Chapter 5 — The Mask Isn't Real

The inclined searchlight was the first thing Uyen Nhi installed when she returned to the factory, even though it was nearly eleven o'clock at night and Nhat Vu was yawning until tears were shed on the bus from Hanoi to Yen Lieu village.

"Aren't you going to sleep first?" Nhat Vu asked, leaning against the door frame, his eyes still closed.

"I need to be sure before I can sleep." Uyen Nhi placed Ms. Hang's mask on the wooden stand, adjusted the angle of the table lamp so that the diagonal light fell into the mouth at an angle of fifteen degrees - the exact angle that the teacher taught to reveal the engravings hidden under the last layer of paper. "Look here."

Under the diagonal light, the engraving appeared clearer than in the afternoon in the shop lights — a single crescent moon, with no small strokes inside, located behind the left ear. Uyen Nhi took out another mask from the drawer, one of the last real works the teacher left behind before he passed away, placed them side by side under the same corner of the lamp.

The difference is as clear as two signatures of two different people. On the real mask, the mark is deep in the mouth cavity, the two crescent moon strokes interlock so delicately that if one did not know in advance, one would think it was just a random scratch in the wood of the mold.

"It's as clear as day." Nhat Vu had already woken up and looked closely over Uyen Nhi's shoulder. "The person who made this fake knew the mask recipe almost perfectly — the paper backing, the lining, the color mix were all correct — but they used the wrong type of stamp, right?"

"That's right. And that's not a random mistake. It's the old style of mark, the one my teacher used before changing to the new style about twenty years ago." Uyen Nhi sat down, pulled the cardboard box containing all the factory's old books out to the middle of the floor, and began searching more systematically than the night before. "Which means the person who made this left the factory, or stopped communicating with you, before that mark. If I find the exact year you changed your mark, I'll be able to narrow the list of suspects down to a few names."

They searched for nearly two hours, dividing each notebook according to the year and month written on the spine, mostly notebooks recording orders, seasonal color recipes, and lists of regular customers. At nearly one o'clock in the morning, Nhat Vu exclaimed softly, pointing to a yellowed page in the notebook recording the year twenty-two years ago.

"Here it is. 'From now on, change the sign - move it into the mouth, add a cage. Only I and no one else know.'" Nhat Vu read aloud, his voice shaking slightly with excitement. "There's no reason written down, but right below there is a line that was scratched out, like he wrote it and then erased it."

Uyen Nhi took the notebook, brought it closer to the table lamp, trying to read the crossed out text. After a few minutes of careful scrutiny, she vaguely recognized a few words left under the layer of ink: "...unexpectedly, P.K...". The rest has been erased too thoroughly to be read in its entirety.

"P.K, same abbreviation in the student list I found yesterday." She turned to the end of the notebook, where there was a list of student names written by year, and found the exact year that marked the renewal. Right above the year line, a student's name was written more clearly than on the other lines, perhaps because it was the last line before the recording became much more careful and reserved: "Phan Khac Tuyen — entered the workshop at the age of twenty-six, left the workshop the same year and changed his mark."

There is no reason to leave the factory. There were no other notes, except for an unusual space between two lines, as if there was something the teacher had intended to write down but ultimately chose to stay silent.

Nhat Vu flipped through a few more pages before and after, looking for any details that could piece together the story. He stopped at a page of order notes, not far away, where a large contract was mentioned — "order of two hundred masks for an international delegation, delivered in three weeks" — and right below, a scribbled line that was much more scribbled than Mr. Tuyen's usual careful handwriting: "Nearly half the batch was damaged, the paper was peeling, the paint was cracked. Couldn't deliver enough in time. Lost the deal."

"Do you think it has anything to do with it?" Nhat Vu pointed to that line and looked up at Uyen Nhi. "The time recorded on this page nearly coincides with the year Phan Khac Tuyen left the factory."

Uyen Nhi took the notebook, flipped back and forth a few adjacent pages, trying to find more details but saw nothing more than a few numbers calculating the damage, crossed out and erased as if the writer was in a confused mood. No one was named as responsible. Only the damage was recorded, dryly, and then there was silence for the next several pages, as if for a long time afterward, Mr. Tuyen no longer wanted to write much.

