Chapter 2 — The Arrow That Missed the Mark

A week after the first practice session, Thanh Tam gradually got used to the rhythm of the Archery Club's routine - Tuesday and Friday, each session lasted nearly two hours, starting with a warm-up, followed by posture exercises, and finally the target shooting session. But even though she was used to the schedule, she still couldn't get used to the feeling of uneasiness every time the arrow didn't hit the right target.

That Tuesday morning, Mr. Kien, coach and club advisor, was present to observe the training session. He is a thin, middle-aged man with gray hair. He was a coach of the provincial archery team before moving back to school to teach. Thanh Tam heard from Yen Thao that teacher Kien was the one who discovered and nurtured Thanh Van from the early days, so when he walked closer to where she was practicing, her heart suddenly beat faster.

"You are Thanh Tam, right?" Mr. Kien said, his voice low and slow, standing and observing her posture for a while. "I heard Nam Khanh mention you. He said you learn very quickly."

"Yes, I'm still trying," Thanh Tam replied, trying to keep her voice calm, even though her heart had begun to build a familiar defense barrier, mentally preparing for the comparison she expected to come.

But teacher Kien did not mention anything about Thanh Van. He just stood there watching her draw the bow, his sharp eyes observing every small detail in her posture, then nodded slightly. "Your shoulders rise slightly when you pull the string. Try to keep your shoulders relaxed, don't tense up. Archery is not about the arms, but about the whole body working together in harmony."

Thanh Tam adjusted according to his teacher's instructions and fired a test shot. The arrow flew away, stuck in the eighth ring, completely to one side compared to the center of the target. She couldn't hold back an exasperated sigh, dropping the bow a little harder than necessary.

"Don't be discouraged," Mr. Kien said, his voice still calm as if he didn't pay attention to her reaction. "Round eight after adjusting your posture is normal. The body needs time to get used to a new position. Just keep shooting, don't think about the results, just think about the feeling."

She nodded, but still couldn't help but think about the outcome. Each arrow to her is not simply a shot, but an answer to the invisible question she always asks herself: whether she is good enough or not.

The practice session continued, and at halftime, Nam Khanh walked around the field, checking each member's posture. When it was Thanh Tam's turn, he stood back a bit, watching her shoot three consecutive shots — round nine, round eight, round nine — before speaking.

"Have you noticed that after each miss, your grip tightens even more?" he asked, his voice gentle but observant.

Thanh Tam paused, looking down at her hand holding her bow tightly. She never paid attention to that. "I... didn't know I did that," she replied, a bit confused.

"It's a natural reaction," Nam Khanh said, without any intention of blaming. "The more I want to control the results, the more my body tenses, and the more I tense, the more unnatural my movements become, the worse the results become. It's a vicious cycle."

"So what should we do to escape that vicious cycle?" Thanh Tam asked, his voice a bit impatient, as if expecting him to give him a specific formula that could be applied immediately.

Nam Khanh laughed lightly at her impatience. "There's no magic formula. But there's a method I use that you can try — instead of focusing on hitting the mark, try focusing on repeating the same routine for each shot. Same foot placement, same breathing, same pull on the rope, same anchor point under the chin. If the routine is the same, the results will naturally stabilize, though not always perfect."

"Consistency is better than perfection," Thanh Tam muttered, recalling the words he said during his first practice session.

"That's right," Nam Khanh nodded. "Try it. Don't look at the target in your head anymore, but look at your own process."

Thanh Tam took a deep breath and tried to do as he said. She placed her feet in the familiar position, breathed evenly, pulled the bowstring to the correct anchor point under her chin as always, but this time she deliberately did not let her mind cling to the image of the target's center, but just focused on feeling each movement of her body - shoulders relaxed, arms pulled evenly, breathing steady.

The arrow left the bow, flew in a smooth arc, and landed neatly in the ninth ring, much closer to the center than the previous shots.

It wasn't a perfect shot. But for the first time, Thanh Tam felt a strange feeling creep into her heart — not the familiar disappointment, but something akin to satisfaction, however small.

