Chapter 2 — Summer Rescuer

Auntie Hoa's Com Restaurant is nestled behind a row of willows at the end of the road leading to Bai Duong, less than five hundred meters from the lifeguard station, close enough for Thao Nhi to hear her teammates' sirens if an emergency happens while she is having dinner. That's why her mother chose to set up a restaurant in this exact location, ten years ago, when her husband was still the captain of the rescue team and often took advantage of his lunch break to quickly eat a bowl of sour soup and then rush back to the beach.

On the evening of the opening season, Thao Nhi returned home when it was dark, her body still smelling of sea salt even though she had bathed at the lifeguard station. Mrs. Tran Thi Hoa was busy cleaning up the last plastic tables, the yellow compact light shining down on her half-white hair.

"You're home," Mrs. Hoa said, without raising her head, still quickly arranging chairs. "I heard there was a life-saving incident this morning right at the opening?"

"Yes, a little boy swam away, pulled by the current. I was saved, mom." Thao Nhi sat down on the nearest plastic chair, her body exhausted after a long day. "News travels so fast."

"It's a small town. Word spreads to the shop before you even get home." Mrs. Hoa placed in front of her daughter a bowl of steaming sour snakehead fish soup, accompanied by a plate of stir-fried water spinach with garlic. "Eat it, it's cold now."

Thao Nhi picked up the chopsticks but didn't eat right away. She watched her mother move between empty tables, her figure small but sturdy, her hands used to carrying things since she was young. For sixteen years, Mrs. Hoa raised the shop alone, eight of which she raised her daughter alone, since the day Mr. Loc did not return.

"Do you remember," Thao Nhi asked softly, "when I was little, how the water flow was like in Mui Sa Den area?"

Ms. Hoa paused for a second, then continued to arrange chairs as if nothing happened. "Why do you suddenly ask that?"

"I see the flow there has changed since they built the embankment. It's like..." Thao Nhi hesitated, "like in the past, when they dredged the sand."

The words made Mrs. Hoa stop completely. In that brief moment, the yellow light cast a distant look on her face, as if she were looking at an old afternoon, not the present evening.

"Let's eat," Mrs. Hoa said, her voice was light but decisive, an evasion that Thao Nhi had become very familiar with over the past eight years. "What's the point of repeating old stories?"

Thao Nhi did not force her, even though she still had unanswered questions in her heart. This wasn't the first time she'd tried touch on that topic, and it wasn't the first time her mother had avoided it in exactly the same way—a short statement, a turn away, and then silence for the rest of the session.

She remembered that day clearly, even though she was only sixteen years old at the time. One afternoon in July, the sea was slightly rough but not dangerous according to the weather forecast. Her father received news that three tourists were swept away near Sa Den Cape - an area where a company named Cat Bien Phu Vinh was dredging sand to "renovate the channel", according to a district license. Mr. Loc, with twenty years of experience in the profession, rushed out to save all three people, bringing two people to safety. But when he went back to look for the third person, he never came up again.

The investigation report later concluded that Mr. Loc was "subjective and swam into the dangerous area without wearing enough support equipment, leading to exhaustion and death by drowning." Not a single line in the report mentioned that the flow in that area had been abnormally altered by dredging activities taking place just a few hundred meters away. Phu Vinh Sea Sand Company continued to operate for another two months, then quietly dissolved, no one was held responsible.

Thao Nhi grew up with that story like a scar that never heals completely, only heals over the years but still hurts every time it gets windy. She used to hate the sea, so much so that she didn't dare step foot in the water for nearly a year after her father's funeral. But then it was Mr. Quan Huu Dat - her father's first swimming teacher, who also taught her how to swim in the early days - who pulled her back to the sea, not so that she could forget the pain, but so that she could learn to live with it, and turn it into strength.

"You can't hate the sea, Nhi," Mr. Dat once told her, when she was seventeen years old, standing trembling at the edge of the waves for the first time after the accident. "The sea did not kill your father. Human negligence killed your father. If you want to do something for your father, you must learn to understand the sea better than anyone, so that no other child has to lose their father like you."

