Chapter 1 — The Finish Line of Years Gone By

At twenty past five in the morning, the slope from Bến Cá Hamlet to the main road was still wet with dew, and Nhật Sơn had begun his fourth lap around the lake.

He wore no headphones—the family could not afford them—so the only sound was his own steady breathing: two breaths in, three out, just as Mr. Khương had taught him. The canvas shoes were faded at the heels from overuse, and black tape still held the toes together. Sơn did not look down. He stared at the streetlamp at the end of the slope, where he had painted a white mark in tenth grade, and counted silently toward one thousand two hundred.

The stopwatch he had borrowed from Mr. Khương the previous week—an old sports watch with loose buttons—was strapped to his left wrist and rattled whenever he swung his arm. Sơn planned to finish this lap and press stop to see whether he could beat yesterday's record: four minutes and eleven seconds over the final eight hundred meters. If he managed it, he would have something to report to Mr. Khương at seven, before first period.

At the intersection before the light pole, a broken rock lay in the middle of the road, which he had managed to dodge for the past few days. Today, with his eyes still fixed on the distant light pole, he kicked it.

Son staggered, trying to keep his balance, and in the moment he threw his arms back to avoid falling, the watch strap came off, flying somewhere in the weeds along the roadside. He fell to one knee on the cement floor, his palms were scratched, but his first reflex was not to check for injuries — but to turn around to look for the watch.

"Damn it," he muttered, crawling through the dew-wet grass and lifting each bush. The watch was not his. If he lost it, he would have to apologize to Mr. Khương—and the team would lose its only working timer, since the other had a broken screen from the previous semester.

"You were looking for this, weren't you?"

A strange, female voice rang out from behind him, causing Son to look up in surprise. A shiny black car was parked close to the curb, the window half rolled down, and a girl wearing another school's uniform, perhaps a brand new uniform that had just been sewn, was standing next to the car, holding his stopwatch in her hand, the strap dangling.

"It splashed all the way here." The girl walked closer and gave it to him. Her hair was tied up neatly, her white sneakers had not had a speck of dust on them - she didn't look like someone who would get up early to go out at this hour. "I saw you fall, I thought you broke your leg."

"It's okay. Thank you." Son stood up, brushed his knees, the feeling of awkwardness rising more clearly than the pain in his palm. He took the watch and immediately checked the screen - the number was still running, it hadn't stopped since he pressed the start button. Instinct made him press the stop button reflexively, forgetting that he hadn't finished the lap yet.

"You pressed stop." The girl looked at the screen over his shoulder, her voice a bit regretful for him. "So today's achievements are ruined?"

Son looked down at the number displayed on the screen: 3 minutes and 58 seconds — for a distance of less than eight hundred meters, stopping halfway, there was no meaning to compare. He let out a breath, not really disappointed, just used to the fact that things never go completely smoothly.

"It's okay. Come back tomorrow," he replied curtly, then remembered to be more polite. "Thank you for helping pick it up."

"My car was passing by and I saw something sparkling on the side of the road. I thought someone had dropped my wallet." The girl shrugged and smiled slightly. "I didn't expect it to be professional equipment. Where did you go to school?"

"Vọng Hải."

"Ah, this is really close." The girl nodded, glancing at the slope behind him before looking back at him with undisguised curiosity. "Do you run at this time every morning? It's not even six o'clock yet."

"Run before there's a lot of traffic," Son replied, without taking his eyes off the watch, fixing the loose strap. "Besides, it's cooler now, so you can run farther."

A car horn sounded softly from behind - a middle-aged man sat in the driver's seat, looking impatient, glancing at his watch. The girl turned her head, waved her hand to signal to wait a little longer, then turned to Son.

"I just transferred here, today is the first day of school at Vọng Hải school," she said, her voice filled with the undisguised excitement of someone about to start something new. "I guess I'll see you later."

Son could only nod, before he could think of a proper answer, when the girl turned her back, walked quickly towards the car, the door closed, the car rolled away and disappeared behind the curve. He stood there for a moment, watching the smoke and dust disappear in the still light of the early morning, still clutching the stopwatch as if afraid it would fall again.

He didn't have time to ask his name.

