Chapter 29 — Summer After the Rain

Linh's phone disappeared while she was talking to a witness right after the town meeting. The person took the thread and gently touched her coat pocket and then slipped into the crowded crowd in front of the market gate, so quickly that no one had time to react. The device contained audio recordings, photo documents, draft statements, witness meeting schedules, and messages from her mother. She panicked and ran around the theater looking for her even though she knew the machine was no longer there. Minh asked if she had backed up yet. Before she could speak, her voice shook with fear.

Hau told the group to map out the scene immediately, trying to be professional like in the detective movies he had seen. Mrs. Nam asked if she needed to look for fingerprints, then accidentally wiped every surface with her towel before anyone could stop her. Minh sighed looking at that scene, knowing that there was nothing left to find at the scene.

Mai immediately requested to block the account, notify the network operator, and notify each witness whose information could be leaked through what was stored on the phone. Minh blamed himself for not standing closer to Linh at that time. Linh said the fault lies in the fact that they do not have a process to protect personal data, not in the fact that a person cannot look in all directions at the same time in a crowd.

A witness sent a new message, saying he saw someone take the phone and run into a nearby noodle shop. The shop's camera recorded a jacket with the South Coast logo looming, but the person's face was covered by a hat. Not enough to conclude, but enough for Mai to apply for an emergency data protection order and warn all witnesses to increase vigilance.

Three days later, when the group was almost desperate, a man wearing a cap appeared at the theater gate and proactively brought the phone to return. The camera from the store opposite, when extracted, confirmed that it was this person. He is not a South Coast employee as everyone suspected, but a freelance reporter specializing in hunting sensational news. He admitted that he took the device just to look at data about Mr. Hai, hoping to find an exclusive story.

Linh did not forgive immediately. She reported to the police and asked him to delete all the extracted copies in front of her. The reporter said that if she cooperated, he would write an article defending the theater instead of exploiting the drama. Linh replied that she would not sell the privacy of witnesses who trusted her in exchange for an article, no matter how well-intentioned the article was.

The lawyer helped her check all affected data. An important audio clip was copied before the device was returned, but the original was luckily still on Minh's private server. He had arbitrarily backed up Linh's data in advance, in case she forgot her password while busy.

“You know my password?”

“No. I know you often use food names.”

“You just admitted to guessing the password?”

Minh remained silent, his face turned red because he was caught. Linh changed all the passwords overnight, then forced him to write clear security procedures on the whiteboard in the projection room, not to guess anyone's anything anymore.

The phone loss made the group understand they had to be much more careful than before. They hired a media lawyer to advise further, assigned document access rights to each level, and stipulated that no one person could keep the only copy of any important document. Hau created an archive folder with a long name that was difficult to remember, causing Mai to request a shorter name. He proposed a common password of "khongphaiDrama123", which was immediately strongly opposed by everyone.

That night, after everything was temporarily calm, Linh and Minh sat in front of the theater steps, the streetlights falling on two long silhouettes on the field. She said trust is not about allowing others to unlock your things arbitrarily. Minh said he would learn to knock before entering, whether it was a room door or someone else's heart door. He gave her a spare key, with his name tag engraved on the keychain.

“What key is this?”

“The projection room door. But you have to knock first.”

Linh took it and told him to start studying well. Behind them, Linh's mother closed the upstairs window, Hau checked the newly installed camera one last time before going to bed. Ha Vang has not turned into a closed fortress, but people have learned how to protect each other by not keeping useless secrets that leave others guessing.

Before closing the door completely, Linh knocked three times on the projection room door to test her new habit. Minh inside asked who. She replied that the person had the key. He opened the door, they both checked the copy of documents one last time before leaving to rest. That small habit makes them feel more secure than everyday empty promises.

A week later, the team received a warning that the cloud storage account was trying to log in multiple times from an unfamiliar address. Hau immediately wanted to change the server right away, but Mai said she must first clearly determine which data really needs to be kept online and which data should be taken offline. They transferred all the originals to an encrypted hard drive stored in a safe, leaving only a low-quality preview on the network.

Linh learned not to respond to every strange message sent continuously every day. Some people sent attractive interview invitations, some people asked to see her resume for research reasons, some people simply wanted to know if she was scared. Establish a standard response form, clearly state the official contact channel, and emphasize the absolute privacy of each witness.

Minh suddenly proved to be better at this than Linh thought. He speaks little, asks many questions, always clearly confirming what the other person really wants before giving any information. Linh asked him where he learned that skill. He replied after being unfairly arrested for just standing near a suspicious locker, making her laugh amid stressful days.

The phone loss made the group understand they had to be more careful, but that caution must not turn into extreme paranoia. Every night, they still open the door for people to watch movies for free as usual, without closing all doors because of fear. Ha Vang cannot exist if it turns into a closed place, far away from the community that has nurtured it for many years.

A few days later, under the drizzling rain of early afternoon, the freelance reporter returned to the theater, this time not to ask for news but to officially apologize. He brought a small bouquet of flowers and a handwritten commitment, promising to never repeat similar behavior. Linh did not accept the flowers, but agreed to sit and talk with him for fifteen minutes. She asked directly why a news person would choose to violate another person's privacy to get a story. He was silent for a moment, then confessed that the pressure to have outstanding articles every week made him sometimes forget the boundaries of professional ethics.

Linh did not forgive immediately, but she proposed a deal: if he wanted to write about Ha Vang, he had to go through the same process as Thu An did, respect the witness's right to refuse, and never exploit personal information beyond the permitted scope. He agreed, signing a commitment drafted by Mai. Minh stood watching from afar, then told Linh that she had just turned an intruder into a more responsible person, and perhaps that was also a way to fix it, no different from what he did with broken machines every day.

That evening, the whole group sat down to summarize the lessons learned from the phone loss incident. Hau proposed a new rule: anyone carrying a device containing sensitive data out of the theater must notify at least one other person, clearly stating the time of departure and expected time of return. Mai added a provision to temporarily delete data on personal phones after each working week, keeping only the original on the common encryption system. Linh recorded everything in the process book that was growing thicker by the day, feeling both funny and serious when she realized that her father's small cinema was now operating like a miniature investigation agency.

Before going to bed, Linh texted her mother a short line recounting the entire incident, from the moment she lost her phone to the moment the reporter signed the agreement. Mom texted back just one sentence: "You're learning to forgive without forgetting to be cautious. That's something I've never been able to do." Linh read that message many times before turning off the light, feeling that perhaps her mother's painful lessons, even though they had never been spoken out loud, had been silently transmitted to her in some way that could not be clearly explained, like an invisible string connecting two generations together through mistakes and how to correct them.