Chapter 6 — The One Who Counts Bridges

Mr. Bay Nhuan lives in a house with a green corrugated iron roof, located between a car repair yard and a row of material warehouses. There are no ornamental trees planted in the front yard, only old railings are lined up in rows, each section painted with a black line. Linh An arrived at 8 o'clock, when he was using steel wire to tie the handrail of a shopping cart.

“I found a map,” she said.

“Found a copy.”

“Signed by Mr. Minh.”

“Who signs is not as important as what they do afterward.”

“Do you have the recording?”

Mr. Bay put down the pliers. “What do you want to ask first?”

“The story of my father.”

"Good. People who want to know the dead usually have to start with the living."

He led her into a small room with a wooden table, three radios with their covers off, and an old map hanging on the wall. On the map, the Moc River is just a light blue line, but every bridge has black lines on the back of the paper. Mr. Bay took out the notebook and opened the page with the words "Number Seven - the day the water changed direction".

“The night the bridge collapsed, your father was not in the middle of the span,” he said. “He's under the north abutment, where the connection begins.”

“The record records him at the south measuring table.”

“The minutes prefer a place with a table to a place with water.”

“What do you see?”

"I saw Hoa pull a boy off the railing. Then he turned around."

“Come back for what?”

“Find a woman.”

Linh An held the pencil tightly. "Who?"

"I don't know. That person went first."

“Are you sure?”

"I counted the people. Three people went through the connection, two people went through the abutment, one person came back. Hoa couldn't pull the boy and be at the measuring table at the same time."

“So how many people did he save?”

"Three. Maybe four, if you count the woman."

“Why didn't you say it in your testimony?”

Mr. Bay looked out into the yard, where a section of railing shook in the wind. "I said. They didn't write it down."

“Who is ‘they’?”

“The person holding the record.”

"Name?"

"You have the map and the signature. Do you want me to read the names to make the story easier to tell?"

Linh An was silent. Mr. Bay is right. From the day she received the card, she always wanted a voice to conclude for her. Because if Mr. Bay says her name, the responsibility will shift from what she sees to what others remember.

“I want to know why you started marking the bridge,” she said.

Mr. Bay took off the cover of the radio and pointed to the small coil of copper wire. "After the collapse, they removed Bridge Number Seven's license plate. They said they would have to re-write it from the beginning. But with the license plate gone, people don't know who to call when the light breaks down. I used paint to mark the span so the crew wouldn't go the wrong way."

“The number on the mark is the number of beats?”

"Part of it. The other part is the number of people who know the way."

“The coordinate table has a triangle symbol.”

"The triangle is the house where someone holds the key. The two dots are dead lights. The circle is where the water rises."

Linh An looked around. “This is a mapping system.”

"It's not a map. It's a collective memory."

Mr. Bay took a plastic box from the cabinet and placed it on the table. Inside were pieces of paper cut from meeting minutes, each with a signature or note. One sheet says “temporary access”; Another sheet says "not within the scope of the project"; The third sheet has only one red line: "If necessary, remove it later."

“Where did you get it?”

"The work team asked for copies. Some people kept them, others returned them. I picked up any copies that were thrown in the trash."

“Why did you give me the memory card?”

“I don't deliver.”

“You keep saying that.”

“Because it's true.”

A motorbike stopped in front of the yard. Tung walked in and put the bag of bread on the table. "Uncle Nhuan, my mother told me not to let strangers in today."

“She's right.”

“You are stranger?”

“I'm an eavesdropper.”

Tung smiled, then saw Linh An. “Have you found the photo frame store yet?”

“You know?”

“I took Uncle Nhuan there last year.”

Mr. Bay looked at him. Tung stopped laughing.

“Someone has been following you since the day at the bridge,” he said. "A white car, with license plate 17. Uncle Nhuan said not to talk, but since you're here, talking won't make it go any faster."

Khai arrived ten minutes later, carrying a scroll of drawings. He put them on the table and asked Mr. Bay about the connection. Mr. Bay did not answer but took a wooden ruler and placed it on the map.

“This section is not a way out,” he said. “It is a path that leads people to a place where they can continue going.”

“Where is the difference?” Khai asked.

“The escape route ends at a high place. The path that leads people must connect with another person.”

Khai opened the drawing. “If the water exceeds 1.2 meters, the old warehouse connection will be flooded. But there are steps to the warehouse roof.”

“The roof of the warehouse has been cut off.”

"I know."

"Why?" Linh An asked.

Khai pointed to the additional drawing. “They built a concrete wall for material trucks to pass through. Cutting the ladder is not in the design, but the workers follow instructions on site."

“Who directs?”

Khai looked at Mr. Bay. “Someone took a picture.”

Mr. Bay stood up and went to the largest radio. He removed the back cover, revealing an empty compartment below the wires. From there he took out a cassette tape wrapped in oilcloth.

“This band?” Linh An asked.

