Chapter 3 — Seeds After the Rain

The next two weeks passed with surprising regularity. Every Tuesday and Thursday, Gia Huy appears in the garden behind the gymnasium, sometimes arriving earlier than the scheduled time because the last class is off, sometimes staying later to help clean up equipment even though the volunteer hours for that day have already been recorded. He told himself that it was just because he wanted to finish the required twenty hours early, no other reason, but even he was starting to feel like that explanation sounded a bit forced every time he repeated it in his head.

That Tuesday morning, when Gia Huy arrived at the garden earlier than usual because the Chemistry class had an unexpected break, he realized something was wrong as soon as he stepped through the bamboo gate. Quynh Nhu was squatting next to the tomato bed, her face frowned with worry, her trembling hands touching the wilting leaves in an unusual way.

"What's up?" Gia Huy asked, quickly walking closer.

"I don't know," Quynh Nhu replied, her voice filled with a bit of panic that was rare in her, who was always calm and sure in everything related to the garden. "When I checked this morning, I saw that the whole tomato bed was wilted, the leaves were yellow, and some plants had strange black spots on their stems. Just two days ago, they were still green and normal."

She stood up, nervously walked back and forth between the vegetable beds, checking a few more beds. "It's not just the tomatoes, the chili plants next to them also have similar signs. If it's a fungal disease or a pest spreading, it could take this whole week to save it, and next week the club also has to submit a report on its semester activities to the school board."

Anh Duong, who arrived a few minutes later, could not hide his worry when seeing that scene. "Have you called Mr. Binh yet?" she asked.

"The teacher is having a lesson, he won't be able to come out until noon," Quynh Nhu replied, her voice filled with helplessness. "And by noon, the plants may have already withered."

Gia Huy stood looking at the scene before him, feeling the tension radiating from Quynh Nhu, something completely different from the image of the calm, steadfast girl he had become accustomed to over the past two weeks. Never before had he seen her so worried that her hands and feet were so frantic, and for some reason, that scene made him also begin to feel a real sense of impatience, not because of duty or volunteer hours, but because of something close to sincere concern.

“Let me see,” he said, kneeling down next to the tomato bed and carefully turning over each leaf to examine it. He did not have in-depth knowledge about plants, but since he was young, every time he moved to a new house, his mother always tried to plant a few small pots of plants to make the house look more alive, and he vaguely remembered a few times her mother complaining about watering the plants incorrectly, causing the plants' roots to rot.

“The soil here seems a little soggy,” he said, gently pressing his finger into the soil around the base of the tree. "It's wet, but it hasn't rained these days."

Quynh Nhu stopped, looked down at the ground he had just pointed to, then suddenly her eyes lit up. "Automatic watering system!" she exclaimed. "The other day, when you checked the pipes, you said you found a few leaks that we haven't fixed yet, just temporarily covered them with tape. If that leak is right under this tomato bed, it's possible that the system has been watering continuously for the past few days without anyone noticing, causing the soil to become waterlogged."

All three people hastily followed the plastic pipe, lightly digging the soil above to check. Sure enough, right under the tomato bed, a small crack in the pipe that Gia Huy had only temporarily marked last time and not completely repaired had the tape come off, causing water to continuously leak into the ground for many days, causing the plant roots to become waterlogged, leading to wilting and possibly creating conditions for fungus to grow on the part of the stem exposed to excessively wet soil.

"Luckily, it's not a disease that spreads," Quynh Nhu breathed a sigh of relief, but immediately frowned again in worry. "But we still have to fix this pipe urgently, otherwise the longer it takes, the more damaged the roots will be. And now there is no spare plastic pipe in the garden, pipe welding tools are only available in the school's equipment room, you have to ask for permission to get it."

"Let me go ask," Gia Huy said immediately, without thinking too much, a reflex that surprised even him a bit. He was not the type to volunteer to do difficult things voluntarily, but looking at Quynh Nhu's worried face, he just wanted to find a way to help immediately.

"Are you familiar with the equipment room?" Anh Duong asked, a bit surprised.

"Not really, but probably okay," Gia Huy replied, shrugging his shoulders with a familiar confidence. "Just let me try."

