Chapter 11 — The Finish Line of Years Gone By

In his first year in Hòa Điền, Son graduated from high school with good grades, though not as excellent as he had dreamed of when he was in Vọng Hải, because he spent most of his time outside school helping his family. The new school's athletics team did not have a professional coach, only a part-time physical education teacher, but Son still maintained his own training schedule based on what Mr. Khuong had taught, carefully recording it in an old notebook he had brought from Vọng Hải.

He did not take the university entrance exam like many of his peers. His family was not qualified, and he himself had no clear direction other than running. Instead, he applied to work as a delivery staff for a large grocery store in Hòa Điền, a job that allowed him to have time to practice in the early morning and evening, while also earning some money to help his family gradually become more stable after his father's accident.

In the second year, a provincial cross-country coach, Mr. Cao - who happened to stop by a running race organized on the occasion of a local festival that Son participated in for fun - noticed his persistent running style and skillful breathing control technique, which was different from other amateur athletes in the tournament.

"You have been properly trained, right?" Mr. Cao asked after Son finished first in the ten-kilometer race, surpassing those who finished by nearly three minutes.

"Yes, I used to be on the high school team in Vọng Hải, and there was a teacher who taught me thorough athletics," Son replied, unable to hide his excitement at this unexpected opportunity.

From that meeting, Son was accepted by Mr. Cao to train with a group of semi-professional cross-country athletes in the province, even though there was no official salary, only a small support each month and the opportunity to participate in regional tournaments, accumulating experience and achievements to gradually be noticed by more professional teams.

Those were the most difficult years in Son's journey pursuing athletics - while working to earn an income and exercising at high intensity, his body was so exhausted many times that he had to be hospitalized for severe dehydration after a long-distance running session in the hot sun. But he never thought about giving up, partly because of his true passion for running, partly because the promise he made to Khue under the almond tree last year still echoed in his head every time he wanted to give up.

One winter evening when he was nineteen years old, after a delivery shift that lasted until nine o'clock in the evening, Son still tried to go to the park near the dormitory to finish his unfinished interval training, even though it was dark and fog covered the path. His father, now able to walk with crutches, sat outside the park gate on a shabby motorbike borrowed from a relative, patiently waiting for his son to finish practicing so he could take him home, even though the distance was not far and Son could walk on his own.

"Why don't you go home and rest first? I can go home on my own after practice," Son said, somewhat guilty when he saw his father huddled in the cold.

"Dad wants to watch you run," Mr. Danh replied, his voice was simple but contained many unsaid things. "When you were still in Vọng Hải, Dad worked all the time and rarely got to watch you practice or compete. Now I plan to make up for that part or something."

His father's words made Son's heart choke, and from that night, every evening of his practice session had a single loyal audience - the father who once advised him to stand on his own two feet, now quietly sat on the side of the road, watching his son's every step as a way to redeem himself for the years he had missed.

At the age of twenty, Son won a silver medal in the fifteen-kilometer cross-country event at the national youth championship, an achievement enough to be on the radar of the Vietnam Athletics Federation in its selection of potential young athletes for the reserve national team. This was the first big turning point in his career — for the first time, running was no longer a distant dream, but became a real career path with a stable, albeit still modest, income.

***

Meanwhile, in a city hundreds of kilometers away, Khue entered university with a degree in Business Administration, majoring in Event and Sports Management - a choice that surprised many people in her family, because they thought she would major in Construction or Finance to later succeed her father at Khang Vinh Group.

"Are you sure about this choice?" Mr. Vinh asked his daughter during a family meal before she entered school, his voice was a bit concerned but did not object.

"I'm sure, Dad," Khue replied, her eyes determined. "I want to learn how to organize and manage truly meaningful sporting events, not just fancy opening ceremonies. I think sports have the power to change a person's life, I want to be a part of creating those opportunities for many others." Mr. Vinh looked at his daughter for a long time, then nodded slightly, not asking anything more about the deeper reason behind this choice, although he could guess that it had something to do with the poor student who had made his daughter cry all summer in eleventh grade.

During her four years at university, Khue studied seriously and actively participated in internships at companies organizing major domestic sports events, from small-scale running tournaments to providing logistical support for a national volleyball tournament. She gradually built a remarkable network of relationships and practical experience in the industry, something that not all "rich kids" take the trouble to accumulate from the lowest positions.

In her third year of college, during an internship at the organizing committee of a half-marathon in the city, Khue was assigned to be in charge of the water station area at mile twenty. The job seemed simple but required accurate calculation of the flow of runners and peak times, to avoid water shortages or congestion that were dangerous for runners. She did it so meticulously that the head of the organizing committee had to praise her in front of the whole team, saying that it was rare for interns to have such good systematic thinking right from the smallest tasks.

"Where did you learn how to do this?" The head of the department asked, curious.

Khue just smiled, not telling the real story - that she learned that skill from an old notebook under a phoenix tree, from afternoons recording running times for a poor student whom she loved with all her heart at the age of seventeen.

During those years, she still thought about Son from time to time, especially on occasions when she happened to witness an athlete overcoming adversity to shine on the track - moments that always made her heart ache with a vague nostalgia. She tried searching for his name on local sports news sites, but "Hồ Nhật Sơn" was not a very rare name, and none of the results really matched her image of him.

The red cloth ribbon was still in the small wooden box, and now followed her from her student room to her college dorm room, then to the small apartment she rented privately when she started an internship away from home. It was no longer an item that was often taken out and looked at like in the early years, but she never thought about throwing it away, as if some part of her still believed that one day, it would be useful again.

In her final year of college, during an industry seminar about the booming trend of organizing marathons in Vietnam, Khue sat and listened to a speaker present about the economic potential of movement sports - how a large-scale marathon can lead to an entire ecosystem of tourism, hotels, restaurants, promoting local image, bringing in revenue many times greater than the cost of organization if operated properly. In her mind, an idea began to form, still vague but enough to make her heart beat faster: maybe one day, her family's Khang Vinh Group could also organize a tournament of such magnitude, not only for profit, but also for a deeper reason that she did not dare to name at that moment.

She wrote down that idea in a new notebook, as carefully as she had recorded Son's running time many years ago, then put it in a corner, not in a hurry to present it to anyone, not even her father. It was an idea that, years later, would become the biggest project of her career, although at the time, she had no idea that the path would lead her back to meeting the person she had never truly forgotten, despite trying to learn how to live without him.