***

A quarter to seven o'clock, Vọng Hải schoolyard had a few scattered groups of students gathered under the phoenix tree, most of them were hastily eating packages of sticky rice or loaves of bread brought from home. Son parked his bike in the last parking lot, locked it with an old rusty chain, then went straight to the backyard, where there was a clay track marked with white lime - the school's so-called "athletics field", which was actually just a temporarily leveled empty space, with no rubber track, no bleachers, only two old goalposts shared with the football team.

Teacher Đoàn Khắc Khương had been standing there before, holding an old leather-bound notebook, writing something down. He was in his fifties, had a thin but sturdy figure, and the tanned skin of someone who was once an athlete and spent his whole life on the track. Seeing Son coming, he looked up, his eyes were sharp but not strict.

"Why are your hands scratched?" He asked immediately, pointing to Son's palm, which still had a few red streaks on it.

"Yes, I tripped over a rock at Bến Cá slope." Son gave the watch back. "I dropped this, luckily someone picked it up for me." Teacher Khuong picked up the watch, turned it over and checked as a professional habit, then nodded. "It's fine if it's still intact. Today's time?"

"I broke the button in the middle, I can't count." Son confessed, bowing his head slightly.

"It's okay, come back tomorrow." Teacher Khuong closed the notebook, his voice calm as if he was used to his students always blaming themselves for small things. "I remember there's a team meeting today, at two o'clock in the afternoon, here. The training said that registration for the regional tournament has already been announced."

Mentioning Huan, Son turned around to look around the yard and saw Tống Gia Huấn running outside, waving his hand to invite him to join the group. Huan has been Son's best friend since tenth grade, with the track and field team. Although he runs a shorter distance - 400 meters - he is always the first one to show up at the practice field and also the last one to leave.

"Hey, I heard you fell at Bến Cá slope?" Huan ran closer, panting. "I saw a strange girl sitting in a car on the same road. I thought it was a traffic accident."

"Nothing, just tripped on a rock," Son replied, starting to warm up, rotating his ankles and pressing his knees.

"That car is a very rich person. I think the license plate is nice." Huan narrowed his eyes, his voice filled with childish curiosity. "Maybe international school students in the city come down here to play."

"He said he just transferred to our school." Son blurted out, then immediately felt sorry for telling him, as if it was something important.

Coach rolled his eyes and almost shouted. "Huh? We have rich students coming to our school? That's strange."

"I don't know." Son shrugged his shoulders, bent down to tie his shoelaces, and deliberately changed the subject. "You and I still have to practice cross country this week, regionals are almost here."

But Huan did not easily ignore something new like that. He kept following and asking a few more questions while the two of them ran to warm up, until the school drum rang signaling the start of class, and the whole yard dispersed and everyone went to their own classes.

Son sat at his desk and had not yet taken all his books out when there was a light knock on the classroom door. The homeroom teacher walked in, behind was a new student - the same girl from this morning, her hair was still tied up, but now she was wearing the Vọng Hải school uniform, looking somewhat out of place among the worn-out uniforms of the whole class.

"Class, hello to our new friend. This is Bảo Khuê Street, transferred from school in the city." The teacher introduced, her usual cheerful voice. "Khue, please sit at the empty table back there." The girl—Khue—nodded to the whole class, glanced around, then stopped when she saw Son sitting there. A flash of surprise crossed her eyes, quickly turning into a small, discreet smile, as if she had just discovered an interesting secret.

Son stiffened, his hand still holding the pen before he could put it down. He did not expect that the "new student transferring to Vọng Hải school" that he had just told Huan about this morning, would now walk straight into his own classroom, and was about to sit right at the desk behind him.

Khue passed by and stopped for exactly one second next to his desk, enough to whisper a sentence that only the two of them could hear: "Three minutes and fifty-eight seconds. Next time, remember to finish the lap before pressing stop, Mr. Son."

Then she walked back to her seat, leaving Son sitting there, hand clutching the pen, ears burning, not knowing whether because of embarrassment or because of a strange feeling that had just arisen in his chest - a feeling that he had never had a name for, only knowing that from now on, every morning running on the Bến Cá slope, it probably wouldn't be the same anymore.

He didn't have time to ask how she knew his name.