Chapter 1 — The One Who Counts Bridges

The Infrastructure Department's folding table is placed between two white painted lines, close to the railing of Ben Cu Bridge, where people often stop to buy boiled corn, not to read maps. Linh An put down her tablet, opened the status data layer and looked at the bridge name appearing in the blue box.

BEN_CU_09.

On profile, the bridge has nine main spans, two approach spans and a walkway located on the east side. The walkway was grayed out in last month's update, noting: "no longer in use, awaiting demolition".

“Where do you measure from?” Phan Khai stood on the other side of the table, holding a helmet in one hand and a laser ruler in the other.

"From the abutment on the south bank. But if calculating the load-bearing span, we must also include the connection to the old warehouse."

“That section is not within the scope of today's inventory.”

“Within the map, yes.”

Khai looked at her for a moment. He has a tanned face, his eye contours are marked by many seasons standing outside the construction site. There is no company name on the reflective vest, only a piece of fabric with the logo removed. Linh An once heard people say he no longer worked for the Cau Moc partnership, but didn't know why.

“The map was not run over by a truck,” Khai said. “The ground does.”

“So today I'll measure both.”

The wind blew up from the river bed, carrying with it the smell of mud and motor oil. Below the bridge, small boats crowded around the wharf. A man pulled the anchor rope and called out to ask if they were measuring to dam the bridge or build the bridge. Linh An replied that they were doing an inventory, but the other person turned away before hearing the end of the sentence.

Ha Luu has seven bridges across the Moc River, if you just look at the traffic map. If you count pipeline bridges, maintenance bridges and pedestrian spans connecting mudflats, the number varies by agency. The Department of Transportation recorded seven. The Infrastructure Committee scored eight because of the addition of the aqueduct. Khai's maintenance team said there were ten, because they had to go through ten places to change light bulbs and block people during flood season. Linh An accepted this job because her cooperative was hired to create a unique data set for the Song Moc Corridor project. A single set of data, as compact as a meeting promise, is often where deviations are squeezed into a single number.

She walked along the railing, took her camera and took pictures of the code plates mounted on the beams. Code copy B09-1 is still available. B09-2 lost. B09-3 is covered with paint. At the gap between the ninth span and the connection to the old warehouse, there is an arc-shaped black streak, as high as an adult's shoulder. Not a haphazard spray paint mark. It consists of a vertical line, a horizontal line and two small dots, like the way children write numbers in a notebook.

Khai bent down and rubbed the edge of the paint with his fingernail. “Newer than the protective paint.”

“Who marked it?”

“If I knew, I wouldn't have called you here.”

Linh An took a ruler and measured the distance between the lines on the mark. Those lines are not the number ten, but ten short lines arranged in two groups of five. Next to it is an arrow pointing towards the bottom of the bridge.

“Someone counts,” she said.

“What do people count for?”

“To know what I'm missing.”

Khai did not laugh. He turned to call Tung, the apprentice who was replacing reflective tape on the way down to the wharf. Le Tung is seventeen years old, thin, his hair is cut askew because he uses his own clippers, and he carries a tool bag with enough screwdrivers and a large flashlight.

“Tung, have you seen this sign before?”

Tung looked down, his face as if he was being asked about something he tried to hide. "Yes. There's also on Bridge Number Seven. There's also under the pedestrian bridge on the market side."

“Have you told anyone?”

"Tell Mr. Nhuan. He said to leave it as it is."

“Mr. Bay Nhuan?” Linh An ask.

“He doesn't like being called grandpa.” Tung put the coil down. "If you tell whoever deletes it, that person knows what they deleted."

Khai looked at Linh An, but she was bending down to capture the paint mark. The tablet vibrates. A notification from the system: the east aisle data layer has been replaced with a new version, the editor is account BHT-ADM, at 14:03 yesterday. History does not allow opening the old version because her access is only "field editor".

“Khai,” she said, “do you have a structural drawing of the old warehouse connection?”

“No longer in the file sent to me.”

“But you ever tested it?”

“Ever.”

“How many beats?”

Khai wears a hat. "Eight small spans. A steel beam connecting the side canal. Not beautiful, not good enough for vehicles, but enough for pedestrians and shopping carts."

“So the Old Ben Bridge has seventeen connecting spans, not eleven like this profile.”

“No. You're mixing the main bridge with the maintenance entrance.”

