Chapter 3 — The Photograph Without a Third Person

At the weekend, Ha's motorbike suddenly broke down in the middle of the road on her way to meet a customer to discuss a family photography contract. The sound of the engine sputtering and then dying in the middle of a small street she had never been to forced her to walk to find the nearest car repair shop.

The shop is hidden in an alley, the sign simply reads the words "Car Repair" in white paint on a rusty corrugated iron background. Inside, a man was bending over another car, his hands covered in oil, his old T-shirt soaked with sweat even though it wasn't too hot.

"Dear, something happened to my car, it suddenly turned off in the middle of the road," Ha said, pulling the car in.

The man looked up. And in that moment, time seemed to freeze around Ha.

That's the face in the photo.

Not a vague similarity, not an illusion caused by her thinking too much these past few days. It was exactly the face she had enlarged dozens of times on the computer screen — high nose bridge, square jaw, and now when she looked at it in person, she also recognized one more detail that the photo could not convey: his eyes carried a quiet fatigue, like that of someone who has been used to living in the dark for so long that even the light of day has become a stranger.

"What's wrong with you?" the man asked, a bit confused by Ha's staring eyes.

"No... nothing," she stammered, trying to regain her composure. "My car suddenly shut down and couldn't start it again."

He walked over, checked the speakers, then opened the seat to see the fuel tank. "It's probably just a damp spark plug, let me see." He bent down to work, his fingers quickly removing each screw with the expertise of someone who had been doing this job for a long time. Ha stood next to him, trying to observe him as discreetly as possible, her heart pounding.

She saw a faint scar on his left wrist, about three centimeters long, long since healed but still leaving a pale ridge on the skin. Somehow, that detail made her even more certain about something — even though she couldn't exactly name what it was yet.

"Done," he said, wiping his hands on a rag hanging next to the car. "The spark plug was damp due to the rain a few days ago. I wiped it dry and replaced it for you. Now try starting the engine."

He started the engine and the car started up again. She should leave now, but part of her couldn't let this opportunity pass by so easily.

"Thank you very much. What is your name so that I can introduce my friends to repair my car?" she asked, trying to keep her voice as natural as possible.

The man paused for a very short second, almost imperceptible if one wasn't paying close attention. "Nam. Just call me Nam."

The name sounds so simple, so common that it almost seems like a name chosen at random, with no particular origin. Ha nodded, paid for the car repair, and then left. But as soon as she turned the corner, she stopped the car, her hands still shaking.

She pulled out her phone, reopened the saved photo, and compared it with the image she just saw in her mind. There's no mistaking it. The man named "Nam" at that small car repair shop was the person standing in the Phan family's wedding photo - the man the groom's family was willing to pay fifty million dong to erase all traces of.

***

That night, Ha couldn't concentrate on any other work. She told Dieu Thao everything over the phone, her voice still shaking with excitement and anxiety.

"Are you sure it's him?" Dieu Thao asked, her voice equally tense.

"Sure. I've looked closely at his face dozens of times on the computer, there's no mistaking it. And he has a scar on his wrist, about three centimeters long, old."

"So what do we do now? Go back and ask him directly?"

Ha was silent for a moment, thinking carefully. "I don't think we should rush. If he is really involved in a big secret of the Phan family, asking directly could make him panic, run away, or worse, be so wary that he will never reveal anything again. I need a different approach."

"What do you mean?"

"I'll go back to that auto repair shop, but not to ask about the photo. I'll get to know him like a normal customer first. Maybe if he trusts me enough, one day he'll tell him himself."

Dieu Thao sighed over the phone. "It sounds like a waste of time. But I think you're right. This person is clearly trying to hide himself from the world, it's not natural for an engineer — if it's true that he's related to a big business family — to work as an auto mechanic in such a small alley."

Dieu Thao's words made Ha suddenly pause. "Engineer? Why do you say that?"

"Ah, I was looking for more information about Phan Group while waiting for you to call back. There was an old article, from about four years ago, mentioning a chief engineer in charge of construction quality named Phan Gia Bao. The article only briefly talked about a project he was in charge of, nothing special. But the last name 'Phan' caught my attention."

Ha's heart skipped a beat. "Gia Bao... is he the same last name as Gia Huy, the groom?"

"I'm wondering that too. Maybe a cousin, maybe a biological brother. But the strange thing is that, after that article four years ago, there was no more information about Phan Gia Bao. Not a single article, not a single line of news, it was as if he completely disappeared from all public records."

Ha sat silently in the chair, feeling as if the pieces of a puzzle were starting to fit together, even though the overall picture was still unclear. A man with the same last name as the groom, once the chief engineer of the family corporation, disappeared completely from all public records exactly four years ago — and now reappears, living anonymously under the simple name "Nam", working as a car repairman in a small alley, only to be caught in a single frame at the wedding of what could be his younger brother.

"I think I just touched on something very big," Ha said softly, more like a whisper to herself than to Dieu Thao.

"What are you going to do next?"

"I'll find out about Phan Gia Bao. Everything I can find out. And I'll come back to that auto repair shop, more often." Ha looked out the window, where the darkness of the city had completely fallen, the street lights shining through the thin curtain. "If it's as you think, then that man isn't running away from someone random. He's running away from his own family."

After hanging up the phone, Ha sat alone in the small office and opened the photo on the computer again. She looked closely at the eyes of the man in the photo, trying to read something behind that quiet look. If this really was Phan Gia Bao, then what made him, among the many options to remain safely anonymous, choose to appear — even for a brief moment — at the very wedding of the person who may have pushed him into darkness?

That question kept echoing in her head all night, to the point where she could barely sleep. Towards morning, a thought suddenly flashed in Ha's mind: perhaps he didn't come to threaten or demand anything in return. Maybe he just came to see someone — someone he couldn't let go of, even at the cost of his own safety.

The next morning, Ha decided not to rush back to the car repair shop right away. Instead, she spent the morning sitting in front of a map of the area around the Phan family's villa, marking the location of "Nam's" car repair shop on it. The distance between the two places is less than three kilometers - close enough for a person to quietly walk there, stand from afar to observe the party, and then leave before anyone notices.

"He didn't happen to be passing by," she muttered to herself, her fingers tapping the map. "He had planned to go there, if only to watch from afar."

That thought made Ha's heart sink a strange beat, not really out of pity, but more like a sudden sympathy for a stranger she had only met once. She wondered if one day she was forced to disappear from the lives of the people she loved to protect them, would she have the courage to do the same - silently stand from afar, just to see them happy, even though she was no longer allowed to be a part of that picture.

She folded the map, put it in a drawer, and told herself she needed to calm down before taking the next action. All the theories in her mind were still just speculations, even though they matched each other in a worrying way. She needed more time, more patience, and above all, she needed to keep herself alert enough to not ruin the only opportunity that was gradually opening before her eyes.