Chapter 18 — The Arrow That Missed the Mark

After about half an hour, Thanh Tam walked out of the dressing room, her face was less red and swollen but her eyes were still gloomy and empty. She tried to avoid all eyes around her, bowed her head and quickly walked towards the gathering area to prepare to leave with the team, when Nam Khanh lightly blocked her.

"Thanh Tam, wait," he said, his voice full of concern. "Do you want to talk for a bit? I understand today is a difficult day, but—"

"I don't want to talk now," Thanh Tam interrupted, her voice colder than she expected, trying to walk past him to continue.

Nam Khanh gently held her hand, not to forcefully hold her back, but as a gesture hoping she would stop for a second to listen. "I just want to tell you, a loss doesn't reflect your worth. Everyone has bad days, even the best athletes—"

"You don't have to say those cliché things," Thanh Tam said, her voice suddenly harsh, withdrawing her hand from his. She looked up at Nam Khanh, her eyes were full of hurt mixed with anger, although most of that anger was not really directed at him, but at herself. "Do you think I don't know that I just failed the whole team? Do you think a few comforting words can erase the fact that I just made the worst shot of my life in front of everyone?"

"I didn't mean that," Nam Khanh said, his voice still trying to stay calm even though he was a little confused by her unusually harsh reaction. "I just want you to know that you're not alone in this—"

"But I'm really alone in this," Thanh Tam interrupted, her voice shaking with pent-up emotion. "I'm not the one who has to stand in front of my sister, in front of her friends, and prove that I'm nothing compared to the image everyone expects me to be. I'm not you."

That sentence made Nam Khanh pause, a pain flashed through his eyes that Thanh Tam, in his own emotions, did not have time to recognize. "I don't fully understand how you feel, yes," he said, his voice quieter. "But that doesn't mean I don't care, or don't want to be with you right now."

"Maybe you should find another teammate, better, more stable, not embarrassing the whole team like me," Thanh Tam said, her voice bitter, the words pouring out from a place of deep hurt that she didn't have time to think carefully before saying. "Maybe it's best for the team, and for you as well."

"What are you talking about?" Nam Khanh asked, his voice a bit panicked at these unusual words. "I don't think so, at all—"

"I need to go home," Thanh Tam said, interrupted, turned around and walked away quickly, leaving Nam Khanh standing there with a dazed and helpless expression, not knowing what to do to stop her, not knowing what to say to ease a pain he felt but couldn't really touch.

On the way home with her family, Thanh Tam sat silently the whole way, no one in the car dared to speak up to break the heavy silence. Thanh Van sat in the front seat, occasionally glancing at her sister through the rearview mirror, but didn't know what to say after what happened in the dressing room earlier.

Upon arriving home, Thanh Tam immediately went to his room, locked the door, and lay down on the bed without bothering to change clothes or eat dinner. She took out her phone and saw a text message from Nam Khanh waiting, sent right after she left the gym.

"I know today is a very difficult day for you," the message read. "I'm not angry because of what you said, I understand you're hurting. But I want you to know, I'm still here, whenever you need me. Rest well."

Thanh Tam read that message, feeling a stream of complex emotions rising in her heart - both regretful for the harsh words from before, and still too hurt and embarrassed to be able to reply normally. She put the phone down, didn't text back, let the screen fade into the darkness of the room, isolating herself from everyone trying to reach out to her.

She lay there, looking at the ceiling, her mind reeling with a series of negative thoughts — about the loss, about the disappointed looks she imagined she saw on everyone's faces, about the harsh words she said to Nam Khanh that she knew she didn't really mean. But instead of finding a way to fix it, a part of her, the part that was most deeply hurt and ashamed, pushed her to retreat, to close the door to her heart, as a familiar defense mechanism that she had learned long before she began her journey with archery.

That night, she didn't write anything in her familiar notebook, for the first time since she started that habit. The notebook lay silently on the desk, folded, as a symbol of the temporary break in the journey of self-discovery that she had persistently built over the past many months.

Nearly nine o'clock in the evening, there was a gentle knock on the door. "Tam, please eat something," my mother's voice rang out from outside, full of worry. "I haven't eaten anything all day."

"I'm not hungry," Thanh Tam replied, her voice muffled from crying too much, and she didn't open the door.

Mom stood outside the door for a moment, then gently placed a tray of food on the floor in front of the room. "I'll leave the food here. When you're hungry, come get it. Mom and Dad don't blame you, don't torment yourself too much."

Those mother's words, although sincere, were still not strong enough to penetrate the self-isolation shell that Thanh Tam was building around herself right now. She lay still, listening to her mother's footsteps fading away, then sinking into a heavy silence, where all sounds outside seemed to become distant, unable to reach the pain tearing inside her.

Her phone vibrated a few more times during the night — a text from Yen Thao asking after hearing about the match, another from Binh with a few awkward but sincere lines of encouragement, and one more from Nam Khanh, tersely: "I'll still be here when you're ready to talk." Thanh Tam looked at each message passing by on the screen, but did not have the courage to open it, read it carefully or reply to anyone. It felt like all the words of comfort right now only made her feel even more unworthy of receiving them.

She curled up in the blanket, trying to sleep, but her mind kept going back to the moment the arrow missed the target, the screams from the stands, Thanh Van's worried eyes, and the bitter words she said to Nam Khanh that now, in the silence of the night, made her feel deeply regretful but still not brave enough to fix it.

"I ruined everything," she whispered to herself in the darkness, her voice broken as tears welled up again. "Not only the match, but also Khanh. He's probably just as disappointed in me as everyone else."

That thought, although completely unreflective of what Nam Khanh truly felt, clung to Thanh Tam's mind throughout that night, reinforcing the vague determination that was forming in her heart — the determination to withdraw, to avoid, to protect herself from the possibility of facing any further disappointment from the people she loved, by simply not giving them the opportunity to be disappointed anymore.

She fell asleep early in the morning, her sleep was restless, and when she woke up on Sunday morning, the tray of food her mother left in front of the door was still intact, having long since cooled.

She opened the door and looked at that cold tray of food. A feeling of guilt arose when she thought that her mother must have been standing outside the door worrying all night yesterday without her knowing. She carried the tray into the room and sat down to eat a few pieces of cold rice mechanically, not feeling anything, her mind still immersed in the chaos of unresolved emotions from the night before.

Her phone lit up with a series of unread messages in the club chat group, people talking about the tournament results, a few words of encouragement for the team after an unfortunate defeat. Thanh Tam scrolled through it quickly, without reading carefully, then turned off the phone screen, placed it face down on the table as if she wanted to completely cut off contact with the outside world, at least for the time being, when she still didn't know how to face everyone after what had happened.

That whole Sunday, Thanh Tam almost didn't leave her room, using the excuse of being tired to avoid any conversations with her family, even with Thanh Van, who she knew was also carrying her own sadness after her harsh statement in the dressing room. She lay in bed most of the time, scrolling aimlessly on her phone, occasionally opening up to see Nam Khanh's unanswered messages, reading them over and over but still unable to find the courage to respond, as if each response would force her to truly face what had happened, something she was not ready to do at the moment.