“It's not the tape you heard.”

“Is there a meeting?”

“There are human voices. You will hear the name. But name is not synonymous with crime.”

He gave her the bandage, but kept one end. “You have to promise two things.”

“What?”

“Don't play the tape until you've listened to it all. Do not publish the voice of someone who does not know they are being recorded without checking the context."

“You know we are doing journalism.”

“I know Yen knows how to ask for permission. I don't know if you know.”

Linh An received the tape. “I promise.”

At the cooperative, Diem helped them build an old tape reader from two different parts. Tung cleaned the magnetic head with a cotton swab, Khai checked the power source and Yen recorded each milestone. They do not connect the machine to the network. Diem said if the tape has been cut, no software can return a lost sentence.

The tape begins with the sound of a ceiling fan, the sound of a chair being pulled out, and a male voice reading the list. Linh An recognized Tran Duc Minh's voice from press conferences. He talked about the progress of site clearance, emphasizing that the public annex must be "simple so that people can easily understand".

Another voice asked about the ramp under Bridge Seven.

“If included in the annex, the corridor area will increase,” Minh said. “Unable to approve this quarter.”

“But it exists,” the other voice replied.

“For now.”

“The maintenance team uses it all year round.”

“The maintenance team is not the planning agency.”

Khai leaned towards the machine. Linh An writes down each sentence in her notebook.

A sound of flipping paper. Then came the voice of Hoa, her father, clearer than any part she had ever heard on the old phone.

"If you write it as temporary, when the water rises, people won't know where to go."

Minh replied: “Mr. Hoa, your task is data. Where people go is the responsibility of the local government.”

“Data do not separate themselves from people.”

“You're making things difficult.”

“I'm recording correctly.”

Band noise for a few seconds. Yen signaled that no one spoke. From the background there was the sound of a woman coughing, very softly. Linh An realized it was her mother.

Van did not sit in the room. She stood outside the glass window, Look at the cassette player but don't walk past it.

In the tape, a person whispered: "Miss Van, if you sign here, the support will be disbursed immediately. Your house is down the hall, they will check again later."

Van replied: "I don't know the data."

“I just confirmed that my husband was reminded of the process.”

Hoa stood up. The chair pulled hard on the floor. “Don't give this to her.”

Minh's voice was higher: "Sit down."

Then the tape was cut. It's not noise, but the first sound stops suddenly, then the machine runs empty for a few cycles. The remaining time was nearly a minute, with only the sound of the fan and the sound of the door closing.

Linh An looked at her mother through the glass window. Van turned away.

“The tape was cut in the right place,” Yen said.

“Who cut it?” Khai asked.

“Don't know yet.”

“But enough to see that Mr. Minh knows the way.”

Linh An took off the bandage and put it in her bag. She didn't say that what hurt her was not Minh's voice. It was her mother's voice in a meeting she never knew she was attending.

Van walked in after everyone had turned off the phone. She looked at the four people, then looked at the tape.

“Mom, did you hear that?” Linh An asked.

“Mom heard that then.”

“What did you sign?”

“A confirmation.”

“Confirm that you know the procedure?”

“Mom signed to receive support money.”

Khai stood up, but Yen held his hand. Van continued, her voice even as if she was reading a menu:

"Your father didn't want me to sign. He said if I signed, people would use my signature as evidence against him. I still signed."

Linh An heard the sound of tape running in her head.

"Why?"

"Because at that time I was in the hospital and needed leg surgery. My father said it was okay, but I knew that if I didn't have money I wouldn't be able to go back to school."

“Dad, do you know?”

"Know."

“Does he blame you?”

“No. He just didn't say a word to me for three days.”

Linh An turned the tape in her hand. “Do you have the original?”

"Are not."

“Do you know who keeps it?”

Van looked at Mr. Bay. “The person who kept the original copy didn't want Hoa's daughter to look for it.”

Mr. Bay did not deny it. He took the notebook and wrote a new line: “Number four — the living know.”

That afternoon, Linh An sent Yen a copy of the tape's content, without sending the audio file. She clearly wrote down the sentences she heard, marked the uncertain parts and requested that Ms. Van's name not be published. Yen agreed, but said the Infrastructure Department had sent a document requesting the station to hand over the records related to Thinh.

“They know ice exists?” Linh An asked.

"Maybe they just guessed. Maybe they heard us turn on the phone."

Diem walked over and put an envelope on the table. "Someone sent it to the cooperative. No name recorded."

Linh An opened it. Inside is a screenshot of Thinh's account access history. A single line is circled in red: 9:17 a.m., his account logged in from the server address of the Cau Moc Joint Venture, after the time he was confirmed dead.

On the back of the photo is a sentence written in black ink:

"Don't just count the bridges. Count the people who opened the door."

Linh An looked at the time on the clock. 9:16 a.m.

One minute later, all computers in the cooperative lost connection at the same time.