Chapter 1 — The End-of-Day Train

At 6:35 p.m., Thanh Chau station platform began to turn pale orange from the late-day sunlight, the light shining obliquely through the old corrugated iron roof and then pouring into long streaks on the rails, which had become shiny from many years of grinding iron wheels. Tong Khanh Chi stood at the head of car number two, her uniform sleeves rolled up to his elbows, checking one last time the small whistle hanging around his neck and the duty book neatly folded in his chest pocket. She followed the same routine every day, at the right time and in the right order; if one step was skipped, the whole evening felt uneven.

The Thanh Chau - Van Phong line only has two trips per day, one in the morning to carry workers and small businesses to the city, and one in the evening to take them back to small towns scattered along forty-one kilometers of railway tracks built in a time when the current country was not yet named. People call the evening train "the last train of the day", not because it is the last train leaving Thanh Chau that day - in fact it is the last train - but because for most familiar passengers, it is the train that closes the day, bringing them back to bed, with a meal to share, with what is left after eight or ten hours of struggling out there.

Khanh Chi is twenty-six years old, has been a train conductor for four years, and before that was a ticket checker for another three years. It turns out that she has been going back and forth on this same stretch of railway for nearly a third of her life. The stranger looked at her, saw her small figure, her hair tied up neatly, her face still holding a childish look at the corners of her eyes when she smiled. Few people would have guessed that she was used to handling an old man who had a heart attack in the middle of the carriage, a boy vomiting from train sickness, a couple arguing so loudly that she had to step in to reconcile like a reluctant matchmaker. This profession teaches people many things that school does not teach.

She looked at her watch. The old watch had a slightly cracked glass, and the second hand still ticked evenly even though it was nearly twenty years old. It was her father's watch.

Tong Van Lich. The man once sat in the cockpit of this exact train, on this exact route, for more than twenty years, before a September rain twelve years ago swept an entire mountain range down a dangerous pass called Vong Pass, while he was taking a train carrying more than a hundred people through there. It is said — by those who are still alive, who have told and retold the story to the point that it has become a small part of the line's legend — that he was able to brake the train, was able to separate the last two cars from the group before the locomotive went off the tracks and rolled down the slope. All passengers survived. Only he did not survive.

Khanh Chi was fourteen years old at that time. She clearly remembered the night the police and people from the railway company knocked on her door, remembered the sound of her mother kneeling on the tile floor, and remembered the way people later talked about her father in a tone that was both mournful and somewhat reserved, as if there was a part of the story that no one wanted to tell. For twelve years, she had never really asked for details. Maybe because she was afraid. Maybe because sometimes people would rather keep a familiar pain than dig up a new pain whose shape they don't yet know.

She put the watch back neatly on her wrist, took a breath, then walked along the station platform to begin her evening work.

Mr. Ung Ba Thin was already sitting in the cockpit, his faded blue sleeve draped over his shoulder, an unlit cigarette tucked behind his ear out of habit - he did not smoke in the station, he just kept it there as a way to remind himself that he was still allowed to have a small bad habit after the train arrived at the station. He was fifty-five years old, had been a train driver on this line longer than Khanh Chi's combined career years, and was the only person on the current payroll who had ever run the same shift as her father.

"Are there enough guests today?" he asked, his voice hoarse and characteristic of a long-time smoker.

"There must be about thirty people, uncle. I was just counting the tickets sold at the counter." Khanh Chi replied, still checking the time table posted on the cockpit wall, even though she had memorized the time table for a long time. At 18:40 we left Thanh Chau. Through seven stations. Arrived at Van Phong at twenty fifty-five.

"Thirty something," Mr. Thin muttered, "in the past, this train was so packed, there was no place to stand. Now..." He didn't finish his sentence, just shook his head and looked out the cockpit window, where the afternoon light was fading behind the old warehouse row of Thanh Chau station.

Khanh Chi did not respond. She knew that question didn't need to be answered, because it wasn't a question, but an observation that everyone working on this line had long realized - the train was carrying fewer and fewer people, the tracks were getting older, and none of them, including her, dared to say out loud what they all implicitly understood: one day, this train would no longer run.

