Chapter 2 — Stupid But Strong

Two years passed faster than Bach Duy thought.

The room that was once empty when he first moved in was now filled with books, a few posters of his favorite band, and a small shelf that Tang Ninh built himself to neatly hang the guitar on the wall. He had grown nearly a head taller, his voice was deeper, and his once immature face now had the solid lines of a boy about to turn eighteen. The pain of losing his parents was still there, but had subsided into a more peaceful memory than a bleeding wound, largely thanks to the silent patience of the woman who still took care of him every day.

Tang Ninh is now twenty-four years old, has become the head of the finance department in the family company, work is much busier than before, but she still keeps the habit of going home to have dinner with Bach Duy every day, except on days when she has to receive important customers. Sharing meals has become a small ritual that no one tells anyone else, a time that both of them secretly cherish amid the busy pace of life.

"How was school today?" Tang Ninh asked, placing the bowl of soup on the table, her eyes were still as gentle as the first days, only now they were no longer probing but had become familiar and close.

"It's normal. The teacher assigned extra homework for the final exam." Bach Duy replied, then hesitated further. "Miss Ninh, are you free this weekend? My school is having a musical performance, I was chosen to sing a song."

Tang Ninh's eyes lit up, a genuine smile she rarely showed outside of work. "Really? What song are you singing?"

"A song I wrote myself." Bach Duy bowed his head, his ears were red. "Can... can I come and see?"

"Of course. I will arrange work to come." Tang Ninh replied without hesitation, and that answer made Bach Duy's chest swell with a warm feeling that he had never named.

The performance took place on a starry Saturday night. Bach Duy stood on the school's small stage, holding a guitar in his hand, his eyes scanning the crowd of spectators looking for a familiar face. He found Tang Ninh sitting in the third row, wearing a simple white shirt, her hands gently clapping to the beat before he could sing, as if she had absolute confidence that he would sing well. That look, that unconditional trust, became the motivation for Bach Duy to sing his first song completely without fear.

When he finished, the applause rang out loudly, but what Bach Duy remembered most was not the applause, but the image of Tang Ninh standing up, clapping louder than everyone else, her eyes sparkling as if she were the one who had just accomplished something important. That night, on the way home, she bought him an ice cream cone, saying it was a reward for "the future singer of our family."

Bach Duy kept that sentence in his heart for many months. "My family." Two simple words but enough to make a boy who thought he had no place to call home feel anchored.

Over the time that followed, the small moments kept accumulating in Bach Duy's heart like pebbles quietly piling up into a mountain that he didn't even realize until it was too big to ignore. That's how Tang Ninh always remembers that he doesn't like eating onions, always saving the cakes he likes in the refrigerator even though she doesn't eat sweets. Those were the evenings when she sat next to him to help him study Math, her hair smelled of familiar jasmine every time she bent down near the page. That's how she always stood up to defend him every time someone from a distant relative said something negative about "adopting children from outsiders."

There is a memory Bach Duy never forgets, which happened in the winter when he was seventeen years old. He had a high fever after coming home from school in the rain, lying in bed all night, his body was hot but his hands and feet were cold. Tang Ninh had just returned from a business trip to a distant province. As soon as he entered the house, he heard a dry cough coming from his room. She immediately dropped her suitcase on the floor, ran upstairs, placed her palm on his forehead and turned pale.

"Why didn't you call me?" she asked, her voice a bit reproachful and worried, her hand quickly took a towel dipped in cool water and placed it on his forehead.

"I don't want to bother you while you're on a business trip," Bach Duy replied, his voice weak but still trying to smile reassuringly.

"So stupid," Tang Ninh scolded softly, but her hand gently stroked his hair away from his sweaty forehead. She stayed up all night, every two hours taking his temperature, changing towels, and feeding him spoonfuls of thin porridge even though he didn't want to eat. Late in the morning, when her fever finally subsided, she fell asleep in the chair next to the bed, her head resting on the edge of the mattress, her hand still holding his hand.

Bach Duy woke up first, looked at Tang Ninh's haggard face from staying up all night, looked at the small hand still holding his hand tightly as if afraid that if he let go he would have a fever again, and a feeling of something warm and choking rose in his chest. That was the first time, even though it was still very vague, he wondered if the feelings he had for this woman were really simply the gratitude of a younger sister for the person who took care of her. He dismissed that thought immediately, thinking that he was just emotional because of being taken care of, then lay quietly for a while so as not to wake her up too early.

From then on, every time he felt sick, he found himself looking forward to that hand on his forehead, even though he never dared to admit it, even to himself.

Bach Duy doesn't know exactly at what moment that feeling changed. Maybe it doesn't come in a split second, but grows slowly, silently, like how a seed germinates underground before anyone even notices. It was just that one day, he suddenly realized that his heart beat faster every time he heard Tang Ninh's footsteps coming home, that he began to pay attention to what she wore, who she smiled at, and had a vague feeling of discomfort every time a male colleague called her in the evening.

Bach Duy's eighteenth birthday fell on a late autumn afternoon, when the almond leaves in the front yard began to turn bright orange-yellow. Tang Ninh had prepared a small dinner, not too elaborate but cozy enough — a cake she had personally made, a few of his favorite dishes, and a carefully wrapped gift placed next to his plate.

"Congratulations on becoming an adult," she said, placing her hand on his shoulder for a brief moment before pulling it back. "I'm eighteen years old, so I consider myself a real adult."

Bach Duy opened the gift, inside was a leather-covered notebook and a fountain pen, along with a small card handwritten by Tang Ninh: "I hope you will write many good songs in this notebook. I believe you will go very far."

He read and reread that line, then looked up at Tang Ninh sitting opposite, the candlelight from the cake casting a warm halo on her face. In that moment, something in Bach Duy's heart suddenly became so clear that he could no longer continue to deceive himself. This is not the love of a younger sister for the older sister who took care of her. It was heavier, deeper, and enough to make him feel scared at what he had just realized.

He didn't say anything. He just smiled, thanked Tang Ninh, blew out the candles, and held that secret tightly in his heart like holding an ember - warm but dangerous enough to burn himself if carelessly exposed.

That night, after Tang Ninh had returned to his room, Bach Duy sat alone at his desk, opened the newly given notebook, picked up a pen and wrote the first lines - not song lyrics, but a short diary entry, something he had never intended to show anyone.

"Today I turned eighteen. And today, I realized something that maybe I shouldn't have realized. I don't know what to do with this feeling. I just know that, no matter what, I don't want to embarrass her. Maybe I'll keep it to myself, forever, if necessary."

Little did he know that just a few weeks later, the very person he was trying to protect from this secret would be the one to discover it first — and that her reaction, although motivated by love, would keep them both apart for six long years.

But that night, Bach Duy could only close the notebook, turn off the light, and fall asleep with a heavy and light heart - a feeling that only those who love for the first time can fully understand.

He didn't tell anyone about that feeling, not even his best friend at school. He was afraid that if he said it out loud, it would become too real, too heavy to be hidden anymore. He told himself he would learn to live with it, the way people learn to live with an old scar — not painful every day, but always there, silently reminding of something that cannot be changed. He was too young to understand that there are feelings that, once rooted, cannot be easily buried by will alone, no matter how hard the person carrying them tries.