Chapter 9 — Seeds After the Rain

The small storm that Gia Huy mentioned the other day finally made landfall over the weekend, bringing strong winds and heavy rain for two days straight. The whole club group has been busy reinforcing the garden since before - adding stakes to support the flower trellis, covering the young vegetable beds with tarpaulin, moving small pots of plants into the covered area.

On Monday morning, when the rain and wind had completely stopped, Gia Huy took advantage of break time and ran to the garden to check the situation before the official activity in the afternoon. He saw Quynh Nhu present early, carefully rebuilding a few saplings that had been tilted by the wind.

"Is the damage serious?" he asked, rushing to help.

"Not too bad," Quynh Nhu replied, breathing a sigh of relief. "Thanks to careful reinforcement in advance, the flower trellis and main vegetable bed are still fine. Only a few newly planted saplings were tilted, with one corner of the bamboo fence blown off by the wind."

The two spent the entire afternoon repairing minor damage, straightening each sapling, and tying up the fence. The work is not too heavy but requires meticulousness, forcing both of them to work close together for a long time, occasionally exchanging a few short sentences to guide each other.

When the sun began to lean toward the west, the two sat down to rest on a familiar stone slab under a mango tree, their bodies covered in mud but their hearts both relieved to have completed their work. The sky after the storm was unusually blue, a few white clouds drifted lazily, and the afternoon sunlight dyed the whole garden yellow.

"Do you miss your old house?" Quynh Nhu suddenly asked, after a comfortable silence. "I mean, after moving so many times, is there any place you regret leaving?"

Gia Huy was silent for a moment, that question touched a corner he rarely shared with anyone. But there was something in the peaceful atmosphere of that afternoon, in Quynh Nhu's attentive, non-judgmental eyes, that made him feel safe to open up more than usual.

"Yes," he replied, his voice slow. "When I was in fifth grade, I lived in a small coastal town for almost two years. It was the place I stayed the longest in my life, so long that I started to think maybe my family would stay there too. I had a group of close friends, we often rode our bikes to the beach after school. There was an old almond tree near the school that the group carved our names on, promising to come back when they grew up to see how big it was."

"And then what?" Quynh Nhu asked softly, without urging, simply listening.

"Then my parents changed jobs," Gia Huy continued, his voice a bit lower. "That time I cried so much, I even asked my parents to let me stay with my best friend's family, but of course I couldn't. On the day we moved, a whole group of friends came to see me off at the bus station, promising all sorts of things, saying they would call every day, and come back to visit each other in the summer. But just a few months later, all contact started to fade. It's not because of anyone's fault, it's just that everyone's life keeps passing by, there are new friends, new concerns, and I gradually realized, promising to keep in touch forever at home. "That age is just a beautiful saying but difficult to implement."

"Are you sad?" Quynh Nhu asked, her eyes gently looking at him.

"It was very sad at that time," he replied, suddenly smiling bitterly. "But gradually, I learned how to not let myself be sad about such things anymore. I learned how to get used to it quickly, integrate quickly, but also not let myself get too deeply attached to anyone or any place, because I knew that eventually I would have to leave. It sounds a bit cold, but that was the way I protected myself from having to experience that feeling of loss again and again."

Quynh Nhu was silent for a long time, her eyes looking far away at the mango tree gently swaying in the late afternoon breeze. "I understand that feeling," she said finally, her voice gentle but full of understanding. "It's not exactly the same, but when my father passed away, I also had similar thoughts - trying not to love anyone too much, for fear of having to experience that painful feeling of loss again. There was a time when I withdrew to myself, not wanting to make close friends with anyone, afraid that if I lost that person, I wouldn't be able to bear it."

"So why did you change?" Gia Huy asked, curiosity mixed with a bit of vague hope.

"Thanks to this garden," Quynh Nhu replied, reaching out to gently touch the trunk of the mango tree next to her. "I realized that if I was always afraid of loss and did not dare to be attached to anything, I would also lose the joy and meaning that attachment brings. My father is gone, but this mango tree is still here, still growing every day, and taking care of it, being attached to it, helps me feel closer to my father, not more distant. Perhaps, it is better to accept the risk of being attached and possibly losing, than to live my whole life in peace. the whole hypocrisy of never letting yourself care about anything."

Those words made Gia Huy speechless, as if a new wind had just blown through the old thoughts he had carried with him for many years. He had never thought of looking at his fear of loss from such a different perspective — not avoiding it by keeping his distance, but accepting it as an inevitable part of living fully.

"Thank you," he said, his voice sincere. "No one has ever said anything like that to me before."

"Probably because no one has ever been patient enough to sit and listen to you tell the whole story," Quynh Nhu replied, smiling slightly, looking at him with warm eyes. "People often only see Gia Huy as happy, sociable, and popular, but few people ask what you really feel behind that smile."

That statement touches on something that Gia Huy has never dared to admit out loud to anyone - that behind the always smiling, sociable, and likable appearance, is a teenager who is so used to having to constantly rebuild himself, constantly adapt, that sometimes he himself is not sure what is his true self, and what is just a facade he has honed to survive more easily anywhere.

The two sat silently together for a long time, not needing any more words, simply enjoying that rare harmony between two souls who once had very different loneliness but could understand each other so much.

"I have a somewhat strange question," Gia Huy said after a while, breaking the silence. "Do you ever feel angry with dad? Like, angry because he left, leaving you alone to face everything?"

Quynh Nhu thought for a moment before answering, not showing any discomfort at that somewhat sensitive question. "Yes, especially in the first months," she replied honestly. "I used to be angry for no reason, angry at why my dad was sick, angry at why everything happened right when I needed him the most. But gradually, I realized that anger didn't change anything, it only made me more tired. So I chose to turn it into something more positive — taking care of the mango tree, preserving the garden, seeing it as a way to continue part of the story that my dad started."

"You are much stronger than I thought," Gia Huy said, looking at her with sincere admiration.

"Not really strong," Quynh Nhu smiled lightly, shaking her head. "I simply have no other choice but to learn to live with it. Actually, I think you are also strong in your own way — having to constantly get used to it from scratch, constantly rebuilding a new life in every place you go, it's not an easy thing."

Gia Huy was silent, no one had ever looked at his constant moving from that perspective - not as a pitiful disadvantage, but as a form of inner strength that he had quietly trained over the years. He felt a warmth spread in his heart, different from the gentle pity he sometimes saw in the eyes of some people when learning about his family's situation.

“Thanks for saying that,” he said, his voice a little choked up. "No one has ever looked at it in such a positive light."

"Then from now on I will be the first," Quynh Nhu replied, smiling brightly, making Gia Huy's heart skip a beat at that simple yet sincere beauty.

As the sunset gradually fell, dyeing the whole garden in a warm orange color, Gia Huy felt lighter than ever, as if a silent burden he had been carrying for many years had just been partially shared by someone. He looked at Quynh Nhu, saw that she was also looking at him, they both smiled without saying another word, as if in that moment, in the middle of this small garden, they both found something precious that they had both been silently looking for a long time.