Chapter 26 — Summer After the Rain

Thanks to Mr. Sau's story and the film, they gradually reconstructed the entire flood event on a large board glued to the wall of the projection room. The rain lasted for three consecutive days, gate number three opened at 2:17 a.m., water flooded the south bank in less than an hour. Linh's father ran back to the theater in the middle of a night of torrential rain, turning the audience room into a shelter for dozens of people who couldn't evacuate in time.

Linh's mother filmed in the camera room, her hands shaking but still holding the camera steady. Phuc received orders from Mr. Hai, but did not dare to sign the operating order himself. He chose to remain silent, and then edited the report to erase the traces. Linh's father admitted operating errors to protect families who received aid without proper procedures, a silent decision for which no one ever thanked him.

Linh looked at the diagram and understood that her father had chosen a small mistake to cover a larger one, a silent sacrifice that lasted for eighteen years. He saved many people, but caused others who did not know they had their honor robbed on his behalf.

Mother said she had strongly opposed that decision, but father said that if he was arrested, Linh would be taken to a safe place, away from any investigation and controversy. He believes everything will be clarified later, it's just a matter of time. No one expected that eighteen years have passed and the truth has still not been called by its correct name.

Minh asked if they announced it, would the townspeople want to relive the flood night, or would reopening it only cause old wounds to bleed again. Linh said they lived with it every day by avoiding mentioning it, and that avoidance was more painful than facing it directly.

They invited an irrigation expert to examine the scene, hoping to have a more objective perspective than emotional accounts. The expert named Tan comes from the provincial university, has a skinny figure with thick glasses, and carries a suitcase of measuring tools. He did not accept money, only asked to see the original water measurement book and the scene of the dyke gate. He walked with Linh under the hot sun all morning, using a ruler to measure the scratches on the valve arm in an incredibly meticulous way. Every time he bent down, Hau asked if he needed an emotional gauge. Tan said that if he had, he should measure his talkativeness level first, making the whole group laugh in the hot sun.

Tan's preliminary conclusion shows that the dike gate was operated seriously incorrectly. That's enough to open an official investigation file, but not enough to convict a specific individual. Tan explained in detail that the water didn't just rise because one person opened a valve. Some people turned off the warning system, some delayed the evacuation order, some changed documents later to hide their tracks. Responsibility is like a tangled network of wires, pulling the wrong button will cause many others to fall.

Linh listened and felt sad because justice takes time, and a life is over, her father is no longer alive to witness the day of vindication. Minh said just because time is slow doesn't mean it's useless. There are people who wait for their names to be given correctly, even if they have to wait until their hair is gray.

They set up a detailed timeline in the projection room, each color of pen representing a different source of information: documentaries, paperwork, eyewitness accounts, technical data. Uncertain sections are marked with a yellow string tied diagonally across. Mai does not allow anyone to call them truth until there is a full comparison from at least two independent sources.

One night, Phuc suddenly sent a copy of the call log from his old office desk phone. There was a call between him and the person in charge of the water alarm at the exact moment the system was turned off. Phuc said he did not remember the content clearly, but agreed to let the investigation agency look into it. Linh realized that he was no longer completely hiding like before, although the underlying motive may still be to save himself from more serious accusations.

That night, the theater showed a classic silent film from the years when black-and-white films were still popular. No one talked the whole time, but everyone stayed until the end, faces quietly touched by black and white light, everyone writing their own lines in their heads. When the screen went dark, a boy asked why the movie had no sound. Linh said that sometimes being silent helps people hear what they have overlooked, an answer that makes both adults and children silently ponder.

Tan invited Linh to his small laboratory at the provincial university to see a miniature model of the dyke gate. He showed her that if just one valve opened ten minutes late, the water pressure would be completely different, enough to decide the fate of an entire residential area. But he also pointed out factors that cannot be attributed to a single individual: equipment that is old and degraded, maintenance schedules that have been cut to save costs, warnings that do not reach the right person with decision-making authority.

“So is no one responsible?” Linh asked, her voice a bit disappointed.

“No. It means that responsibility must be divided properly, not all placed on those who are most likely to be blamed.”

Linh wrote that sentence into the file, considering it as a guideline for the entire remaining truth-finding process. She didn't want her father to be vindicated by creating someone else to hate instead. Ha Vang is not the place to recreate a simple story with clear villains and heroes.

They held a safety talk in the theater, inviting affected families to attend. Tan used water bottles, small marbles and a plastic tray to simulate the flow of water when the dike gate opens at different times. Hau dropped the marble in the middle of the session and the children laughed. He quickly said it was an illustration of how a small mistake could completely derail everything, making the conversation both serious and intimate.

After the talk, everyone discussed with the rule that no one spoke for more than five minutes to avoid getting emotional. A teacher asked if the next time there is a warning, who will decide to evacuate. Linh gave her the new procedure he had prepared with Tan, saying she should not wait for a hero to take on everything; Each person must clearly know their part in an emergency situation.

She looked at the rows of chairs and saw Phuc also taking careful notes. He is no longer standing outside the story like before, although he is not necessarily on their side. Linh accepts that ambiguity, because the truth rarely comes in clear black and white.

Mai reminded everyone not to use Phuc's silence or presence as evidence that he had completely changed. Linh agreed. She only noted that he chose to sit back instead of leaving, but time will tell what he will do next, no one can rush to conclusions.

Tan sent the hydraulic model to a group of independent engineers in the city for objective criticism. They responded that more detailed rain data were needed, but basically agreed with his initial calculation. Linh included all feedback in the file appendix, including points that did not fully support their conclusions, because she understood that an honest file must contain unanswered questions.

A few days after the safety talk, Tan stayed in An Binh longer than planned. He rented a small room near the market, telling Linh that this job touched on something he had never fully addressed in his career: the feeling of helplessness when knowing a disaster that could be prevented but still happened because of people's wrong decisions. He said, his voice low, that many years ago he witnessed a landslide in another province, where he was also the one who issued a warning but was ignored, and he lived with that tormenting feeling his entire career.

Linh listened, realizing that Tan not only helped them out of professional responsibility, but also because he was looking for a way to atone for what he couldn't fix in his own past. She invited him to stay for dinner with the group, where Aunt Tam cooked a special pot of sour soup as a thank you. Tan, for the first time since appearing in An Binh, told a few funny stories about his student days, making the whole table laugh, and Linh saw that he was no longer an unfamiliar expert, but had become part of a strange group of people who were taking on Ha Vang together.

At the end of the meal, Tan suggested teaching a short class for children in the area on how to read natural flood warning signs: water level, water color, flow speed. Linh agreed immediately, seeing it as a way to turn the pain of the past into something useful for the future, instead of just focusing on blaming past mistakes.