Chapter 2 — The Mask Isn't Real

"How long are you going to keep it a secret from me, or wait until I read it in the newspaper?"

Cao Nha Uyen stood at the factory door, still holding the bag of baked goods she bought in the district town, her voice mixed with half blame and half worry. Uyen Nhi turned around in surprise, her hand was in the middle of brushing a layer of scallop powder onto a unicorn head, the brush stopped in mid-air, causing a milky white drop to fall onto the cement floor.

"You know?"

"Nhat Vu called me yesterday, asking if I knew about the auction. I was planning on stopping by this afternoon to ask you, but I didn't expect you to still be sitting here scanning colors as if nothing had happened." Nha Uyen put the bag of cakes on the table, pulled up a stool and sat down opposite, her eyes scanned the stack of wooden molds, past the colored paper drying pole, stopping at the corner of the wall where Mr. Tuyen's photo hung. "Did you sleep well last night?"

"Not much." Uyen Nhi put down the brush and wiped her hands on an old cloth tied around her waist. "I stayed up until three in the morning, going through all of your books, trying to find if you had any notes about being forged before. There was nothing. Only this."

She took the business card from her pocket and placed it on the table in front of Nha Uyen. The woman looked down, and for a very short moment — so short that if Uyen Nhi hadn't been watching intently she would have missed it — something flashed across Nha Uyen's face. Not really scared. Like a very slight frown, like people frown when they hear about an old pain that they thought was healed.

"It's your business card." Nha Uyen laughed, her voice returning to normal so quickly that Uyen Nhi wondered if she had imagined the frown from before. "I gave it to your teacher a long time ago, probably when I first opened the gallery."

"On the back is the teacher's letter. 'Nha Uyen promised to ask for help - Tuyen's story.' Do you know who Tuyen is?"

This time the silence lasted a little longer. Nha Uyen picked up the business card and flipped it over as if she were rereading her own handwriting from a long time ago, even though in reality she was just buying time.

"I'm someone who was an apprentice at the factory, many years before you." She put down her business card and gently pushed it towards Uyen Nhi. "It's an old story, my dear. Now more important is the auction. I know someone who works in the Southeast Asian art department at Indochine. Let me call to see if I can get any information."

Uyen Nhi nodded, but in her mind she wrote the name "Tuyen" in a corner, along with that frown. She was not someone who easily dismissed a detail just because it was said in a gentle tone.

"Can you show me the photo of the shipment again?"

Uyen Nhi opened her phone, zoomed in on a close-up photo of Ms. Hang, then a photo of Uncle Cuoi, and finally the corner of the mouth where the crescent moon mark should have been. Nha Uyen stared intently, long enough for Uyen Nhi to realize she was really considering, not just being polite.

"This eye drawing..." Nha Uyen tapped her finger on the screen, where Ms. Hang's eyes were. "It's so perfect. My teacher never draws eyes evenly like that, even in the last years his hands have been shaking. He always leaves one side a little more lopsided than the other. That's how he speaks so it's soulful, people's eyes are never absolutely symmetrical."

"That's right, miss. But this is even more certain — there is no crescent mark in the oral cavity."

Nha Uyen looked up, her eyes questioning. "Which crescent moon?"

Uyen Nhi paused. She was used to saying it as if everyone knew it, but in reality there were only two people in the world who had ever held it completely - and one of them had been lying under a foot of ground for two years.

"It's a secret mark that my teacher used to authenticate his work in the last years of his life. I can't say it more clearly, I sympathize - not because I don't trust you, but because the true meaning of a secret mark is that the fewer people know, the better. That's what my teacher taught me."

Nha Uyen looked at her for a moment, then nodded, seemingly satisfied with the answer rather than annoyed at being rejected. "You're right to be careful. Now what are you going to do next?"

"I plan to go to Hanoi and meet directly with Indochine's representative here. The website says there is a representative office on Trang Thi street, managed by a man named Ho Bao Ky."

"I've heard that name before. A few times in the collector world, it was mentioned that he was a cool person, bringing many Vietnamese items to the international market at high prices. I thought that was a good thing for the craft village." Nha Uyen laughed softly, there was no joy in that laugh. "Now that I think about it, it's a bit creepy."

