Chapter 8 — The Code in the Tangerine Garden

Letter found his father's debt in a paper box containing electricity bills.

The box was on top of the cabinet, covered with a thin layer of dust, but the edge of the lid had just been touched. She brought it down, placed it on the table and opened each volume. Electricity bill, fertilizer fee, pump repair fee, then a stack of transfer receipts regularly every month. The recipient is not a bank but an account named "An Loc Fatherland".

Quan is washing mud on the porch. He heard that name and immediately walked in.

“What country?”

“Have you heard?”

"Are not."

“So dad hid a whole debt payment in the electricity bill.”

Mail counts receipts. There were twenty-seven transfers, a total larger than the loan she knew about. The content says "refund of contribution". The transfer date is usually after the harvest season, when the money from selling tangerines comes in.

Quan leans on the table. “Do we have to pay for six houses?”

"Don't know yet. The account is in the name of a person named Bui Van Nghiem."

Mrs. Man was picking up leaves in the yard and heard it so she went in.

"Mr. Nghiem is the future keeper of the country's ancestral book."

“Is he alive?”

"Lives in the next district. But Tan doesn't pay him. He takes it for the families."

Thu opened her laptop and entered the amounts into the table. The last number made her stop. Father used the money from selling tangerines to return the land that six families had contributed, but only returned five parts. The sixth part is blank.

“Which house hasn't received it yet?” Quan asked.

“No names.”

“Maybe it's not due yet.”

Thu turns over a sheet of paper. “The deadline is before transfer.”

The inscription is in an old record, signed by father at the end. It states that if the garden is sold, the proceeds of the sale must be fully contributed to the households involved before being divided among the three heirs. If not completed, the right to use the water line continues to belong to the water group.

Quan sat down. “The will doesn't have this.”

"Because this is not a will. This is an obligation of the estate."

“Father deliberately hid it from us.”

“Or you think we'll keep the garden.”

Quan looked at Huy's proposal. If they receive the proceeds from the sale, the debt will be deducted first. The amount of money left for the three brothers is much less than the number Huy gave.

He laughed, this time not at all happily. “So Huy's good price is not good either.”

Letter did not respond. She felt that two fathers existed in these papers. One person tried to preserve the garden by returning the land to someone else. A person cuts off every piece of information from his family because he believes only he can handle it.

Lam walked in, his shirt was dirty. “I found this at the north gate.”

He placed the blue notebook on the table.

Quan stood up suddenly. “You took it?”

“The other person dropped it.”

“Why are you giving it now?”

“Because I want to see inside first.”

Open book letter. The first pages are the watering schedule according to symbols. Seven pages were torn in the middle, but the remaining lines showed that Father used to write down the names of households in letters. The last page has an incomplete list:

“Seven people contributed land, six people received water, one person kept the paper.”

“Seven people?” Thu asked.

“Dad is the seventh,” Mrs. Man said.

Lam turned over. There was a circle of red ink and a smudged fingerprint. A small piece of paper was stuck in the spine of the notebook, containing an account number like a receipt.

Thu called Mr. Nghiem. No one listens. She called back ten minutes later, this time a woman's voice picked up.

“Mr. Nghiem is at the hospital,” the woman said. "I'm the daughter-in-law. Is there something wrong?"

Self-introduction letter, talking about the money transfer. The woman was silent.

“You are holding the right blue book Are not?" she asked.

Thu looked at Lam.

“How do you know?”

"Your father said that if he dies and the Tan family still hasn't sold it, I have to say: the sixth part of land never belonged to Mr. Nghiem."

“Who does it belong to?”

“Belongs to someone who doesn't receive money.”

The call ended when the woman said the hospital called. The answer didn't explain anything, but it made Thu understand that there was still one person who refused to accept the debt.

Huy arrived later, not bringing Ms. Van with him. He looked at the green notebook, his expression changed.

“Khai doesn't have it,” he said.

“Are you sure?”

“I checked the archives. He borrowed a set of technical documents, without the original map. But the survey vehicle entered the garden that night.”

“Who gave permission?”

"I."

Quan stepped forward. “You admit it?”

“I thought they only measured the altitude outside the fence.”

“You think?”

“I didn't know they were inside.”

Huy placed a printed copy of the email on the table. The company required him to complete negotiations within ten days, otherwise the file would be transferred to the legal department to request permission for a mandatory survey. It's not a coercive order, but it's enough to make households around here confused.

Thu asked: "You know they cannot get water without resolving the rights of the six families?"

"I know."

“So why still give the price?”

Huy looked at Quan. “Because the company promised to pay more to resolve it.”

“Solved for whom?”

“Households.”

“Or for someone who will sign first?”

Huy did not answer. Quan turned away.

Mail put the receipt on the table. “Father returned the land contribution. But there is still an unpaid portion. If the company buys it, they have to pay that part.”

Huy held the minutes. “This is a private agreement.”

“There are signatures of six households and commune seal.”

“Not in the cadastral records.”

“Doesn't mean it doesn't exist.”