"It's possible." Uyen Nhi nodded slightly, her heart heavy with a feeling that was hard to name - not quite sympathy, not quite suspicion, but an insecurity at the fact that she was revisiting a part of the past that her teacher had probably deliberately buried. "If a batch of damaged goods caused the factory to lose a large contract, and if someone was blamed for it, rightly or wrongly, it would be enough to explain why people left the factory in anger, and why they returned years later to counterfeit the very work of the person who kicked them out."

"Sounds understandable in a sad way." Nhat Vu closed the notebook and placed it aside carefully as if it were evidence of a case that happened a long time ago. "But easy to understand doesn't mean right. You need to know for sure before concluding anything."

"So there's a name." Nhat Vu sat down next to her, his voice lowered, no longer the excitement from before. "But I find it a bit strange, have you noticed? If this person was expelled for doing something seriously wrong, the books would usually clearly state the reason to warn the students in the future, or at least write a short sentence. There is only a blank space here."

Uyen Nhi nodded slowly. She thought of that as soon as she read the name Phan Khac Tuyen. A deliberate silence, not an accidental forgetfulness. She remembered Nha Uyen's slight frown when she saw the business card, remembered the vague words "it's an old story, dear" — and now, combined with the scratched out words, she has the feeling that the story of Phan Khac Tuyen is not simply the story of a student being expelled for making a mistake.

"Maybe you feel guilty." She said, more to herself than to Nhat Vu. "Maybe you fired this person in a situation where you're no longer sure you did the right thing later."

She stood up, went to the corner of the wall where Mr. Tuyen's photo hung, looked for a long time at the face in the photo - calm expression, eyes focused on the tip of the brush touching the wooden unicorn's eye. He was never perfect in her memory, but she always believed he was fair. Now, for the first time, she wondered if that belief was truly true for everyone who passed through this workshop's doors, or if it was true only for her.

"Should we go find Phan Khac Tuyen tomorrow?" Nhat Vu asked, tidying up the notebooks spread on the floor.

"Not yet." Uyen Nhi shook her head and turned to look at Nhat Vu. "I want to ask Ms. Uyen first, more frankly than yesterday, to see how much she knows about this matter. If she avoids it again, I will know where to find the answer myself."

Nhat Vu nodded, did not ask any more questions, just looked out the factory window, where the night sky of Yen Lieu village had turned dark blue and black, a few people's house lights were still flickering and still staying up late. Uyen Nhi packed up the fake mask and fake certificate in a separate box, carefully labeled it, and put it in a locked drawer along with the notebook with the words crossed out - starting, without knowing she was starting, a set of documents that she would later need more than she thought.

Before turning off the lights and going to bed, she texted Nha Uyen a short message: "Miss, can I come over to your house tomorrow? I have a few questions to ask in more detail about Tuyen's story."

The message showed up as read after just a few seconds, but it took nearly five minutes for the reply to come, unusually brief compared to Nha Uyen's usual, detailed texting style: "Okay. I'll be home all day tomorrow."

Uyen Nhi looked at that short message for a long time before turning off the screen, a vague but persistent premonition reminded her that tomorrow, the conversation with the woman she had always considered a relative would no longer be as easy as previous visits.

She lay down on a wooden counter in the corner of the workshop, where she still slept whenever there was an urgent batch of goods that needed to be watched overnight, her eyes looking up at the old tile roof, her ears still ringing with Nhat Vu's words. Easy to understand did not mean correct. She closed her eyes, trying to imagine Phan Khac Tuyen's face - a name, no face, no specific age, just two crossed out abbreviations and a short note about a batch of damaged goods from twenty-two years ago. Where was that person now, what was he doing, and why did he choose to return after more than two decades, not to confront, not to reclaim justice through a legitimate path, but by borrowing the same hands that were rejected to create copies bearing the name of the old teacher.

That night she slept fitfully, dreaming that she was standing in the middle of a room full of masks hanging on the wall, each face identical, and when she reached out to touch each one to look for the crescent moon mark, they were all empty, without a trace at all - as if her entire career as a teacher had never left behind anything that could distinguish the real from the fake.