Chapter 13 — The Alley Is No Longer On The Map

Tan Nguyen's office occupies the entire twenty-second floor of a Class A building, with transparent glass walls overlooking the entire city. Vy's desk is placed in the corner of the room, two large screens are always lit with dozens of planning drawings, financial spreadsheets, and legal contracts stacked on top of each other. This has been her world for the past fifteen years — precise, cold, operating according to numbers and uncompromising deadlines, a world away from the slow, noisy, human life of the alley where she was born.

The night after the meeting with Mr. Binh, Vy sat in the office until late, alone facing the planning map of the Dong An project spread out on the table. She considered and calculated all options for many hours: withdrawing from the project due to conflicts of personal interest, or silently accepting and finding ways to control the situation from within.

Retreat seemed like the safer and more upright option. But Vy clearly understands the system the company she was working in: if she refused, the project will be assigned to another director, possibly someone who saw this area as just a set of coordinates on a map, ready to apply the minimum compensation plan in accordance with the state price frame, speeding up the clearance process at all costs to meet the deadline with foreign investors. At least, if she were in this position, she would have the opportunity to influence and had a voice to protect the people she once called neighbors, even if the price was having to face the past that she had avoided for many years.

"Miss Vy, are you still here?" Diem Quynh appeared at the office door, holding a stack of newly printed documents. "I have a preliminary population survey of the project area. Can you see it first? I need to present it at the briefing tomorrow morning."

"Leave it there, I'll see." Vy replied, trying to keep her voice calm.

Quynh put the file on the table and left, leaving Vy alone with the thick pages. She flipped through each page, her eyes skimming over the dry statistics: total number of households, average area of each house, percentage of poor households, percentage of households with legal red books. Coming to the page listing details of each residential cluster, she stopped at one line: "Cluster 3 — Gieng Chung Alley — 47 households, high population density, most level four houses built before 1993, some do not have full land use rights certificates."

Forty-seven households. She counted in her head, trying to visualize the faces of every family she knew — Mrs. Nam Xoi's house, Uncle Bay's house, and of course, the small house behind the car repair shop with the sign "Car Repair - Hai Moc" that she didn't know still existed or not.

She opened another satellite image file attached to the file, zooming in on the Gieng Chung alley area. From above, the alley was just a zigzag gray streak wedged between closely packed corrugated iron roofs, nothing special compared to the hundreds of similar residential areas across the city that she had dealt with in her career. But when she zoomed in all the way, she realized that in the middle of that gray streak, there was a small round area of darker color - the common well, still there, still in the same position as fifteen years ago.

Vy sat silently in front of the computer screen for a long time, her trembling fingers touching that small circle on the touch screen, as if trying to touch a part of the memory that she had deliberately hidden for many years.

She opened her phone and looked in her old contacts for a name she hadn't heard from for a long time: Dang Duy Khanh. The phone number was still saved from more than a decade ago, I don't know if it was still valid or not. Her finger hovered over the call button, hesitating for a long time. Should she call ahead and let him know about the project, or should she go there herself to find out the actual situation first? If she called now, she would have to explain too many things in one call, while she hadn't even had time to sort out her own emotions.

Finally, she turned off the phone screen, put it in her bag, and told herself she would find a more suitable way to deal with this, even though in her heart, she knew it was just another way of procrastination, no different from the times she delayed calling home many years ago.

That night she could hardly sleep, lying on the bed in a luxury apartment in the city center, looking at the ceiling, her mind reeling with a series of unanswered questions. How is Khanh now? Do you still keep your father's auto repair shop? Do you have your own family? And most importantly, does he still keep that half coin, or has he thrown it away along with all memories of a long-forgotten promise?

*

The next morning, at the briefing meeting, Vy presented the overall plan for the project to the board of directors in a professional and coherent manner as always, no one in the meeting room noticed the turmoil going on inside her.

"In phase one, we need to complete a detailed field survey and assess the legal status of each household within three weeks." She presented, her tone decisive. "Phase two is to develop a compensation plan and organize dialogue with the community. I propose to personally lead the first field survey."

"Are you doing the survey yourself? That's usually left to the junior survey team." Another member of the leadership team wondered.

"This project is large-scale and socially sensitive. I want to grasp the actual situation directly, avoiding unnecessary errors." Vy replied, a legitimate professional reason, although the real reason lies much deeper than what she can say in front of the group.

Mr. Binh, sitting at the head of the table, looked at her for a moment, the eyes of someone who had followed her career for more than a decade, seemingly sensing something unusual, but he did not ask further, just nodded in agreement.

"Okay, you can proactively arrange it. But remember, eighteen months is a hard deadline for investors, it cannot be delayed."

After the meeting, Diem Quynh lingered and asked quietly when the meeting room was empty. "Sister Vy, are you okay? From morning until now, I feel like you're a little different."

"I'm fine." Vy replied, gathering the documents on the table, trying to avoid the young employee's judgmental eyes. "It's just a big project, a bit of pressure."

"So remember to take care of your health. If you need anything, let me help you, don't try to bear it alone." Quynh said, her voice sincere, then left, leaving Vy alone in the empty meeting room, the cold white fluorescent light shining down on the planning map still spread out on the table.

*

That afternoon, instead of going with the official survey team with full measuring equipment and company name tags, Vy decided to drive to the project area herself once, without warning, without bringing any signs related to Tan Nguyen. She changed to a simple jacket and wore a full-face mask, partly because of her habit of avoiding the city sun, partly because of a vague fear of not wanting to be recognized immediately.

The car slowed down as it approached a familiar area. The main roads were now very different from before, convenience stores had sprung up instead of street stalls, but when turning into the small road leading to the alley, a suffocating sense of familiarity suddenly rushed back, as if fifteen years had never passed.

Vy parked the car a short distance from the alley, turned off the engine, sat still in the car looking out at the scene before her eyes through the windshield, her heart beating so fast that she had to take several deep breaths before she had the courage to open the car door and get out.

The main road leading into the area is now busier than before, with several chain-brand convenience stores sprouting up on both sides, and a new bus station built with shiny tempered glass standing out of place among rows of old houses that have not yet had time to change to keep up with the pace of surrounding urbanization. But as soon as you step past the old sign saying "Common Well Alley" in faded red paint, everything seems to go back in time: still the familiar cracked cement floor, still the tangled electrical wires strung between two corrugated iron roofs, still the familiar smell of grease mixed with the smell of food wafting in the afternoon air.

She walked slowly, her eyes observing every corner, her mind unconsciously comparing between the current image and the memory of fifteen years ago. Some houses have been renovated, added floors, and painted in more modern colors. A few other houses are still the same, with peeling lime walls and rusted corrugated iron roofs, clear evidence of the gap between rich and poor that has silently formed right in the heart of a small alley during the years she was absent.

Stepping through the first corner - where the old map the two of them once noted "Crab Turn and Fall Off the Car" - Vy suddenly smiled in pain, realizing that she still clearly remembered every little detail that seemed to have been erased by time.