Chapter 5 — The Code in the Tangerine Garden

Quan pulled Thu back when the sound of metal hitting stone echoed in the well.

Lam turned on the light and turned down. An iron bucket lies at the bottom of the well, stuck in the broken wire. It's not the bucket of the house. The handle of the bucket is new, water is still dripping from the rim to the well.

“Someone just released it,” Quan said.

He took the hook and pulled the bucket up. Inside there is only a flat stone, the stone surface is waxed. Under the wax layer is a circular symbol divided into six parts, but one part is shaved off.

Mrs. Man stood next to the well, her lips pursed tightly.

“Don't shave any more,” she said.

“Do you know who did it?”

"Know someone who can do it. Don't know someone who has done it."

Thu used a towel to wrap the stone. "This is no longer about Dad hiding papers in the garden. Someone is trying to lead us away."

“Or a distraction,” Lam said.

Na was sitting on the steps of the house. When she heard that sentence, she immediately stood up. “Grandpa said the code must be read according to the season.”

Mail is back. “Where did you hear that?”

"While he was teaching me to label, he said tangerines don't ripen in the order of rows. The tree that receives water first will ripen sooner."

Quan looked at the piece of porcelain plate with a series of numbers. He took a pen and drew eight rows of trees on the cardboard, marking the trees with symbols. Leafy plants in the winter beds, waterdrop plants near the well, circle plants close to the packing house. If arranged according to when the fruit changes color instead of its location, the symbols form the sequence leaf–leaf–water–ring–water–leaf.

“This is not the way,” he said. “It's order.”

Thu opened the black cover book. The dates recorded next to the sweetness level are grouped into six clusters. The first cluster has leaves, the next cluster has water drops. The series of dates on the plate fall on the earliest harvest days of the five beds, but the sixth day is absent because that is the day the tank is shared.

“The last day is not on the calendar,” Thu said. “Because it's the day everyone tests the water.”

“Grandpa called the day of opening the ring,” Na said.

Lam looked at the child. “Did you even tell me that?”

“He said when you grow up you will understand.”

“You talk more to children than to adults,” Quan muttered.

Mail not answered. She's realizing something even scarier: her father didn't leave behind a single password. He divided the information among each person, each person having just enough pieces so that no one could solve it on their own. Leaves for Lam through pictures, water for Quan through pipes, dates for Thu through books. Na, who was not dragged into the dispute, heard the part about the circle.

They took the disc into the packing house and placed it next to the map. Lam took pictures of the front and back, then tried reversing the symbols. When rotating the map to true north, the row of six dots on the disc coincides with the six connecting points on the white strip of land.

Take a measuring tape. "The dots are not tree positions. They are six boundary segments."

“So what is a circle divided by six?” Quan asked.

“One area of common use.”

“Do we use land or water together?”

“Maybe both.”

Na propped her chin up and looked at the map. “Why doesn't grandpa write too?”

“Because adults often lose paper,” Mrs. Man said.

In the afternoon, a man named Duoc from the district land office called Thu. He is an officer who is digitizing old records. He said he had found a map of the plot of land from twenty years ago, but the appendix on the water route was missing. The document loan slip has the signature of an employee of the cold storage company who came to pick up a copy two months ago.

“Who signed?” Thu asked.

His name was read: Tran Khai.

“I don't know this person,” Thu said.

“It could be an outsourced survey unit. But oh well has not been paid in full.”

Letter recording name. She didn't tell Huy right away, just texted him one sentence: "Does your company have someone named Tran Khai who takes cadastral records?"

Huy replied after nearly an hour: "I will check."

There is no denial.

Meanwhile, Quan installed an old pressure gauge into the valve cover. He opened each branch according to the symbol. The move is good in the east furrow, weak in the north. When opening the circle, the pressure drops completely, as if somewhere outside the garden is absorbing water. Quan turns off the valve and marks the indicator.

“The cold storage hasn't been built yet, but they've tried smoking,” he said.

“Maybe a survey machine,” Thu replied.

“The surveyor does not dehydrate the tank.”

Lam checked the edge of the north wall. He found a new plastic pipe connected to the old pipe, the end of the pipe was covered with a rubber stopper. There was a knife cut on the button and the smell of machine oil.

“They tested the device,” he said.

Quan unbuttoned the button. A little water sprayed out and then stopped. Inside the tube is a gray cloth, similar to the type used to clean drills.

Thu called Huy. I don't listen. She called again, the line was busy.

That night, the family ate in silence. Quan received a call from the hospital. Na's test schedule had to be moved a week earlier because the new index was unstable. He listened, just replied "yes" and put the phone down.

Thu looked at her younger brother. “How much is needed?”

“Not relevant.”

