Chapter 1 — Reef Keeper

The wooden ship left the mainland port at five o'clock in the morning, when the fog had not yet completely dissipated on the surface of the bay. Pho Lam Khue sat at the bow of the ship, both hands clutching a backpack containing diving equipment, eyes looking towards the horizon where Hon Vong Ngu was still a blurry blue streak between the sea and sky. It's been twelve years since she returned. Twelve years, enough for a fifteen year old child to grow into a twenty-seven woman, enough for a pain to become as familiar as the rhythm of breathing, but never enough for her to forget the salty smell mixed in this morning wind.

The ship rose in small waves, the ship's beak creaking. A few passengers on the same trip, mostly fish traders carrying ice, looked at her with questioning eyes - a young girl, her skin not tanned like a seafarer, wearing an ash-gray windbreaker and carrying large plastic containers with foreign words written on them, clearly not familiar with this train. Khue bowed her head and pretended not to notice, but her ears still clearly heard the whispers behind her.

"That's Mr. Dam's daughter. I recognized her immediately. She looks exactly like her mother."

"I haven't been back for ten years, why come back now?"

"I heard there's some kind of project being done on Da Bac reef. There's some kind of coral."

Khue did not come back. She had anticipated these questions and had practiced a calm expression for a month before leaving. But when he actually heard his father's name mentioned, a sharp pain still shot straight into his chest, just like old times, just like no twelve years had passed.

Mr. Pho Van Dam is a fisherman of Hon Vong Ngu, as well as his father's father, and his father's father's father. Three generations of the Pho family lived on the sea, living off the sea's fortune, and the sea also took that man away one July night twelve years ago, when his squid fishing boat did not return after a short trip out to sea. Several pieces of the boat were found washed ashore three days later, but he was never found. The commune's minutes briefly recorded: accident while going to sea at night, unusual weather. Khue read and reread that line hundreds of times during her teenage years, trying to find something behind the dry words, but never found it.

After her father's death, her mother took her away from the island to live with her aunt in the city. A year later, her mother remarried, her new life took her in a different direction, and Khue grew up with an ocean-shaped void in her heart - both loving and afraid, wanting to run away and not being able to stop looking back. She studied well, passed the entrance exam to major in marine biology as if guided by an invisible hand, then went to graduate school, then to graduate school, each step bringing her closer to the very thing that took her father away. Her friends once asked her why she didn't choose a career on land that would be healthy and light on her head. She just smiled, unable to answer clearly. Perhaps because the more she understands about the sea, the more she feels like she is a little closer to her father.

Now, when the ship broke through the waves and entered the anchorage of Hon Vong Ngu, when the old corrugated iron roofs and rows of coconut trees tilted in the wind began to appear, Khue felt her heart beat faster. Early in the morning, the fishing wharf was bustling with people coming in and out, with the sound of vendors, the sound of winches pulling nets, and the smell of fresh fish mixed with the smell of ship engine oil. A few children ran along the wharf, holding small crabs they had just caught, laughing loudly. That scene was both strange and familiar to the point that Khue had to hold the boat tightly to keep her emotions in balance.

As soon as the ship docked, she saw a familiar figure waiting in the crowd - a small woman, half-white hair, wearing a bandana, leaning on the basket of the boat next to her with one hand, and looking towards the ship with the other hand covering her eyes. Mrs. Bay Xuyen. The woman who made fish sauce and dried fish at the wharf was Khue's mother's best friend when she was young, and also the person who half-raised her in the years after her father passed away and her mother left, leaving a fifteen-year-old child alone on this island.

"Khue! Oh Khue!" Ms. Bay Xuyen waved her hands frantically, her voice cracking with emotion, weaving through the crowd to run to the edge of the wharf. "Oh my god, are you really back? You thought I was just talking for fun!"

Before Khue could step completely ashore, Mrs. Bay hugged her. The smell of dried fish and fish sauce mixed in her shirt was so familiar that it made Khue's nose sting. So many years of separation, so many short letters sent back and forth, now all gathered together in a tight hug in the middle of a noisy fishing wharf.

"I'm home, Mrs. Bay." Khue said, her voice choked. "I'm sorry it took so long to get back."

"What are you sorry for? You worry about school and work, I'm happy for you." Mrs. Bay Xuyen stepped back and looked at Khue from head toe, her eyes both searching and affectionate. "Wow, my daughter looks so classy now, I don't dare admit it."

"I'm still the same person as before, grandma." Khue smiled, even though in her heart she knew that she had changed a lot compared to the barefoot girl running along the sandy beach years ago.

Two women, one old and one young, walked together along the red dirt road leading from the fishing wharf to the village. Mrs. Bay Xuyen told stories about the island as she walked, her voice clear as if no time had passed: stories about whose family just got married, stories about who just built a boat, stories about how this year's fishing season was worse than last year's. Khue listened, trying to remember every name and every face she mentioned, as if trying to reassemble each piece of a picture that had been blurred by time.