They sat in silence for a while, the old ceiling fan whirring above their heads, the blades spinning slowly not enough to dispel the sweltering heat of the late summer afternoon. Uyen Nhi looked around the workshop - twelve wooden molds arranged neatly on the shelf, each with a different face: Uncle Cuoi grinned, Mr. Dia had a big belly, a fierce lion head but still had a sense of humor in his bulging eyes. This is the entire inheritance that the teacher left behind, not money, not land, but hand-carved wooden blocks and a book of color formulas that only she fully understood.

"Do you remember when you first entered the factory?" Nha Uyen suddenly asked, her voice lowered, as if she wanted to ease the tension. "At that time, my teacher often complained to me that none of his students were willing to study long enough to be able to get to the point of labeling. One of them criticized the job as a very difficult job but the salary was not much. Another, after a few months of studying, wanted to go out on his own and open a bigger factory, work faster, and sell cheaper. My teacher kept talking until he was willing to stay for eight years."

"I remember." Uyen Nhi smiled slightly, remembering the first evenings when her hand blistered because she held the brush the wrong way. The teacher didn't scold her, he just quietly placed his hand on her hand, adjusting the angle of her wrist. "The teacher said making a mask is not difficult, the difficulty is being able to endure the repetition. Every day, I put paper on it, every day I wait for it to dry, every day I mix the same color as yesterday. Whoever can endure that repetition will go all the way."

"That's him." Nha Uyen looked far into the yard in front of the factory, where the afternoon sun shined through the old longan canopy, casting patchy shadows on the brick floor. "She has known him since they were young. She traveled around the northern craft villages looking for supplies for her small art gallery. He was already famous in the world at that time, but never accepted many students at the same time. He said that teaching a trade is like raising plants. If you are greedy and plant too many seeds at once, no plant will have enough land to grow."

"Miss Uyen." Uyen Nhi spoke, her voice slow. "Should I report it to the police?"

Nha Uyen looked at her, silently considering her answer for a long time before speaking. "Do you have any evidence? Besides the fact that you said you know a secret that you cannot reveal the details of? The police will need more than that, and once you report, the matter will be taken out of your hands, into documents, into procedures, it can take up to a year to complete while the other party continues to sell."

"So do you think I should find out for myself first?"

"I think you're the only person in this world who can look at a mask and immediately know whether it's real or fake with just your eyes and fingertips. That's a weapon that no one else has, even the best police. Go ahead and find out, but—" Nha Uyen grabbed her hand and squeezed it gently, "—be careful. Don't go alone to strange places. It's good to have Nhat Vu with you."

Uyen Nhi nodded, but her mind was still stuck with an unasked question. She watched Nha Uyen stand up, carry the bag of baked goods that was somewhat flattened because it had been left for a long time, walk out the door, and told her before getting in the car that she would call as soon as she heard from her acquaintance at Indochine.

Only when the shadow of Nha Uyen's motorbike disappeared behind the bamboo grove at the beginning of the alley did Uyen Nhi return to the table, reopen her teacher's notebook, and find the last page - where there was a list of initials, the names of former students who had passed through the workshop during the forty years Mr. Tuyen practiced. Most people just write down their last name and the year they entered and the year they left. She followed each line, her finger stopping at a line that was crossed out with a thick ink, almost completely erased, only the first two letters could be faintly read: "P.K." — and year of release: twenty-two years ago.

No reason. There are no further notes, except for a small exclamation point at the end of the line, written in a different pen, apparently added later, as a reminder that was never explained.

Uyen Nhi took a photo of the notebook page with her phone, then sent a text message to Kieu Nhat Vu: "Are you free this weekend? I need to go to Hanoi to meet someone, and maybe I need your help to look up some things that only journalists can look up."

The reply came less than a minute later, accompanied by a smirking emoji: "Finally have something interesting to write about? I'm going. What time do we leave?"

She looked out the factory door, where the afternoon shadows were falling on the brick yard, the unused wooden molds still lay silently on the shelves, waiting for another Mid-Autumn Festival to approach. But for the first time in two years of running the factory alone, Uyen Nhi feels like she's not just preserving a profession — she's about to embark on a quest that she doesn't even know will lead.