Chapter 7 — Summer Rescuer

The next morning, Bach Duong appeared at Bai Duong before the sun had fully risen, carrying a small rubber boat and a set of flow rate measuring equipment that he had asked permission to install the day before. He was wearing a thin diving suit, unlike the image of an office worker yesterday, and his movements when preparing the equipment showed that this was clearly not his first time working underwater.

Thao Nhi, on the morning shift at the watchtower, observed him from afar with eyes that still had echoes of yesterday's unhappy conversation. She saw him row the rubber boat to the area near the breakwater, drop into the water a small cylindrical device with an orange buoy attached, and then write something down in a waterproof notebook.

"What is he doing?" Nhat Quynh asked, standing next to her, looking curiously.

"Measuring the flow rate," Thao Nhi replied, her voice still a bit cold. "That device records the speed and direction of water flow in real time, transmitting the data to a computer."

"You don't seem to like him very much," Nhat Quynh commented, her voice somewhat mischievous.

"It's not that I don't like it," Thao Nhi replied, still not taking her eyes off the rubber boat moving slowly near the dangerous area. "It's just that he's too rigid with his rules of 'scientific objectivity'."

But when she looked more closely at the way Bach Duong worked — meticulously, carefully, always checking the boat's position before dropping equipment, always carefully observing the wave direction before moving to the next spot — she couldn't deny that he knew what he was doing. This is not the type of civil servant who just comes for show, signs a few papers and then returns to give a brief report.

Near noon, when she finished her shift, she saw Bach Duong struggling to pull the rubber boat to shore, his body soaked, his face showing signs of fatigue but also excitement.

"Need help?" she asked, though her voice was still reserved, stepping closer.

Bach Duong looked up, a bit surprised to see her proactively starting a conversation after yesterday's tense conversation. "Thanks, I'm fine." He pulled the boat onto the dry sand, then turned to her, his voice somewhat hesitant. "Miss Thao Nhi, I'm sorry about the way I spoke yesterday. I didn't mean to belittle what you went through."

Thao Nhi was a bit surprised by that unexpected apology. "It's okay. I also reacted a bit harshly. You were just doing your job."

"So are we even?" he asked, the corners of his mouth curling up into a slight smile for the first time since he appeared in this town.

"For now," she replied, but her voice had softened a lot. "What were the results this morning?"

Bach Duong pulled out a waterproof tablet from his device bag and opened a graph with red and blue lines representing flow rate over time. "I took measurements at five different points along the embankment. Three showed normal results, consistent with the natural flow of the area. But two points — the exact locations she had noted in her notebook — showed a current speed of nearly one and a half meters per second during low tide, three times as strong as the average for the entire area."

"One and a half meters per second," Thao Nhi repeated, immediately understanding the meaning of that number even though she was not a hydrology expert. For the best swimmers, the maximum swimming speed is only about one meter per second for a short time. A current faster than a human can swim means that anyone caught in it, no matter how good a swimmer, cannot escape by swimming against the current.

"That's right," Bach Duong confirmed, his voice serious. "This is a high level of danger. According to coastal safety standards, any area where the current speed exceeds one meter per second requires special warnings, swimming restrictions, or structural measures to reduce the current speed."

"So you would propose closing that area?" Thao Nhi asked, a ray of hope flashing in her voice.

"I will include it in the preliminary report," Bach Duong replied, but his voice was no longer as certain as before. "But you need to understand, my report is only a technical recommendation. The final decision on whether to close the area or not, whether to request the investor to adjust the design or not, falls under the authority of the district and my superior agency."

The smile that flashed on Thao Nhi's lips suddenly disappeared. "Which means even if you have clear evidence, they can still ignore it."

"I hope it doesn't come to that," Bach Duong said, although his own tone was not very convincing. "But I will do my best to make sure my report is detailed enough and convincing enough that no one can ignore it."

