Chapter 10 — Shrimp Street Without Name

Kien arranged to meet Hai Yen at his familiar coffee shop at seven o'clock in the morning. Before he started his shift, his face looked tired as if he had stayed up late the night before. He placed in front of her a piece of paper printed from the public information page of the Department of Planning and Investment, listing the list of legal representatives and registered management positions of Ocean Seafood Group over the years.

“I followed the business registration records and found the name you needed,” Kien said, pointing to a line in the middle of the board. "Nguyen Hoang Son, has held the position of Head of Quality Management Department of Dai Duong since eight years ago. Before that, public records did not clearly state his old workplace, but I asked an acquaintance who used to work in the same industrial park human resources department. This person confirmed that before coming to Dai Duong, Mr. Son worked as a technician at a seafood laboratory in the area."

Hai Yen held the piece of paper, read and reread the name Nguyen Hoang Son, comparing it in her mind with the vague image of "Son who often comes to the house to play" that her mother told her last night. Matching age, matching time of job change, current position - quality manager, person with highest authority in approving test result forms before the company submits them to partners - make every piece of the puzzle clearer.

"If it's true that this person is," Hai Yen said, her voice slow because she was trying to stay calm in the face of a bigger discovery than she thought, "then he went from the position of a technician directly evaluating samples, to the position of managing the entire quality stage of the very company that bought most of the assets of the cooperative that collapsed because of the appraisal results that he may have signed."

“A strange advancement,” Kien commented, his voice heavy. “Unless it's not a normal promotion, but a reward for something.”

Hai Yen nodded, then took out from her briefcase a photocopy of the old certificate of Kenh Ba cooperative, along with a screen print of the current result card of shipment DH-0417, placed side by side on the plastic table. Both have a small identification stamp in the lower corner: TS-04. The accompanying signature, although much faded over time on the old copy, still retains the basic characteristics — the way the letter T is written up at the top, the way the letter S is connected seamlessly without lifting the pen — identical to the sharp signature on the new copy.

“Same person,” Hai Yen said, almost whispering to herself rather than talking to Kien. "Ten years ago, this person signed to confirm the results of the indictment against my father. Ten years later, this same person, now with a much higher position, signed to confirm another false result for the same company that benefited from that collapse."

“Do you think this is a coincidence or on purpose?” Kien asked, even though they both already knew the answer.

"If there was only one match, I could consider it a coincidence. But this is a consecutive series: the KB farming area code reappearing in the current document, the brown leather-bound book with the old logo of the cooperative lying on Mr. Bao's desk, and now the same technical identification code appearing in both incidents ten years apart." Hai Yen gathered the documents and put them carefully in her briefcase. “There are not so many consecutive coincidences in a system without someone deliberately arranging or maintaining it.”

She sat still for a moment, looking out at the small alley where a few stevedores were passing by on their way into the morning shift. Everyday life continued as if nothing had happened, as if the secret she had just touched did not exist to the rest of the world. That feeling made her feel both lonely and her responsibility heavier than ever.

She remembered the image of the gentle young man her mother described, the skinny figure who often folded his arms in greeting before entering the house, the scene of fixing fans for him all afternoon. It's hard to pair that image with someone who signed off on a false test result, leaving another family devastated. But she also understands that ten years is long enough for a person to completely change, or long enough for a person to be put in situations where they have to choose between their conscience and their own existence. She is not quick to judge without knowing the situation clearly, but she also cannot let that sympathy obscure the responsibility she is pursuing.

“So what are you going to do now?” Kien asked.

“I can't get the code TS-04 into the official report yet,” she said, thinking out loud. "Technically, a matching identifier is not enough to conclude there is fraud, it can be disputed by the company as a coincidence or a system error. I need more evidence, something that directly connects Mr. Son to the act of swapping samples or editing results, not just a similar stamp."

“Are you going to approach him directly?”

"No. If I approach too early, he will be wary, will find a way to erase the traces before I can collect enough evidence." Hai Yen shook her head. "I think the best way right now is to continue quietly, expanding the scope of the audit to other shipments related to the KB farming area code, to see how many other shipments have passed through Mr. Son's hands with the same type of deviation."

Kien nodded in agreement, but his face still had a worried expression. "I will continue to explore Khai's ship log to see if there is any connection with the period when Mr. Son first moved to Ocean. But Ms. Yen, I want to repeat, everything we have just pieced together is based on inference, nothing is legal evidence. The deeper we go, the greater the risk, for both of us."

“I know,” Hai Yen replied, her voice determined. “But I also know that if I stop now, I will never have the answer to the question that has haunted me for the past ten years.”

They parted ways at the alley, each returning to their daily work as if this morning had never happened. But when Hai Yen returned to her temporary office, she received a call from her superior at the Central headquarters. His voice was somewhat different from previous work calls.

“Yen, I just received a call from the regional testing laboratory,” he said, his voice cautious. "They asked why the Center's staff sent a request to look up internal identification information related to a case that was closed ten years ago. They seemed... quite interested in why you were looking into that while handling a completely different audit case."

Hai Yen tightened her grip on the phone, trying to keep her voice calm. "I'm just comparing the precedent of handling similar violations to make a report, sir. There's nothing unusual."

“I understand, and I believe you,” the superior said, but his voice was still hesitant. “It's just, you should be careful how you place it questions from now on. I don't know what's going on, but it seems like someone is watching her every move quite closely, even small things like an email looking up information."

The call ended, leaving Hai Yen sitting alone in the small room, the morning sunlight shining through the window creating a long streak of light on the floor. She looked back at everything she had collected in the ten short days since she set foot back in this land: an old farming area code that had not been erased, a brown leather notebook bearing the symbol of the collapsed cooperative, a name — Nguyen Hoang Son — connecting two incidents a decade apart, and now a warning that someone, somewhere in the system, had begun to pay attention to her existence.

She understood that, from this moment, she was no longer an anonymous auditor performing a regular audit. She has become a variable that someone, perhaps Mr. Bao himself, perhaps even Mr. Son, is having to recalculate in their plans. And she doesn't know for sure, when those people realize that the variable has the last name Do, how they will react.

She opened her laptop and created a new folder on the computer, naming it simply “Contrast Precedent,” a name innocuous enough to not attract attention if someone happened to see the screen she was working on. Inside, she began to reconstruct a detailed timeline: the day her father signed off on the final export orders, the day the poisoning shipment was discovered, the day the trial took place, the day the cooperative was officially erased, and now, in addition, the day Mr. Son was officially recorded as holding a position at Dai Duong. Each timeline, when placed side by side, begins to draw a curve that is no longer vague speculation, but a verifiable structure, step by step, if she is patient enough and cautious enough not to expose herself before the final proof is in hand.