But that's a story for another day. Tonight, she still has work to do.

A short whistle blew signaling five minutes before departure time. Khanh Chi walked out onto the station platform, stood next to the door of car number one, and began to pick up passengers in the same familiar position. The first person to step up was a middle-aged man wearing a factory security uniform, nodding to greet her like every night - familiar relatives, although they rarely asked each other's names. Next were two female garment workers wearing uniform jackets that still smelled of new fabric, then an old man walking slowly with a cane, helped by Khanh Chi's hand, up the train steps naturally, without him having to say a word.

"Thank you," the old man said, his voice shaking with age.

"Yes, please be careful, there is a seat near the door for you." Khanh Chi smiled and pointed towards the row of seats at the front of the carriage, which she always deliberately left for older passengers, even though there were no regulations forcing her to do so.

Almost all the passengers had boarded, she took one last look along the platform, her professional habits did not allow her to look away until she was sure there was no one left rushing to catch the train. There were a few strange faces today — a young woman carrying a large bag, probably visiting home; A young man wearing a large backpack stood hesitantly looking at the train timetable as if wondering about something. He didn't get on the train, just stood there, then turned away. Khanh Chi didn't pay much attention, just noted it in her mind as a small detail among hundreds of small details she passed by every day.

At exactly 18:40, she blew the long whistle and raised her hand to signal Mr. Thin. The two-car train shuddered once, the sound of iron rubbing against iron rang out, then began to roll, slowly leaving Thanh Chau station, leaving behind the rising city lights in the twilight.

Khanh Chi walked along the aisle and began checking tickets. This is her favorite part of the job — not because of the inspection procedures, but because of the short time she stops next to each passenger, exchanging a few words, memorizing a face, a small story. She knew that Ms. Nga often made this trip after the wholesale market, always carrying a few bags of unsold vegetables in her hand, saving some for her neighbors. She knew that the student sitting at the end of the carriage was studying for the university entrance exam, and every night he took the opportunity to study in the pale yellow light of the train carriage, because the boarding house was cramped and there was no decent study desk.

The train runs through dark fields, small hamlets with scattered lights, and the steady sound of iron wheels tapping on rail joints creates a familiar rhythm that Khanh Chi can recognize even with his eyes closed. There were nights when she stood silently in the gap between the two cars, watching the darkness pass through the window, and felt like her father was still somewhere at the front of the train, his hands on the controls, his eyes glued to the tracks ahead like he always did.

He once told her, when she was little, sitting in the cockpit on the days he allowed her to follow him because there was no one to look after the summer vacation: "This ship doesn't just carry people, my child. It carries things people can't say - homesickness, fatigue, even hope. You have to understand that when you drive a ship, you have to bring them back to a safe place, no matter how windy or rainy it is."

Khanh Chi does not clearly remember how her father's face faded over the years, but she remembers those words clearly, every word, every warm intonation. Maybe that's why she's still here, still wearing this uniform every night, still blowing the whistle on time, still helping old people walk up the train steps — not because she has no other choice, but because she chooses to stay, chooses to hold on to a part of her father in the only way she knows how.

The train decelerated, the brakes squealed softly as it entered the first station, a small platform with only a hanging light bulb and a rusted corrugated iron awning in a few places. A few figures stood waiting on the station platform, the lights illuminating their faces with flickering streaks of light and dark. Khanh Chi walked out the carriage door, preparing to welcome more guests, her heart still lingering with the echoes of the words her father left a long time ago.

Outside, darkness had covered the fields on both sides of the tracks, leaving only the pale yellow lights from the two train cars trembling past like a small creature persistently crawling through the darkness, carrying with it thirty or so people and a heavy mass of memories that only the girl standing at the car door could truly feel the full weight of.

Little did she know that, in just a few stations, one of the passengers boarding the train tonight would be the man she had seen standing hesitantly in front of the timetable at Qingzhou station — and her life, accustomed to a steady, unchanging rhythm for the past four years, was about to take a turn she had never anticipated.