Chapter 9 — Stupid But Strong

Within a month after the first meeting, Vom La restaurant had a special regular customer - although no one in the restaurant, other than Tang Ninh, knew the true identity of the man who always wore a baseball cap, a mask, and chose the right corner table every time he visited.

Bach Duy has learned how to arrange his busy schedule so that he can always take advantage of a few dozen minutes to stop by the shop, whether it's early in the morning before practice or late in the afternoon after a tiring day of filming. He no longer addressed Tang Ninh politely like in the early days, nor did he pretend that he was just passing by by chance. Both of them implicitly understood that those visits to the restaurant were not accidental at all.

"Are you here so early today?" Tang Ninh asked when she saw him appear when the shop had just opened, the morning sunlight had not yet had time to dispel the dew on the vines in front of the porch.

"The filming schedule has been moved to the afternoon, I'll take the opportunity to stop by you for a bit." Bach Duy replied, sat down at the familiar table, and spoke while looking at her with eyes that could not hide his joy.

Tang Ninh did not respond to that smile directly, but the corners of her lips slightly curled up as she turned to make coffee, and Bach Duy knew that it was a small improvement compared to the rigid reserve of the first days of their reunion.

Gradually, the conversations between the two became longer and deeper. Bach Duy told her about his hard years as a trainee, about the nights he fell asleep on the practice room floor from exhaustion, about his feeling of extreme loneliness on his first New Year's Eve away from home. Tang Ninh listened, sometimes couldn't help but put her hand up to cover her mouth, her eyes filled with tears as she listened to him talk about difficulties she never knew about.

"Why don't you find a way to contact me when it's so difficult?" she asked, her voice choked.

"I told you not to contact me anymore," Bach Duy replied, not blaming, simply stating the truth. "I respect that, even though sometimes I really want to call you."

Tang Ninh bowed her head, a feeling of guilt rising in her heart. "I'm sorry. I didn't know you had to go through so much those years."

"You don't need to apologize," he said, his voice gentle. "If it weren't for those difficult years, maybe I wouldn't have become the person I am now. I learned how to stand on my own two feet and not rely on anyone anymore."

Those words both warmed Tang Ninh's heart and made her feel pain, because she understood that much of that growth stemmed from the pain she herself had caused him.

One weekend evening, when the restaurant was completely empty, Bach Duy took his travel guitar out of its case, sat down on the chair next to the window, his fingers lightly gliding on the strings. "Do you want to listen to a song?" he asked, his eyes both timid and expectant, like the teenager who once asked her the same question before a school performance.

Tang Ninh nodded, pulled out a chair opposite her, placed her hands on her thighs, and waited. Bach Duy plays a few opening notes, then begins to sing — not one of the hits currently making waves on the charts, but an old song, "The Person Standing Behind Me," the original version has never been edited for publication, still retaining the most honest words he wrote when he was eighteen years old.

Tang Ninh sat silently listening to every word, immediately realizing that this was the song she had secretly heard behind his door six years ago - the song that made her realize for the first time the true feelings of the teenager she was raising. Tears fell silently from her eyes, not because she was sad, but because she was moved by the sincerity that had not faded over all those years.

"This song..." she whispered as he finished the last song.

"I have never fully sung this original version to anyone, except you," Bach Duy said, folding the guitar, looking at her more frankly than ever. "Because this was never a song for the public. It was always just for one person."

Tang Ninh did not dare to ask further who that person was, even though they both knew the answer. She stood up, using the excuse of cleaning the kitchen, avoiding the moment that was too much for her heart, which had been carefully guarded for six years. But that night, when she got home, she lay listening to that melody over and over in her head, unable to sleep, her heart torn between reason and emotion.

For her part, Tang Ninh also gradually told Bach Duy about the years she opened the shop, about her father's death, and about the quiet life she had chosen for herself. She did not mention the underlying reason behind her decision to send him away that year, still keeping her suspicions about her father and uncle's plot hidden, partly because there was no clear evidence, partly because she did not want to bring up a painful past when things between them were just beginning to heal.

There were late afternoons, when the restaurant was closed, Bach Duy stayed behind to help Tang Ninh clean up the tables and chairs, even though she always refused, telling him that he was a distinguished guest and did not need to do physical work. But he still resolutely rolled up his sleeves, cleaned the table, arranged chairs, and talked to her while working as if they had never been apart for six years.

"Aren't you afraid of being seen by fans doing things like this?" Tang Ninh teased, watching him wipe the table with a clumsy look that rarely appeared on the flashy image of an entertainment star.

"If anyone sees, I don't mind," Bach Duy replied, his eyes serious. "For me, these are the most precious moments of my busy week."

Those words made Tang Ninh speechless for a moment, not knowing how to respond. She turned away, pretending to be busy cleaning the counter to avoid having to face that sincere look for too long, afraid that if she looked for a second longer, she wouldn't be able to maintain the boundary she had worked so hard to build.

Those small moments kept accumulating week by week, like a stream of water flowing quietly through a crack in the rocks, persistently and persistently, gradually eroding the defensive wall that Tang Ninh had built over the past six years. She began to realize that she looked forward to Bach Duy's visits to the shop more than she wanted to admit, began to notice which days he didn't come to worry about whether he was okay, and started preparing his favorite cake before he could even enter the shop.

Ha Thuy Duong, who witnessed that change from the flower shop next door, couldn't help but worry about her friend. "Do you know what you're doing?" she asked during a visit to chat. "The more you let your feelings develop, the harder it will be to stop later."

"I know," Tang Ninh replied, her voice soft but strangely firm. "But I don't have the strength to continue pushing it away anymore. Maybe... it's time for me to learn how to face my true feelings, no matter what the outcome."

Thuy Duong looked at her friend and noticed a change in Tang Ninh's eyes - no longer the fear she tried to suppress like before, but a fragile ray of hope that had just rekindled after six long years of darkness.

"But you still have to be careful," Thuy Duong added, her voice serious. "He's a public figure. With just one secretly taken photo, one sensational article, both you and he will be caught up in a storm of public opinion that neither of you can withstand alone."

"I know," Tang Ninh replied, her face showing a bit of worry. "I've thought about that. But I can't keep living in fear, avoiding everything that can bring happiness just because I'm afraid of things that haven't happened yet. If I keep like that, I'll repeat the same mistake of six years ago."

Those words made Thuy Duong silent and did not refute further. She understood that her friend had thought very carefully, and perhaps, it was time for Tang Ninh to make her own decisions for her own life and heart, even though the road ahead would certainly not be smooth.

In the days that followed, Vom La restaurant continued to welcome the hidden patron at empty hours, and each time, the distance between the two of them narrowed a little more, like two boats that had drifted apart for six years were now gradually finding their way back to the same river, even though there were still many rapids waiting ahead.

Unknown to both of them, in the midst of those peaceful afternoons with a cup of coffee, there were a few camera lenses that accidentally or intentionally passed through the glass window of Vom La shop, capturing moments that they thought belonged to only the two of them. The storm that Thuy Duong feared, it turned out, had quietly begun to form long before any of them realized it.