Chapter 6 — The Machine of Dreams

Part II — Afternoons in the Studio

October passed faster than Bảo Châu imagined, bringing with it a new rhythm of life that she never thought she would be so familiar with. Every afternoon after school, instead of cycling straight home, she turned onto the road leading to the factory building at the end of the school, where the fluorescent lights were always on until it was completely dark, where the smell of burning plastic and motor oil had become a familiar part of her olfactory memory, no longer as strange as the first days.

Bảo Châu's desk, once covered in dust and neglected for a long year, was now filled with drawings, test material samples, and a cup filled with colored pencils that she brought from home. She had pasted on the wall above the table a series of sketches of each stage of the robot — from the original bare iron frame to the soft, elegant bird-like form gradually emerging from behind its new shell.

"You know what," Tấn Phát said one afternoon, leaning back in his chair, looking at the row of drawings on Bảo Châu's wall with admiration. "This desk corner now looks more like an art gallery than a factory corner."

"Thank you for the compliment, although I'm not sure if it's a sincere compliment," Bảo Châu replied, not looking up from her unfinished drawing.

"It's a real compliment," Tấn Phát affirmed. "Compared to last year's dusty old corner of the desk, this is truly a giant step forward. The same goes for our entire team - from the day you joined, the working atmosphere has become much happier. Before, we were just stuck on the computer with tools all day long, no one talked about anything other than technical stuff."

That comment made Bảo Châu feel warm, but she also realized that what Tấn Phát said was not entirely accurate. It wasn't just her presence that changed the factory atmosphere — Hoàng Nam himself also changed, although much more slowly and imperceptibly. He still maintained a serious, meticulous demeanor down to the smallest detail, but the tense moments of silence from before had now been replaced by short conversations, sometimes with rare awkward jokes that he tried to utter, making both Tấn Phát and Bảo Châu laugh because of the adorable awkwardness in the expression of a person who was not used to making jokes.

Bảo Châu's design work was no longer limited to the outer shell alone. She began participating in the team's strategy meetings, where everyone discussed how to position the focus and how to arrange parts to be both effective and aesthetically pleasing. At first she just sat and listened, but gradually, her opinions — although stemming from aesthetic intuition rather than formal technical knowledge — began to be taken seriously by the team.

"If you put the picking arm in this position," she said in a meeting, pointing to the master plan being projected on the screen, "the center of gravity will be too much forward, and it will look unbalanced. Why not try moving it closer to the center axis?"

"Um," Hoàng Nam thoughtfully looked at the drawing, lightly tapping his fingers on the table - a habit she realized he still did when thinking deeply. "Aesthetically, it's certainly more balanced. But let me check to see if that move affects the operating radius of the gripper arm."

After a few minutes of calculating on the simulation software, he looked up, a bit of surprise in his eyes. "Actually, it is still within the allowable limit. Bảo Châu's proposal is not only more beautiful, but also helps the robot be more stable when moving at high speed."

That moment, one of many similar moments that had become increasingly familiar in recent weeks, made Bảo Châu feel a quiet but steady sense of pride. She's no longer an outsider who just draws things to look good — her opinions were actually shaping how the robot operates, even though she's never taken a formal mechanical engineering course.

Đức, the guy in charge of the team's mechanical part, a quiet guy but surprisingly skillful, also gradually became closer to Bảo Châu through the afternoons of working together. "Before, we always had to guess how to make the design pleasing to the eye," he said once, when the two of them were working together to rework a small part of the robot frame. "Now that we have you, we don't have to be 'reluctant designers' ourselves anymore."

But not every afternoon was smooth. There were days when the whole team had to stay late at night to solve a stubborn technical error, when the robot continuously failed to respond properly to control commands, or when a newly installed part did not match the rest despite careful measurements on the drawing. At those times, the atmosphere in the workshop became tense, and Bảo Châu learned to recognize the small signs on Hoàng Nam's face - clenched teeth, fingers tapping faster than usual on the table - signaling how heavy the pressure was on him.

"Do you want to rest for a bit?" she asked one such evening, when the clock was almost eight o'clock and the robot was still stubbornly refusing to follow the programmed sequence of commands.

"No way," Hoàng Nam replied, his voice tense, his eyes still glued to the screen. "The regional qualifiers are less than two months away, we don't have time to rest."

"Sometimes resting a little helps you see the problem faster," Bảo Châu said, gently but firmly. "I remember when I was studying drawing, there were times when I was stumped for ideas all day, but I just had to get up to make a cup of tea and turn around and naturally see what was wrong."

Hoàng Nam stopped typing, looked at her for a moment, then sighed, rubbing the back of his neck - a tired gesture he rarely showed in front of others. "Maybe you're right," he admitted, his voice softening. "I forgot that I also need to rest sometimes."

The two walked out into the hallway and sat down on the steps in front of the factory door, where they could see the night sky sparkling with a few rare stars amidst the city lights. The cool air of the late autumn evening penetrated through the thin uniform, bringing with it a pleasant quietness after many stressful hours in the workshop.

"Thank you," Hoàng Nam said, breaking the silence after a few minutes. "Not just because of the suggestion to rest earlier, but because... in general, because of everything. Since the day I joined the team, things have been much different."

"Different for better or worse?" Bảo Châu asked, half joking and half serious.

"Better, definitely better," Hoàng Nam replied, without hesitation, making Bảo Châu surprised by that decisiveness. "I used to think that for a team to function well, everyone just needed to be good at their profession. But now I realize that a truly strong team needs more than that - it needs people who know how to remind others to stop and breathe for a moment, who know how to see the beauty in things that seem to only have dry functions."

Bảo Châu felt her heart beat a beat faster at that sincere comment, a feeling that had now become familiar whenever she was near Hoàng Nam, although she still did not dare to name it exactly. She looked up at the night sky, trying to hide the smile that was slowly spreading on her lips.

"Then maybe I should ask for a few more hours of extracurricular activities for the sake of 'rest reminders'," she joked, trying to lighten the somewhat overly serious atmosphere.

Hoàng Nam burst out laughing, a rare laugh of relief resounding in the quiet space. "Let me suggest to teacher Vinh," he replied, his eyes sparkling under the hallway light. "Though I think what you bring to the team is much more valuable than the few hours of activity recorded in the book."

They sat there for a while longer, not saying anything, simply enjoying the rare moment of peace amid the busyness of the days preparing for the upcoming competition. Bảo Châu realized that the afternoons in the factory - with all the fatigue and stress, but also full of warm little moments like this - had gradually become a part of her that she couldn't imagine what her school life would be like without them.

When the two stood up and returned to the workshop to continue their unfinished work, Tấn Phát and Đức had almost finished cleaning up and were ready to leave. "Where did you two disappear to?" Tấn Phát asked, his eyes glancing meaningfully back and forth between Bảo Châu and Hoàng Nam. "We searched and couldn't find it."

"Let's go out and rest for a bit," Hoàng Nam replied, his tone returning to calm as if no conversation had just happened, although Bảo Châu noticed that he avoided looking directly into Tấn Phát's eyes. "I think there's something wrong with the error code just now. Try correcting the command line that controls the arm."

Sure enough, after just a few minutes of editing, the robot executed the correct sequence of commands, the picking arm neatly extended and then retracted as designed. The whole group shouted with joy, laughter dispelling all the fatigue of a long day of work. On the bike ride home that night, Bảo Châu hummed a cheerful melody, her heart still lingering on Hoàng Nam's words on the steps, and wondered if afternoons like these, those small, quiet moments, were silently weaving something bigger than a competition machine.