He quickly ran towards the office, where the school's security guard and equipment manager was sitting reading the newspaper. With a friendly smile and skillful way of speaking that he had honed countless times having to get acquainted with strangers at new schools, Gia Huy quickly convinced his teacher to lend him pipe repair tools and a few spare pieces of plastic pipe, even though that was not the school's usual procedure.

When he returned to the garden with tools in hand, Quynh Nhu looked at him with eyes that could not hide both surprise and admiration. "Can you really ask? We've tried to borrow tools dozens of times but were always refused because the procedure was complicated."

"It's probably just luck," Gia Huy smiled, although in his heart he secretly understood that it wasn't really luck, but a skill he learned after many years of having to quickly create sympathy with strangers to survive in a new environment.

All that afternoon, three people worked together to dig the ground, cut off the cracked pipe, reconnect it with a new pipe, then carefully cover it with soil, and gently dig around the roots of the waterlogged tomato plants to help the roots breathe. Mr. Binh, when he came to the garden at lunch break as scheduled, saw the work was almost completed, and couldn't help but nod in praise.

"You guys did it quickly and accurately," the teacher said, bending down to check the pipe connection again. "If it's not discovered until the afternoon, it can take a whole week for the tree to recover, and some trees can even be saved."

"It's because Gia Huy discovered that the ground was unusually wet," Quynh Nhu said, looking at him with obvious respect. "If it weren't for her, we would still be struggling to find the reason."

Gia Huy felt a bit confused by that praise, a strange feeling compared to often receiving easy recognition at school because of his appearance or sociable personality. This time, that recognition comes from something he actually did, contributing to solving a specific problem, not just because of who he is.

"It's just working together," he replied, trying to stay humble, even though there was a smoldering joy in his heart that he had never felt so clearly after any previous club activities.

As the afternoon sun gradually faded, the group sat and rested under the shade of the mango tree, looking at the newly repaired tomato bed with reassuring eyes. Quynh Nhu poured water from a thermos into several plastic cups and shared them with everyone.

"Thank you everyone, especially Gia Huy," she said, her voice sincere. "If I had discovered it alone, it would have taken more time to figure out the cause was the pipes."

"Nothing," Gia Huy replied, taking a sip of water, feeling the cool taste flowing down his throat after an afternoon of hard work. He looked around the garden, looked at the tomato beds slowly recovering, looked at the relieved smile on Quynh Nhu's face, and suddenly realized he was feeling satisfied in a way he had never experienced before — not the satisfaction of being praised or loved, but the satisfaction of actually doing something meaningful, with people he was starting to like.

On the way home that day, Gia Huy passed by the park near his house, where several children were playing in the sunset. He stopped for a moment, watching them laugh and play carefree, then suddenly smiled to himself, thinking of the feeling of relief when he saw the tomato bed being saved, and of Quynh Nhu's respectful eyes for him. It was a new feeling, different from the fleeting joy he usually got from everyday social compliments, and he began to wonder if he was slowly being drawn into something bigger than the initial twenty hours of volunteering.

When he got home, he went into the bathroom to wash off the mud still clinging to his hands, looking at the small scratches on his fingertips due to being unfamiliar with the pipe repair tool all afternoon. Normally, such a small scratch is not worth worrying about, but this time he looked at it for a long time, as if it were a mark proving something he had just done with his own hands, not with a smile or a few pleasant words. He suddenly remembered Mr. Binh's eyes as he nodded in praise, remembered Quynh Nhu's grateful voice when sharing water with the group, and also the slight change in Anh Duong's attitude, no longer keeping a cautious distance like in the beginning.

He took out his phone and intended to text Dang Khoi about this afternoon, but after typing a few words, he deleted it. He wasn't sure how to explain to a friend who was only used to seeing him through the lens of basketball games and noisy gatherings about the strange feeling of satisfaction he felt when saving a bed of tomatoes that were about to wither. Perhaps Dang Khoi would just laugh it off, telling him to "overdo" the little thing and make it big, and Gia Huy, even though he didn't fully understand why, found himself not wanting to hear that joke at the moment. He turned off the phone screen, put it aside, then lay down on the bed, letting that dull feeling of satisfaction continue to stay in his heart for a while longer before falling asleep.