"People using the maintenance path do not have the right to separate themselves from the bridge when the flood occurs."

A tanker truck passed by, making the bridge surface vibrate. Linh An waited for the vibration to subside and then entered the coordinates of the paint streak. The returned location is 1.8 meters off the map, exactly the width of a slope leading down to the old warehouse.

On the south bank, a delivery boy stopped in front of the table and gave her a clear plastic envelope. He wore an orange shirt, with the logo of an electronics store on his helmet.

“Is that Ms. Linh An?”

"Correct."

"Someone asked me to deliver this. They said they could only deliver it in person."

“Who asked?”

"A guy stood at the bus stop. He didn't say his name."

“What does he look like?”

"Blue shirt, burn mark on left hand. That's all I remember. You asked for my name so I accepted."

In the envelope was a small memory card covered with white tape. There are no words. Linh An is not plugged into the tablet. She used her phone to take pictures of the front and back, then put them in the anti-static bag in the measuring kit.

Khai looked at the bag. “Do you often get secret deliveries while working?”

“No. Usually people just send me the wrong spreadsheet.”

“So today is a special day.”

Linh An was about to ask more when a portable speaker at the boiled corn shop broadcast the local news. A monotone female voice said engineer Le Quoc Thinh, a data consultant for the Song Moc Corridor project, was found dead in his private apartment this morning. Authorities initially assumed he committed suicide. The newsletter reminded him that he had participated in reviewing the current status of bridges on the Moc River, then transferred to the records department.

Linh An's hand stopped on the screen.

Khai finished the sentence and then looked down at the river. “Thinh is not a person prone to suicide.”

“You know him?”

"No dear. I once saw him holding my measurement sheet and asking why the number of beats on it was more than the number of beats in the appendix."

“What did he ask you?”

“Ask who told me to fix it.”

“How do you answer?”

Khai shrugged. "I said no one told me. I stood under the bridge and wrote down as many as I could count."

Linh An looked at the black paint mark again. Ten small lines are located below the bridge's surface, where people on the street cannot see them. If it was just mischief, the artist chose a place that was too laborious. If it's a signal, it's for those who know how to bend down.

They finished the measurement at four thirty. Linh An could not take a drawing of the connection, but saved twelve coordinate points, seven photos of paint marks and a video of the water surface rising close to the foot of the slope. Before leaving, Tung pulled his sleeve Miss.

“Don't open the memory card on the office computer.”

"Why?"

"Uncle Nhuan said that any computer that has a network is no longer mine."

“What else did he say?”

Tung looked towards the foot of the bridge, where a man in a blue shirt was standing behind the signpost. When Linh An turned back, that person had gone towards the market.

"Uncle said," Tung said, "a bridge that is erased from the map can still support people. But people who don't know it exists won't be able to find the way."

Linh An picked up the phone, greeted Khai and drove back to the cooperative. In the city at rush hour, car lights form strands of light that drift slowly across the bridge. She passed Bridge Seven and reflexively slowed down. On the underside of the railing, right at the turn onto the residential road, she saw another black streak: five short strokes, then a gap, then four.

Ripe.

On the tablet, the current map still shows eight flood-accessible bridges. She zoomed in on the western area, where the old warehouse passage used to be. A white patch appeared, larger than the bridge shape, like an erased mark that had not yet covered the background.

That night, Linh An sat alone in the cooperative's office, turning off the network connection before inserting the memory card into the offline device. The card only has one folder named “dem_lai”. Inside were three files: a coordinate table, four photos of the bridge piers, and a two-minute-and-seventeen-second audio clip.

The sound began with the sound of metal hitting metal, followed by a low, hoarse male voice.

“If you keep counting according to the appendix, when the water rises there will be a missing path.”

Another voice asked: “Who is responsible for this number?”

The first person replied: "The one who signs. Not the one who counts."

The recording stops there. But before turning it off, Linh An heard a very small sound in the background: the sound of a cassette player turning on, then a woman's voice calling her name when she was a child.

“An, don't stand close to the edge of the bridge.”

Her mother had not mentioned that sentence for twelve years.

Linh An sat motionless in front of the black screen. Outside the window, cars continued to cross the bridge marked number nine. She took out her notebook and wrote down the first line: "How many bridges are there on the Moc River?"

Then she underlined it twice, because the real question wasn't how many bridges there were. It's who decides which trees are allowed to exist.