"See," Nam Khanh said, the corners of his mouth curling up into a slight smile. "There's no need to hit the middle, you can still feel fine with that shot, right?"

"I... think that's right," Thanh Tam replied, her voice still hesitant, but a new question began to ripple in her heart: could that feeling of satisfaction be repeatable, or was it just a moment of random luck.

At the end of the practice session, when everyone was packing up their equipment, teacher Kien called Thanh Tam closer to the table recording the club's scores. "I saw you improving very quickly in the first week," he said, looking at the notebook recording the scores of each practice session. "But I've also noticed that you often put pressure on yourself. I just want to remind you of one thing — archery is a very long-term sport. Those who rush to demand immediate results will often be the first to give up, because no one can keep their enthusiasm alive if they constantly feel like they're not good enough."

Thanh Tam listened silently, those words touched something deep inside her that she had never dared to admit openly - the fear that if she did not achieve success from the beginning, she would have to face the familiar feeling of failure that she had carried with her for many years living in her sister's shadow.

"I will try to remember what you said," she replied, bowing her head in thanks before leaving.

On the way home, she texted Yen Thao, recounting the story of her ninth-round shot thanks to focusing on the process instead of the result. Yen Thao replied almost immediately, accompanied by a series of celebratory emojis: "See, I told you that you don't have to be perfect from the start! Just take it slow, you'll be good at it, and more importantly, you'll have fun doing it."

Thanh Tam smiled looking at the phone screen, but that smile quickly faded when she got home and saw her mother standing in the living room, holding Thanh Van's photo frame and wiping the dust as usual.

"Is training okay today?" Mom asked, her voice still as kind as always.

"Yes, it's okay," Thanh Tam replied, trying to keep her voice normal. "I shot round nine."

"That's great," Mom said, a bright smile appearing on her face. "In the past, Van, it took me a whole month to shoot round nine. I'm much faster than you."

Thanh Tam forced a smile, nodded, then quietly went up to her room and closed the door. She sat down at her desk, looked out the window, feeling both a bit of vague pride and a familiar feeling of fatigue rising up - the feeling that no matter what she did, all her achievements would always be weighed against her sister's, even though no one in the house really meant it.

She took out her small notebook, a habit she had just started after the first practice session at Mr. Kien's suggestion — jotting down a few short lines after each practice session, not about her score, but about how she felt. She wrote: "I learned something today — maybe it's not whether the arrow hits the target, but whether I can repeat the right thing or not. I'm not good at this yet. But maybe, for the first time, I'm okay with not being good at it."

After writing, she closed the notebook, put it on the table, then lay down on the bed, the room light was still on. She thought about Nam Khanh's words, about the repetition process, about looking at herself instead of looking at the center of the target. It was a small lesson, but for someone like her who was used to living by absolute standards of perfection, it was like a door opening, leading to a completely different way of looking at life that she had never dared to try before.

Outside the window, the sound of summer cicadas still chirps incessantly, and somewhere in Thanh Tam's heart, a small seed of self-acceptance is starting to germinate, slowly but surely, like the way an arrow needs time to find its most stable flight trajectory.

Before she fell asleep, she could still remember Nam Khanh's eyes when he watched her hit the ninth round in a new way - not the eyes of admiration like others often reserved for a beautiful shot, but the eyes of someone who truly understood the meaning behind that small progress. She wondered why a friend who had only known her for less than two weeks could see through her psychology so clearly, while people who had been close to her since childhood sometimes didn't even realize it. Maybe, she thought, it was because Nam Khanh had also experienced something similar on his own journey, even though she hadn't had a chance to ask him about it. That thought made her curious in a gentle, unhurried way, like a question she was willing to save for later practice sessions, when the two of them got to know each other a little better.

She reached to turn off the table lamp, pulled up the blanket, and in the quiet darkness of the room, Thanh Tam smiled to herself — a small, unobtrusive smile, but the first smile in many months that she gave herself, not because she had achieved anything perfect, but simply because she dared to try a different perspective, and that perspective, although still immature, brought something warmer than the usual feeling of tension.