But when passing through the small market, among the fish stalls and vegetable stalls, Khue caught the eyes of a few elderly people looking at her with unsympathetic scrutiny. An elderly man, with tanned skin, was mending nets on the front porch. He stopped when he saw her pass by. He stared for a long time before bending down to continue his work without saying a word. Khue clearly felt that silence was heavier than any blame.

"Don't pay attention." Mrs. Bay Xuyen spoke softly, as if reading her thoughts. "People heard that you were working on a project to ban fishing on the reef, so people were worried. The fishing grounds are already very tight now, when they hear about any more bans, people are afraid."

"I didn't come back to ban anyone, Mrs. Bay." Khue said, trying to keep her voice calm. "I came back to save the coral reef. As long as the reef is alive, only the fish will survive, and the fishermen will have something to fish for in the long term. I am not their enemy."

"I know. But it's easy for me to tell her, I have to tell them, and this whole commune." Mrs. Bay Xuyen sighed and looked out to sea. "Besides, you still have to deal with something else, something about your father."

Those words made Khue's steps stop in the middle of the road. Mrs. Bay Xuyen turned to look at her, her eyes filled with both pity and guilt, as if she had just accidentally said something that should have been kept.

"Your father's story is something that no one has ever forgotten, Khue. Especially when you came back here, doing a job associated with the sea, associated with the exact place where he..." She didn't finish her sentence, just shook her head, then pulled Khue's hand to continue. "Okay, let's take it slow. I just got home, I haven't had time to rest yet. I'll take care of your food first."

Khue's family's old house, located at the end of the village, close to the beach, was asked by Mrs. Bay Xuyen to clean it a few days in advance according to Khue's instructions over the phone. The tiled roof is old, the lime wall is mottled with moldy streaks from many stormy seasons, but the wooden door frame is still intact, the window overlooking the sea is still there, where in the past Khue used to sit and watch his father prepare his gear before each trip to sea.

Stepping inside the house, the smell of mold and old wood rushed into Khue's nose, bringing with it a stream of memories she had tried to bury for many years. The wooden table in the middle of the house, where her father and her children used to sit and eat every night. A jute hammock hangs in the corner of the porch, where her mother used to lull her to take a nap. And on the wall, a yellowed black and white photo of her father standing on the boat, holding a large tuna high in his hand, smiling brightly, with the blue sea behind him.

Khue stood silently in front of the photo for a long time. Her father's face in the photo was younger than she remembered, his smile so bright that it was hard to believe that the man would disappear without a trace just a few years later.

"My father loved the sea very much back then." Mrs. Bay Xuyen stood behind her, her voice low. "He told her, the sea is his second adoptive mother, raised him, raised his whole family. He loves the sea like he loves people, takes care of every reef, every seaweed, knows where the fish spawn, where the fish grow, and never fishes to destroy them like some people do now."

"I remember." Khue said softly. "Dad often took me to the shallow beach at low tide, showed me each starfish, each urchin, taught me to distinguish between living coral and dead coral. At that time, I didn't understand why he cared so much about that. Now that I do this job, I understand that dad has been an ecologist for a long time, it's just that no one calls him that."

Mrs. Bay Xuyen was silent for a moment, then patted Khue on the shoulder. "You should rest, take a shower, and I'll bring dinner over for dinner. Tomorrow you have to appear at the reserve management board and have to take care of packing your tools down to the reef. It's going to be a long day."

After Mrs. Bay Xuyen returned, Khue sat alone in the middle of the empty house, opened the largest backpack, took out an old leather-bound notebook - her father's seafaring diary, the only thing among his relics that Khue kept for the past twelve years, reading it over and over until she knew every page by heart. The scribbled handwritten notes recorded the water, wind direction, coordinates of the fishing grounds, and occasionally, interspersed among those dry notes, were a few short exclamations about the beauty of the sea, about the worry when seeing that the coral on Da Bac reef began to show signs of weakness many years before his death.

The last page he wrote, dated three days before he disappeared, contained just one line: "I saw strange lights on the reef tonight, I'll have to go check it out tomorrow." Khue has read this line countless times. Each time she reads it, she feels like a door is about to open, but she has never had enough courage or enough clues to step through.

She closed the notebook, held it in her arms, walked out onto the porch and looked towards the sea. The sun is getting lower, dyeing the whole water a bright orange color, in the distance are the silhouettes of fishing boats returning after a day out at sea. Somewhere out there, under those calm waves, is Da Bac Reef - where she will spend the next year replanting each branch of coral, and perhaps, where she will find the answer to the question that has haunted her for twelve years.

The sea breeze blew briskly, carrying a salty, bitter taste on the tip of the tongue. Khue took a deep breath, feeling more clearly than ever the familiar yet strange feeling of returning home - a home that she both loves and fears, where every wave that hits the shore carries both memories and unanswered secrets.

The first night on the island, Khue lay on the old bed, listening to the steady sound of the waves outside, hearing the wind passing through the door, and for the first time in many years, she found herself crying - not because of pain, but because of a strange feeling of relief, as if a part of her, the part that had been lost for twelve years, had finally found its way back.