Chapter 2 — The Inn at the End of the Pass

By noon, the repair vehicle had not arrived in time, so the survey team had to stay at the inn for another day. Khai Dang and two colleagues - a man named Phu, short and sturdy, specializing in machinery, and a young man named Sinh, fresh out of school, holding his phone all day looking for signal - sat at the lunch table with other guests, sharing a pot of sour stream fish soup and a plate of braised meat from Thao.

"The rice here is so delicious, sister." Sinh ate while spitting and picking continuously. "I've been working on construction sites all year, and I've never seen a place with food this delicious."

"On this pass, only good cooking can keep customers." Thao replied, half joking and half serious, still serving another bowl of soup for the next table.

Gia Binh appeared at that moment, his hair still messy because he had just woken up, and walked out of the room with a familiar frown on his face. He glanced at the crowded dining table, then glanced at Thao, without saying anything, went straight to the backyard to scoop water to wash his face. A moment later, he returned, sat down at the furthest corner of the table, helped himself to the rice, and ate in silence.

"Did Mr. Binh just come back?" Thao asked, trying to keep her voice gentle.

"YES." Gia Binh replied curtly, not taking his eyes off the rice bowl.

The atmosphere between the two sisters is always like that - not necessarily harsh, but there is always a thin layer of ice separating them, just one wrong word can crack into an argument. Thao learned not to poke the ice at mealtime, in the middle of a crowd of people, so she quietly put the rice reserved for Gia Binh aside and then returned to serving the guests.

In the afternoon, when the guests gradually left, Khai Dang brought a roll of maps and sat at the wooden table on the porch, spreading them out to study, occasionally jotting something down in a leather-covered notebook with frayed corners. Thao brought out a pot of hot tea and placed it on the table.

"Drink some tea to warm your stomach. It's afternoon down here so quickly, it's suddenly cold."

"Thank you." Khai Dang looked up, smiled, then as if suddenly remembered something, quickly rolled up the map and pushed it aside.

That gesture did not escape Thao's eyes. She didn't say anything, just poured tea, her eyes glanced at the corner of the map that had just been hidden - seeing red lines marked in detail along the shape of the pass, and a few symbols she didn't understand, looking like arrows pointing straight through the mountain behind the shop.

"You hid it so well, is it a state secret?" Thao asked, her voice joking but with some genuine scrutiny.

Khai Dang laughed and scratched the back of his neck. "It's nothing, it's just construction documents. Regulations cannot be revealed until they are completed, for fear of causing bad misunderstandings."

The answer was still as smooth as the morning, making Thao even more curious, but she did not inquire further. There are some things, she thought, that time will automatically reveal them, there's no need to rush.

"So how long are you guys going to stay here?"

"The car will probably be repaired in a few days. Besides—" Khai Dang hesitated, looking around at the scenery, "—this place is so beautiful, I want to take the opportunity to survey a few more points along the pass, it will probably take a week."

"All week?" Thao raised her eyebrows. "So you're staying at my shop, right?"

"If you don't mind." He smiled, his eyes somewhat shy, rarely seen in a mature man with experience in construction sites.

Thao doesn't mind. In fact, during the days when the restaurant is empty, having three more long-term residents is a significant amount of income, enough for her to worry less about the mortgage payment that is due at the end of the month. But she didn't say that pragmatic reason, just nodded and went back inside to continue working.

In the middle of the afternoon, taking advantage of the kitchen's time to catch up on work, Thao stopped by Mr. Bay Trinh's small car repair shop, about a five-minute walk from the shop, and asked if he had any suitable spare parts for his broken-down pickup truck. Mr. Bay's workshop is just a temporary corrugated iron roof on the side of the road, filled with old tires, engine covers, and the smell of lubricant oil mingling in the air to a level that Thao has been used to since childhood.

"Geological survey vehicle?" Mr. Bay Trinh looked up from his unfinished motorbike, his wrinkled face covered in grease. "I heard that a group has been measuring along the pass for a few weeks now. Have you asked them what they measured?"

"I asked, they said it was just a normal geological survey."

Mr. Bay Trinh snorted, looking unconvinced, his hand still quickly turning the screw. "The geology is normal but it took a whole month to measure from the beginning of the pass to the end? I've lived here since this road was still a trail for people to carry salt, my dear. I can smell anything unusual right away." He stopped and looked at Thao with experienced eyes. "Just pay close attention to them. Nowadays, people do everything for a reason, they just don't want to say it yet."

Mr. Bay Trinh's words made Thao feel even more uneasy when she returned to the shop, although on the outside she still smiled and talked normally, telling him if he had any suitable spare parts to let her know so she could pass on the information to the survey team.