That saying has become a guideline for Thao Nhi's entire life since then.

After finishing the bowl of soup, Thao Nhi stood up to help her mother clear the last few tables. Outside, the music from the opening season festival still echoed in the distance, mixed with the constant whine of machinery from Kim Cuong Vinh construction site - that sound now almost never stops, even at night, when construction teams work overtime to keep up with the opening schedule.

"Do they work all night, Mom?" Thao Nhi asked, looking up towards the bright searchlights hovering above the dark sea, where the barges were still hurriedly moving rocks.

"Since last month," Mrs. Hoa replied, her voice a bit tired. "The whole neighborhood couldn't sleep because of the noise, but no one dared to say anything. The district chairman and Mr. Cung or something, the investor, are very close. Some people commented at the people's meeting and were said to 'obstruct local economic development'."

"Cung Nghia Phat," Thao Nhi said softly, the name lingering in her mouth with an unpleasant taste. "This morning I saw him standing in the stands, smiling as if he didn't know what had just happened right under his feet."

Mrs. Hoa was silent for a moment, still putting the last stack of dishes into the water basin. "People like that, Nhi, they don't need to know what happens under their feet. They just need to know whether the revenue at the end of the season meets the target or not."

There was something in her mother's voice that made Thao Nhi pause. It wasn't the usual contempt that the townspeople had for wealthy bosses from other places. It was a more specific, more personal bitterness, as if she had encountered exactly that type of person before.

"Mom," Thao Nhi asked, her voice gentle but firm, "this Mr. Cung Nghia Phat, do you know him before?"

Mrs. Hoa looked up, her eyes slightly confused, then quickly regained her familiar calmness. "The town is small, everyone knows everyone. Well, it's late, go home and rest, you have an early shift tomorrow."

Thao Nhi knew that was another closed door, just like every other time. She did not inquire further, even though in her heart the disparate pieces began to stir, seeking to connect with each other in a shape that she had not dared to look directly at.

On the walk to the small house behind the shop, where mother and daughter have lived together for the past eight years, Thao Nhi passed by an old family photo hanging in the living room - a photo of three people on the sand, her father wearing a red rescue uniform, holding an eight-year-old grinning girl, her mother standing next to her, her hair still jet black, her radiant face unaware of the pain that was about to come.

She stopped in front of the photo as usual, her fingers gently touching the cold glass.

"I promise to find out the truth, Dad," she whispered, her voice loud enough for only herself to hear. "I don't know how, but I'll find out."

Before going to bed, she lingered next to her old desk, where the small wooden box her father left behind was still intact — inside was a tarnished bronze rescue whistle, a worn duty schedule notebook, and a few swimming medals from his youth. She opened the notebook, flipped to the last pages he ever wrote, the familiar slanted handwriting recorded the duty schedule, the weather, and sometimes a few small lines of feelings about the water during the day. The penultimate page, dated exactly one week before his death, has a short line: "The water at Mui Sa Den is strange. We need to report to the district, but no one has listened." Thao Nhi read and reread that line countless times over the past eight years, each time she read it, it felt a little heavier, as if her father, right before he died, had sensed something unusual but couldn't do anything to stop it. She closed the notebook, put it back in the wooden box, then stood still for a long time before turning off the desk lamp.

That night, she lay in bed, listening to the sound of construction site machinery echoing through the half-open window, mixed with the steady sound of waves lapping the shore like the breath of a giant sleeping creature. She thought about the unusually calm water she saw this morning, about her mother's avoiding eyes, about the name Cung Nghia Phat lingering in her head like an unsolved puzzle.

She knew she wouldn't be able to sleep well tonight, nor many nights to come. But there's one thing she's sure of: if the sea is trying to tell her something, she won't turn away like she did eight years ago. This time, she will listen to the end, no matter how painful the truth is.

Outside, far to the south, the construction site headlights still shine brightly all night, like eyes that never close, watching each wave that quietly changes direction.