down his thin cheeks.

"Two billion dong..." Van sobbed, covering his face with both hands. "Just for two billion dong, Mr I killed my father... killed those innocent workers. Why... why doesn't the law see this?"

Vu silently stood up. He walked over to the bookshelf and pulled out a black leather-covered notebook used to record particularly serious cases. The air in the room was now thicker, the sound of rain falling on the porch seemed to become more intense, pounding against the glass windows as if to urge a truth buried at the bottom of the Saigon River for the past ten years to surface.

"Miss Van," Vu spoke calmly, his eyes now exuding the coldness and determination of a hunter who had seen his prey. "From this moment, I officially accept authorization to protect the legal rights of your family. This piece of evidence and her father's file are the new details required by the law. Together we will expose that concrete layer of lies."

The wooden office door is closed, shielding the stormy winds from outside, but right in this small room, a terrifying legal earthquake is silently beginning. The underground forces of Dinh Phat Group, those who used money and power to distort the balance of justice ten years ago, would never have expected that their fatal weakness was contained in an envelope wrapped in yellowed Do paper. The origin of the bid, marked by the eternal time stamp: 09:17.