That afternoon, when Thuy Duong came home from school, she immediately rushed into the kitchen, chirped about class, then suddenly lowered her voice and leaned close to Thao's ear.

"Sister, I heard my friends say there's a rumor in town that they're going to build a tunnel through the mountain. Is it true?"

Thao's hand paused for half a second on the knife chopping onions, then continued as if nothing happened.

"Just a miscellaneous post, a tunnel is not an easy thing to do, it's very expensive. Who told you that?"

"Classmate Hoa said her father worked at the district committee and overheard it at some meeting." Thuy Duong frowned, her eyes slightly worried. "If there was a real tunnel, vehicles wouldn't go through our pass anymore, right? So our shop..."

"Okay, let me worry about adult matters, just study well." Thao interrupted, her voice harder than she wanted, then softened as soon as she saw Thuy Duong's shoulders shrink slightly. "Sorry, I don't mean to be harsh with you. It's just that nothing is certain yet, don't worry in advance, do you hear?"

Thuy Duong nodded, but her eyes were still a little uneasy, looking down at her hands rolling up her pants legs, covered in mud from the slippery red dirt road after the morning rain.

That night, after finishing cleaning the kitchen, Thao sat alone on the steps, looking down at the dark valley sparkling with a few distant lights of the houses at the foot of the pass. She thought about the tunnel story that Thuy Duong had just told, about the map with red lines and arrows through the mountain that Khai Dang hastily hid that afternoon. Those two puzzle pieces naturally fit together in her mind, forming a vague image but enough to make her chest tighten.

"What are you doing sitting here, aren't you afraid of the cold?"

Khai Dang's voice rang out behind him. He walked out, holding two small glasses, one given to Thao.

"I bought corn wine in town yesterday. I saw it in the kitchen and took the liberty to take it out and offer you a cup as a thank you for today's lunch."

Thao accepted the glass of wine and took a small sip. It stung slightly in her throat but gradually warmed down to her stomach.

"Have you been doing this survey for a long time?"

"It's been almost ten years. Traveling everywhere, from one project to another, rarely staying in any place for more than a few months." Khai Dang looked out into the darkness of the valley, his voice slow. "To be honest, I don't really remember what it feels like to have a place to call home."

The words accidentally touched a certain corner of Thao's heart. She looked at him, not with curiosity about work like in the afternoon, but with a sudden sympathy.

"So you must think this inn is very strange, right? A group of people who are not related by blood, living in the same house, calling each other sisters."

Khai Dang turned to look at her, his eyes serious.

"It's not strange, sister. I think it's the opposite. It's quite common for people to be apart by blood. And here, I see all the kids clinging to you, including the boy named Binh who looked cold at noon, but I noticed that he still ate all the rice you set aside, not leaving out a single grain."

Thao was surprised by the sophistication of the man she had known for less than a day. She smiled slightly, feeling her shoulders feel a little less heavy for the first time that day.

"Thank you." She spoke softly, not sure if she was thankful for the glass of wine, for the comment, or for something bigger that she hadn't yet named.

The night mist began to fall thicker, gradually covering the valley lights in the distance. The two sat next to each other on the wooden steps, saying nothing more, just quietly looking into the darkness, while behind them, the inn's light was still on, casting a warm golden halo amidst the mountain cold that was getting deeper and deeper.

From inside the house, there was the sound of Nhat Minh's window closing softly. He must have fallen asleep after an exciting day because a stranger showed him how to draw contour lines. Thuy Duong's mumbling voice studying echoed out faintly through the thin wooden walls. As for Gia Binh's room, it was dark, without a sound, as usual.

Thao looked at the halo of light shining from the kitchen window, thought of the strange amount of money that was regularly transferred into her account every month, thought of the map with red lines that Khai Dang quickly hid, thought of Mr. Bay Trinh's warning that afternoon. All those fragments had not yet been assembled into a clear shape, but she was sensitive enough to feel something silently shifting under the quiet mist of the pass, like mountain rocks silently cracking from the inside before an entire hillside collapsed without anyone having time to react.

"Are you cold?" Khai Dang asked softly, noticing that Thao shivered a bit.

"It's okay, I'm used to it." Thao replied, pulling the hem of her coat tighter, trying to dispel the feeling of insecurity that had just risen. "Thank you for the wine. It's late, you should go rest, you have work tomorrow."

Khai Dang nodded, stood up, but before turning back in, he looked back at her again, his eyes had something to say but hadn't finished saying it, then stopped, just softly greeted and walked inside. Thao sat for a while longer, alone in the increasingly thick fog, until the cold seeped through her coat, forcing her to stand up, close the door, and return to the fitful sleep of an acquaintance who carries a heavy burden even in her dreams.