Huy read to the end. His face tightened when he saw his father's name on the second line.

“My father signed,” he said.

“You know, right?”

“I know he contributed land. I don't know if he hasn't received his money back yet."

“The sixth part is your house?”

Huy folded the paper. “No.”

“So who is it?”

Huy left the house without speaking. Quan tried to chase, but Thu held back.

“Let him face it himself.”

“Are you still going to trust him?”

“I don't believe it yet. But the truth is not whether he is upset or not.”

That night, Thu rechecked the transfers. She realized that the contribution refund amount was always transferred on the day with the circle symbol in the book. Except for the last day, all coincide with a harvest. The day of lack of money was not the day of picking, but the day my father was hospitalized.

In the bank note, the last transaction was made by someone but canceled. The person requesting the cancellation is Nguyen Van Tan.

“Dad planned to pay,” Thu said.

Lam sat next to him. “But for whom?”

Thu pulled the map back. Six letters, one letter is blacked out. Seventh Dynasty, Tenth Dynasty, Tan Dynasty, Hoa Dynasty, Fifth Dynasty, Huy Dynasty. The seventh letter is not in the water line. It may be someone who has contributed but has no land.

Na spoke at the door: "Grandpa is called the paper keeper."

Mail is back. “When did you hear him say that?”

“The day he had difficulty breathing. He asked me if I remembered that the tree had no fruit.”

“Which tree?”

“The tree is behind the packing house. He said it doesn't need water but still has to be marked."

Quan took the lamp to the garden. Behind the packing house there is an old tangerine tree with a rough trunk and almost no fruit on its branches. There is a leaf symbol on the tree trunk, but the engraving is half covered by white paint.

They scraped off the paint. Below appears another T, then a circle open.

Thu uses a ruler to measure from the tree to the tank. The distance is exactly sixty-six steps, which is also the serial number on the company's email printout.

Huy stood at the edge of the darkness, no one knew when he came.

“That tree belonged to my land before,” he said.

Quan clasped hands. “So the sixth part is yours?”

“No. My father contributed the land, but he is not the paper holder.”

"Who?"

Huy looked at the tangerine tree without any fruit. “A person whose name has been forgotten by all six families.”

Thu asked him if he remembered Mrs. Luu. Huy shook his head, but said his father once told him that a woman often stood by the valve, her feet muddy, and her hand holding a silver ring. She has no fields, only a hut at the beginning of a ditch. Every time there was a meeting, she sat outside the circle because no one knew where to write her name.

“My father said she doesn't count as a household,” Huy said. “But when the deadline comes, he still looks for her first.”

“Because you kept the key?”

“Because she knows where the water goes.”

Quan from the hospital called and heard the story. He asked Huy if his family still kept Mrs. Luu's things. Huy said no, but remembered his mother once bought a ring from an old collector. The ring has the letter L and a chip.

Lam opened the photo of the ring under the tree and enlarged the dent. It matches Huy's description.

“Who gave it to you?”

"I do not know."

“I know more than I think,” Thu said.

Huy did not react. He just bent down into the soil around the tree, looking for a copper nail. There were green cloth stains on the nail, like a torn book cover.

“The person who took the book was standing here,” he said.

“So he knew Mrs. Luu's name before us.”

Huy looked at the trees. "Someone mentioned this name at a company meeting. They said if they find the paper, they must prove that person has no rights."

“Who said?”

Huy did not have time to answer.

Before he continued speaking, the lights outside the gate went out. The sound of motorbikes roaring up the north road. When Thu ran to the gate, on the ground there was only a piece of paper torn from a green book.

On the back is a handwritten line:

Thu put the torn piece of paper in the file bag, then took a pen to write down the gate location, car direction, and the time the lights turned off. She didn't want the memory of a noise to be the only evidence. Huy said he could ask for data on the toll station near the north road, but Thu reminded that the data had to be officially requested.

“Why didn't my father tell you?” Quan asked.

Huy looked at the fruitless tree. “Maybe because he knew I would choose a job before understanding water rights.”

“Are you saying you're not trustworthy?”

“I'm saying I didn't know I was choosing.”

Thu took the green notebook and placed it next to the map. The torn lines create a white space in the exact position of the letter L. If the book is turned upside down, the edge of the paper still retains a line of blue ink running in a circle. She used a pencil to trace it, then realized it was a diagram of a hut by the ditch, not a household name.

“Mrs. Luu used to be here,” Mai said over the phone. “My mother told me that the hut was demolished after Mr. Suu bought the land.”

“What about the hut floor?”

“Maybe still under the bamboo bush.”

Lam immediately took the camera and followed. They didn't dig, just took photos of the background, measured the distance to the fruitless tree and wrote down Mrs. Man's words. Each new twist makes the story feel less like a code and more like a forgotten file.

At the gate, Huy saw new tire tracks. He bent down to pick up a piece of plastic from the taillight, which had the contractor's code on it.

“This doesn't belong on a company car,” he said. “It's a rental car.”

Thu put the plastic piece in the evidence bag.

"The final debt is not money. It's the name."