Chapter 12 — Shrimp Street Without Name

The business card Hai Yen left on Ms. Tuyet's desk lay silently for four days without a response. On the evening of the fifth day, when Hai Yen had almost given up hope, her phone received a short message from an unknown number: "Tonight at 8 o'clock, house number 14, alley 3, Tran Hung Dao street, going alone." Without signing her name, Hai Yen immediately guessed that it was Mrs. Tuyet, the only person she had left her contact number with a handwritten message in the past week.

She debated whether to tell Kien the location before leaving, and finally decided to send him a short message with the address, telling him that if she didn't text back after ten o'clock at night, he should call to check, a careful precaution for a meeting where she wasn't sure what direction it would take.

House number 14 is located deep in the alley, small and old, but the front yard is clean, and a few pots of ten o'clock red flowers bloom along the entrance. Mrs. Tuyet opened the door as soon as Hai Yen knocked, pulled her into the house quickly, closed the door, looked out into the alley once before turning back in.

“Sorry for the odd appointment,” she said, her voice still tense. “I don't want anyone to see you coming to find me at work anymore.”

"I understand. Thank you for agreeing to meet." Hai Yen sat down on the offered chair and observed the simple living room. On the wall hung a few discolored certificates of merit for advanced labor, and a small shelf displayed a few old textbooks, perhaps her daughter's from her high school years.

Mrs. Tuyet sat opposite, her hands clasped together in her lap, and it took a while before she spoke. "You want to ask about the Kenh Ba cooperative case, right? I know who you are. You look a lot like Mr. Tien, especially when you frown and think."

That sentence made Hai Yen pause for a moment, but she did not deny it. "Yes. I am Mr. Do Van Tien's daughter."

Mrs. Tuyet nodded slowly, as if hearing her confirm that relieved some of the burden she had carried for many days since their first meeting. "I've thought about this for a long time, wondering what I would say if one day someone came to ask about the old story. But I never thought that person would be his daughter."

“Sister Tuyet, I'm not here to blame you,” Hai Yen said, her voice as gentle as possible. “I just want to understand the truth, no matter how that truth concerns you.”

Mrs. Tuyet was silent for a long time, her eyes looking down at her hands clasped together. "For ten years, I have never told this story to anyone, including my husband. At that time, I was a young technician, just three years into the profession, still very enthusiastic, believing that the work I did was to protect consumers and protect the reputation of the region's seafood industry. The test results I performed for that batch of goods, initially, were not as high as the final number appearing on the official slip."

Hai Yen sat up straight, trying to keep her voice calm even though her heart was beating much faster. “So where did the final number come from?”

“I didn't fix it myself,” Ms. Tuyet said, her voice shaking. "But I signed the form with the altered numbers, after someone came to me privately, saying that if I didn't sign, I would lose my job, and not only would I lose my job, my family would be in bigger trouble. At that time, it had been two years since I gave birth to my first daughter, my husband was unemployed, and I was the sole breadwinner. I... I chose to sign."

“Who came to see you?” Hai Yen asked, trying to keep her voice from revealing her vomiting hot.

Mrs. Tuyet shook her head, her eyes were red. "I can't say his name right now. Please understand, that person still has power and great influence in this area, and I have a daughter who is in her final year of college in the city, and I'm all responsible for tuition and living expenses. If I speak out and nothing can protect me and my child, I'm afraid the consequences will not just stop at losing my job."

Hai Yen understands that fear, although in her heart she is a little disappointed because she has not yet received a specific name. She pulled out a blank piece of paper from her bag and placed it on the table. "I won't force you to tell me your name now. But can you write down, in general terms, what happened? No need to sign your real name, no need for a specific date. I just need a record as a basis, so that when the conditions are right, you are ready to confirm it is true."

Mrs. Tuyet looked at the paper for a long time, then picked up the pen and wrote each line slowly. Her hand shook slightly but the writing was still clear. When she finished writing, she pushed the paper towards Hai Yen, did not say anything more, just nodded slightly as a silent confirmation.

Hai Yen read through it, folded the paper carefully, and put it in a separate compartment in her briefcase. "Thank you. I promise I won't use this to harm you, only when necessary and when you're ready."

“You're like Mr. Tien in that way too,” Ms. Tuyet said, her voice suddenly softening, almost a sad smile flashing across her lips. “He is also someone who always keeps his promises, no matter how high the cost.”

Before leaving, Hai Yen asked one last question, a question she had considered for a long time before deciding to say it. "Miss Tuyet, do you think my father knew in advance that the result sheet was altered?"

Mrs. Tuyet hesitated, her eyes flashed with something hard to name - maybe guilt, maybe something she wasn't ready to say yet. "That... I'll talk about it another time, okay? I've said more than I thought I could today."

Hai Yen nodded and did not press further, understanding that trust needs to be built step by step and cannot be rushed. She thanked Mrs. Tuyet again, then left the small house and walked out into the dark alley, where the only streetlight cast a yellow halo onto the potholed road.

On the way home, she texted Kien a safety alert as scheduled, then drove slowly through the empty streets, her mind reeling from Mrs. Tuyet's unfinished answer. Did my father know in advance? That question, instead of being answered, now became even more burdensome after the evasive reaction of the only person who could know the real answer.

Returning to the motel room, she opened her father's notebook again, reading the last line once more: "This cannot be allowed to continue. It must be said, even if it means losing everything." For the first time, she wondered if the words meant something different from what she had assumed—not the words of a completely innocent person determined to denounce someone else, but perhaps the words of someone grappling with his own conscience, trying to find a way to right a wrong before it turned into disaster.

She lay down on the bed, didn't immediately turn off the light, looked up at the rain-stained ceiling, and in that moment, an old memory suddenly came back, so clear that she could hear the voice again. She remembers when she was about ten years old, one evening her father took her to the shrimp pond behind the house and taught her how to measure the salinity of water with a rudimentary instrument he made from a plastic pipe and some water. glass marbles. “You have to measure correctly, Yen,” he said, his voice rare and serious for a father who often jokes around with his daughter. "If the water is too salty, the shrimp will die. If the water is too salty, the shrimp will die. If I measure a little wrong, people will lose everything in the pond. In this job, numbers are not just to report beautifully, numbers are people's lives."

For many years, Hai Yen still thought of that statement as simply a career lesson her father taught her young daughter. Unexpectedly, now, when reviewing what she had just heard from Mrs. Tuyet, it carried a completely different weight. Could a person who taught his children to value numbers so much be the one who directly sparked a disaster of erroneous numbers? Or because he values precision so much, he fell into a situation where he was forced to choose between the correct number and the safety of the people he loved, exactly like how Mrs. Tuyet just described her own choice ten years ago?

Hai Yen turned off the light, but sleep did not come immediately. She lay in the dark, listening to the hum of an old ceiling fan above her head, trying to piece together the image of her father in her memory—not to defend him, not to condemn him, but to prepare herself for the possibility that the truth she was searching for might be much more complicated than the simple story of an innocent father being murdered that she had carried with her for the past ten years.

Near midnight, she woke up, reopened the paper Mrs. Tuyet wrote, and reread each line under the light of a small desk lamp. In it, Mrs. Tuyet did not mention whether her father knew in advance or not, only recounting the part related to herself. The absence of that detail, instead of making Hai Yen feel secure, made her even more anxious. She folded the paper, put it in her briefcase along with her father's notebook, then closed her eyes and tried to force herself to sleep, knowing that tomorrow there would be more work to do, and she needed to keep her mind alert for all that lay ahead.