“We are the heirs. Relate to."

“What concerns you is numbers. Related to you being a girl.”

Thu put away his chopsticks. “You think I don't understand?”

“I understand on paper.”

Lam stood up to pour water. “The more you two argue, the more profitable the company will be.”

Quan turned. “Don't stand outside.”

Lam put down the cup. “I'm not standing outside. I just don't know what I'm getting into.”

No one noticed that Na had left the table. A while later, she ran back from the packing house, holding a small flashlight.

“I found where grandpa hid this.”

It produced a plastic tangerine label with tape on the back. Under the tape is an old memory card.

Lam stiffened.

“Where?” he asked.

“In the weight box. He said if Uncle Lam comes, he will bring it.”

Thu looked at Lam. “You know about this card?”

"Are not."

But his hand trembled slightly when he received it.

Lam plugged the card into the computer. There is only one folder named “FINAL SEASON”, containing six videos and one audio file. The first part is a garden scene from three months ago. Father stood next to the circle tree, his body noticeably thinner, but his voice was still strong.

“If you can see it, it means I no longer have the strength to open the lid myself.”

The video stops there. The screen turns black. The audio file begins with the sound of running water, followed by the father's voice, distant and hoarse:

“Don't look for money. Money is just an excuse people give to cover up what they really want.”

A loud noise rang out in the recording. His voice lowered.

“The seventh tree doesn't just hold paper. It holds the names of the people who lent us the land. If you marry alone, you will lose the whole garden.”

The file ends with three knocks: one, two, then six.

Quan looked at Thu. “Where is the name?”

Lam opened the second video. Father stood by the well, pointing toward the packing house.

“If you want to read the name, go through the days when tangerines ripen. Don't count the trees from the gate. Count from where the water returns.”

Outside in the garden, the sound of a tree branch breaking was heard.

The letter ran out first. On the wet ground, there were six shoe prints leading from the well to the breeding house. The last mark stopped in front of the door that was always locked.

Quan just put the key in drive, a piece of paper fell from the crack in the door.

Mail does not open immediately. She asked everyone to stand back, then used her phone to take pictures of the lock and shoe prints. The door is painted blue, but the lock was recently changed. Under the door there was a layer of dust pulled into two parallel lines, as if someone had pushed a thin box in.

Lam knelt down and used a plastic stick to take out the piece of paper. He said the writer used a thermal printer, the type commonly used in survey offices. The edge of the paper has a streak of orange ink, the same color as the symbol on the tangerine Quan picked up.

“They know we are reading by the day,” Thu said.

Quan holds the key in his hand. “Open it.”

“What if there's someone in there?”

“Then they knew I was standing outside.”

Mrs. Man said she locked this room after her father was hospitalized. The master key is still hanging in the house, no one has taken it. But the rear window frame has a ventilation hole large enough to slide your hand into the latch. Lam looked at the camera through the slit and saw shelves of seeds covered with tarpaulins and a chair that had fallen over.

Thu looked at Na. “Did you hear him say this room?”

Na nodded. “He said there were things in there that weren't ripe yet.”

“Seeds?”

“Your name.”

Quan inhaled, then turned the key. The door doesn't open. From inside there was the sound of something falling. They wait. There are no footsteps.

Lam found an iron bar behind the packing house and used it to pry the edge of the door. The wood popped out, the smell of old paper rushed in. On the table in the middle of the room are a scale, six trays of seeds, a turned off lamp and a board with the picking schedule. Seven calendar pages were removed from the board.

Letters look on background. A trail of water led from the back door to the low cabinet. The cabinet is not locked, but the middle compartment is empty. On the wooden surface was the mark of an envelope that had just been lying there.

“The first person to get in gets the calendar page,” she said.

Quan opened the seed trays. In the sixth tray there is a black tangerine seed, not the same as the old one. Na said her grandfather once said this is a seed "don't sow to reap, only sow to remember".

Lam found a small tape recorder in the pocket of his father's old shirt. The device has a battery, but only one segment remains. Father's voice read the date, followed by the sound of tapping on the table. There were five hours, then silence, then one hour.

“Five households and one person standing outside,” Thu said.

At the end of the room there is a tiled wall. A tile with a scraped circle mark. Quan touched and discovered that the bricks were warmer than the surrounding area. Behind it may be the tank's catheter.

The letter does not allow digging. She took the chalk and marked it, then returned to the board. The places where the pages were removed left seven nail holes. Six holes in the ring, one hole on the outside.

“Dad left the password in the missing way,” she said.

Na pointed to the outermost hole. “That was the day he told me not to come alone.”

On it is a machine-printed line:

"Don't open Mr. Tan's room if you're not ready to know who sold the first piece of land."