Chapter 10 — The Finish Line of Years Gone By

Hòa Điền town welcomed Son's family with torrential rain that lasted through the first week. The room they rented—deep in a small alley near the market, only about twenty square meters with a shared kitchen for the whole block—became the family's new home: strange and damp, completely different from the small but familiar house in Bến Cá Hamlet.

In the early days, everything revolved around Mr. Danh's health. Hòa Điền Orthopedic Hospital had better rehabilitation equipment than the old provincial hospital, but treatment and medicine were still a significant burden, even with partial support from Khang Vinh's labor insurance. Mrs. Nhu had to find a job immediately; eventually she became a kitchen assistant at a restaurant near the market, working from five in the morning until late at night.

Son did not rest for long either. He applied to transfer to a high school near the boarding house, but the mid-year transfer process was longer and more complicated than he expected, taking nearly three weeks. During that time, he worked part-time as a porter at the wholesale market before dawn to earn extra money, because the family's meager savings were quickly dwindling under the hospital bills.

The brick phone, his only link to Khue, also caused trouble in the second week. The family's SIM was a prepaid promotional card bought from a small countryside shop, without a formal contract; once its credit ran out, the carrier automatically locked it after thirty days of non-use.

"Mom, the SIM is locked," Son said in panic one evening when he tried to call Khue and heard, "This number does not exist."

"I've been out of deposits for a few weeks now, I thought you knew," Mrs. Nhu replied, her voice tired after a long day of work. "Let me count and see if I have any money left over tomorrow so I can refill it for you."

But that “tomorrow” did not come quickly. The money in the house was enough only for hospital bills and rent, so non-essential expenses such as phone credit had to wait. Three weeks later, when the family finally bought a new SIM—cheaper and with a better package for the inter-provincial calls Mrs. Nhu needed—the old number was irrecoverable.

Son tried to remember Khue's phone number to call from the new number, but he realized a painful truth: he had never memorized her number, because during the time they knew each other, he only needed to click on the name "Khue" saved in the old phone book - the phone had now changed the SIM card, and the old phone book, due to an incident when reinstalling, had been irreversibly erased.

He sat absent-mindedly outside the boarding-room door that evening, trying to recall each digit, but he could remember only the first few—not enough to call without risking a stranger answering.

***

Not discouraged, Son thought of another way: writing letters. He knew the address of Vọng Hải school, and thought that if he sent the letter by post and asked teacher Khuong to deliver it to Khue, he could at least reestablish contact. He spent an entire evening writing a long letter, recounting everything that had happened since the day he left, along with the address of his new room in Hòa Điền, then sent it with all hope.

That letter, and three subsequent letters he sent over the next two months, received no response. What Son didn't know — because there was no way to know — was that his family had to move two more times within the first four months in Hòa Điền, when the first landlord suddenly increased the rent, and the second time when they found a place to live closer to the hospital to conveniently take Mr. Danh for a follow-up visit. Every time he moved, the mailing address changed, and Khue's response letters - if any - sent to the old address, as well as the letters from Mr. Khuong trying to deliver for him, were all lost somewhere in the midst of those chaotic transfers.

In Vọng Hải, although Son did not know it, Khue did not sit still. She asked Mr. Khuong to seek news and even sent the family driver to Hòa Điền to ask at the orthopedic hospital, using the vague address she remembered from Son's story. But patient-confidentiality rules prevented the hospital from giving a non-relative a specific address. Hòa Điền was small, yet large enough for a newly arrived family living in nameless alleys to disappear among thousands of others.

Four months later, when everything was more stable - Mr. Danh could walk on crutches, was hired as a security guard at his relative's mechanical workshop, and the family moved to a more permanent room - Son tried writing one last letter, but this time sent it directly to Khue's home address that he remembered from the time she mentioned the name of the urban area.

That letter was also never responded to, although the reason this time was different — the letter was lost during delivery between the two provinces, one of countless small incidents that often happen with the postal system in remote areas, where a handwritten letter has no guarantee of reaching its destination.

***

That summer, when Son officially transferred schools successfully and began his twelfth grade year at a high school in Hòa Điền, he gradually accepted a bitter reality: contact with Khue, at least in the near future, was almost impossible.

He still kept the photo taken with the team in his wallet, still vividly remembering her face smiling brightly under the phoenix tree, but he had to learn to put that nostalgia in a corner deep in his heart, to focus on what was in front of him: family, studies, and the athletics dream that he promised Khue would never give up.

The new school in Hòa Điền had an athletics team, although it was much smaller than the one Uncle Lam had built in Vọng Hải. Son signed up on his first day and continued his early-morning runs alone through the unfamiliar streets, carrying the old promise in his heart even though the person who had heard it was now hundreds of kilometers away and might have begun to believe that he had quietly disappeared from her life forever.

In Vọng Hải, Khue spent the last months of eleventh grade in a state of limbo between hope and disappointment. Every time the phone rang with an unfamiliar number, she nervously picked it up, only to be disappointed when it wasn't Son. She still kept the book recording the team's achievements even though there was no one else to write them down for - Son had left, and no one on the team had special talent enough for her to devote herself to as before.

"How long are you going to wait?" One afternoon, Ky asked directly when she saw Khue sitting and flipping through an old notebook under the phoenix tree, where now there was no one who used to make her excited to go to the practice field every day.

"I don't know," Khue replied, her voice was empty. "I just thought, if he still missed me, he would find a way to contact me again."

"What if circumstances don't allow him to do that?" Ky said, her voice softer than usual; she rarely showed such softness. "You know how poor his family is. They had to move in the middle of all that upheaval, with everything turned upside down. It's not as though you can contact them right away when you want to."

Khue remained silent, closed the notebook, looked far away at the clay track, which was now deserted because it was summer vacation. "I know. I just wish I knew the exact address, so I could at least go there and look for it myself, instead of sitting here waiting in vain like this."

"Your father won't let you go alone, but where will you find him in the middle of a strange town?" Ky shook her head. "Well, let time tell. If the fate is still there, we will naturally meet again. You have a whole future ahead of you, don't let this sadness hinder your studies and other plans."

Ky's advice, although coldly rational, partly helped Khue gradually regain her balance. She hadn't forgotten Son — that was for sure — but she had learned to let that nostalgia exist alongside her current life instead of letting it swallow everything else. She kept the red cloth ribbon carefully in a small wooden box on her desk, occasionally taking it out to look at it as a reminder of something beautiful that had once truly existed, not just a fleeting dream.

That was the moment that ended the pure student life they both had, a short time but profound enough to become the foundation for everything that would come later — although at that time, neither of them could have imagined that it would take more than a decade for their paths to coincidentally intersect a second time.