They stood there for a moment, silently looking out at the sea, where the waves still steadily crashed against the shore as if they didn't carry a deadly secret. Thao Nhi felt something in her heart gradually change — not that she completely trusted this strange man, but she began to realize that he was not like the white-collar civil servants she had met at the district Economic and Tourism Department.

"Where did you learn this flow measurement technique?" she asked, partly out of genuine curiosity, partly because she wanted to break the silence.

"I studied marine engineering at university, then completed a certificate in applied oceanography," Bach Duong replied. "But most of the practical experience I learned from my years of competitive swimming. When you swim long distances in the open ocean, you are forced to learn to read the water with your whole body, not just your eyes."

"You ever played professionally?" Thao Nhi asked, a bit surprised.

"Used," he replied, his voice tinged with regret. "National swimming team, long-distance freestyle swimming. But a shoulder injury when I was twenty-two forced me to stop. Then I switched to studying technique, then did this job."

"Are you sorry?" she asked, her voice much softer than the usual business tone between them.

Bach Duong was silent for a moment, looking out to sea. "Yes, sometimes. But this job gives me the opportunity to protect others from what I experienced in my career — projects built hastily, without adequate evaluation, with consequences that no one anticipated. Maybe that's how I find new meaning for what I learn."

Thao Nhi looked at him, and in that moment, she realized they had something deeper in common than she thought — they had both turned personal loss or disappointment into motivation to protect others. Perhaps that was why she felt, even though she had only known him for two days, that he was the rare person who could truly understand her obsession with this body of water.

"Tomorrow I will continue measuring in an area farther south," Bach Duong said, packing up his equipment. "If you have time, can you show me the locations you took notes on? I want to compare them with the data I measured."

"Okay," Thao Nhi nodded, feeling a new consensus in her heart, different from yesterday's cautiousness. "My shift ends at five. Then I can come with you."

When Bach Duong drove away, Thao Nhi stood and watched for a long time, then returned to the rescue station, where Anh Thi was waiting with undisguised curiosity.

"What's wrong, is it peaceful?" Mr. Thi asked, raising his eyebrows.

"There's a truce," Thao Nhi replied, but the corners of her lips curled up into a small smile that she didn't even realize.

Not everyone on the team looks at this development with sympathetic eyes. That afternoon, when Anh Kiet returned from his shift in the northern region, he saw Thao Nhi sitting with Bach Duong at a wooden table on the station's porch, the two of them bowing their heads, looking at a map full of measurement symbols. Mr. Kiet stopped, crossed his arms, unable to hide his discomfort.

"Do you really believe his numbers?" he asked directly, his voice somewhat harsh, when Bach Duong had temporarily left to answer the phone. "It's not that I don't want help, but the guys from the Bureau come down here, work for two or three weeks and then disappear, leaving us to bear the consequences if their reports are brushed aside. I've seen this happen at my friend's place who works as a rescue worker in Nam."

"I don't blindly trust anyone, Anh Kiet," Thao Nhi replied, her voice calm but firm. "I just believe in the data. And his data matches almost exactly with what I recorded over the past two months. That's not blind faith, that's proof."

Mr. Kiet was silent for a moment, his expression still reserved, but did not refute further. "I just don't want you to be disappointed again," he said, his voice softening a bit, revealing a rough but sincere concern behind his usual gruff exterior. "You've been waiting for justice for Uncle Loc for eight years. I don't want to see you put your hope in someone and then be abandoned halfway."

That sentence made Thao Nhi pause, more touched than she thought by the clumsy concern of her teammate who always seemed careless. "Thank you for worrying about me," she said softly. "But this time I will follow it to the end myself, not just put my hope in him alone. The data are mine, the notes are mine. He just gave me more tools to prove what I've known for a long time."

Mr. Kiet nodded, patted her shoulder and then walked inside, but when he glanced at Bach Duong who was standing on the lawn listening to the phone, his vigilance was still intact - the vigilance of a person who has witnessed too many promises from outside disappear with the sea breeze.