Chapter 30 — Summer After the Rain

From the company profile that Duc and the driver in the coastal city provided, they discovered that Phuc was only a representative, not the final decision maker as the group thought. The person behind the Bo Nam project is actually Mr. Hai's group, now run by his son after his death. Phuc kept the theater under his radar for many years to erase the last trace of the dike gate, a task he silently performed on behalf of the family that raised him.

Mr. Hai's son, named Tuan, personally came to meet Linh on a drizzly morning. He said his father had passed away and the current project was completely legal on paper. Linh asked why the contract required handing over the entire roll of film and all assets. Tuan said it was just a sample clause prepared by the legal department, nothing special.

Minh asked if the model clause was written by someone who was afraid of movies. His tone was sarcastic but not harsh. Tuan didn't smile, just remained silent for a moment as if considering his answer.

Linh gave the recording to Tuan to listen to on the spot. Tuan listened, his face changed clearly every second, from disbelief to shock. He said he had no idea his father had ever given such direct orders, that the image of his strict but fair father in his memory had just collapsed in a big way. He promised an immediate internal investigation, but could not promise to withdraw the entire project from this land.

For the first time, Linh saw that the other person also had his own tragedy. Tuan grew up in a family built on money and silence, and was taught to absolutely trust his father's decisions without being allowed to question them. That doesn't make him innocent of what the company has done, but it gives him an opportunity to choose a different path than the one his father took.

After that meeting, Tuan personally searched the company's old email archive, a place that few people had paid attention to after many years. He found an email from Phuc to his superiors, reporting that the theater was abandoned and could be bought back easily. The email also clearly stated a sentence that made the whole group cold: "If she asks about the flood night, please mention the scholarship." That evidence shows that Phuc knew Linh had returned but still deliberately pushed for a quick sale, using the old scholarship story as an implicit threat.

Mai said this email was not enough to prove a direct and specific threatening order, but it clearly showed the impure intentions behind Phuc's urgings. Tuan's hands shook as he signed to confirm the email's authenticity, asking if his name would be widely publicized. Linh said they would protect him as much as possible, not using his personal story to highlight their own.

Not long after, Phuc was suspended from the company according to an internal decision. The court accepted to open the official civil file on the dyke gate case. The news spread throughout the town in just one day, and outsiders flocked to the theater to ask more questions than ever before. Thu An posted the first article about the new developments, telling it in the people's own words and clearly stating what has been verified and what is still awaiting further verification.

Minh opened a bottle of soft drink to celebrate this rare good news, but his clumsiness caused it to squirt straight into Linh's shirt. She chased him around the projection room amid loud laughter. Tuan stood watching that scene from the door, laughing out loud for the first time since he appeared in the theater, a relieved laugh as if he had just relieved part of the family's burden.

The theater is still at risk of being withdrawn because the terms in the old contract have not been completely resolved. Mai began preparing a plan to request recognition of the theater as an official community cultural space. Linh must prove that the theater has regular operations, transparent finances and a feasible long-term operating plan. She suddenly had to relearn the things her father used to do silently alone, but she did not want to repeat the way he chose to hide everything from those around her.

A few days later, a person from the company's headquarters came to meet Linh directly. He said Phuc acted arbitrarily beyond his authority, and the company was completely unaware of the previous threats against Linh's family. Linh replied that she did not need them to plead guilty on behalf of anyone, she just needed them to submit the documents according to the law.

The other person offered to support part of the theater's repair costs, with the condition that Linh agree not to mention Bo Nam's name in any future public screenings. Mai requires that all proposals must be clearly written down before consideration. They cannot accept money and then let people misunderstand that the theater has silently compromised and sold their silence.

“Did you intentionally spill water on my shirt?” Linh asked Minh, trying to keep a serious look.

“I want to test your rapid response system.”

“The system will slap you.”

Tuan laughed even harder at that response. Linh realized that people who had been silent for many years could now begin to laugh freely in the very room that once scared them. The war changed not because they were completely victorious, but because no one had to stand alone before the mighty nameplate of the South Bank anymore.

Tuan stood by the window of the projection room, quietly listening to the sounds of children laughing and playing in the lobby. He said this was probably the first time he entered the theater that he didn't feel like he wanted to lower his head to the ground in shame. Linh replied that he should just look up and look, because the Ha Vang nameplate is still there, not to remind his family of his sins, but to remind everyone of what is worth preserving.

Tuan asked to take on a volunteer shift in the small library area that was forming upstairs. Linh told him there was no need to repay his father's debt by being at the theater every day. He replied that this time he stayed not because of debt, but because he wanted to see with his own eyes where this story would go. They wrote his name on the duty schedule, not next to the heavy "witness" section, but next to the simple "volunteer" section.

Tuan brought an old wooden box containing warehouse labels from when his father's company still rented land around this area. He wants to keep them in the library as a reminder of places that once belonged to others before being changed hands or forgotten. Linh asked if it needed to be publicly displayed. Tuan said that just keeping it in the right place is enough, so that when someone is curious and asks, there will always be someone ready to answer honestly.

A few weeks after Phuc was suspended, Tuan invited Linh and Minh to the group's old headquarters, nearly two hours away from An Binh, to review the entire archive of documents, a proposal that the company's board of directors was not very pleased with but did not dare to stop the heir. The storage room is large, neat and cold, completely different from the warm, messy atmosphere of the Ha Vang theater. Linh walked between the rows of tall filing cabinets, her footsteps echoing in the vast, silent space, feeling small before the scale of the machine that her father had faced alone eighteen years ago.

Tuan showed them a private corner, cold white fluorescent lights shining down on rows of gray iron cabinets, where all documents related to the dyke project in the years before the flood were stored. He said that from now on anyone in Linh's group has the right to access this area to compare information, a written commitment signed by the entire new board of directors, although some board members expressed discomfort when signing it. Minh flipped through a few files, his hands careful as if touching fragile pages, commenting that for the first time during their journey to find the truth, they were invited in instead of having to sneak in or wait for a response through dispatch.

On the way home, sitting in the car when it was already dark, Linh asked Tuan if he was afraid that opening this door would cause the company to face more trouble. Tuan looked out the car window, the street lights flashed across his face in light and dark, remained silent for a moment, then said that he would rather face the troubles of the truth than continue to live in the fake peace that his father had built at the expense of so many other families. Linh didn't respond right away, but she remembered that sentence as proof that sometimes, the heir of a mistake can also choose to be the one to fix it, instead of just sitting back and enjoying what that mistake left behind.