Chapter 32 — The Ship That Never Looks Back

Not One Line of News

Two days later, Khe Lam returned to Bui Dac Sinh's workshop on an evening when the artificial rain fell heavier than usual, water flowing in small streams along the drains in the ceiling of Day Deck, creating a steady soundtrack to the conversation they were about to continue. He had prepared two cups of tea on the table, and an old towel covered the tin box containing Lam Vinh Chi's business card as a way to protect that precious keepsake from moisture.

"I've been thinking for the past two days." He said, as she sat down. "About how to tell the rest so you can bear it."

"I'm ready, sir." Khe Lam said, even though she clearly knew that no amount of mental preparation was really enough for what was to come.

For the past two days, she had tried to live as normally as possible — still going to work on time, still laughing and joking with Phung Bao Nhan, still responding to Trinh Yen My with innocuous answered — but inside, she felt like she was carrying a newly planted seed in her chest, not yet sprouting but already heavy enough to pull each step askew. Lam Vinh Chi's business card still lay close to her chest every night, and every time she touched the fabric wrapped around it, she found herself a little closer to her mother, even though it's just an image, a name, not yet a flesh-and-blood person.

Bui Dac Sinh nodded, took a sip of tea, then began, his voice monotonous as if trying to keep a distance from his own emotions so that he could tell the whole story without interruption in the middle.

"After the Guards sealed off the Engine Hall, they divided the crowd into small groups, herding people into side corridors for easier control. He was pushed in one direction, along with about thirty others, most of whom were ordinary workers like him, with no leadership role. We were kept overnight in a temporary storage compartment, interrogated individually, and then released the next morning with a stern warning and a disciplinary mark on our records."

"What about your mother?" Khe Lam asked, her voice so soft that it was almost drowned out by the sound of rain falling outside.

"Your mother and Dinh Khac Bat, along with about five or six other people I remember as the main organizers, were taken in another direction, completely separate from the rest of the crowd." Bui Dac Sinh spoke, his voice getting slower and heavier with each word. "He saw them being escorted through another hallway, under much tighter guard than his group. That was the last time he saw mother and child in the flesh."

Khe Lam squeezed the teacup in her hand, its heat not enough to dispel the coldness spreading in her chest.

"A few days later, the official announcement was made." He continued. "Dinh Khac Bat was recorded as having died while resisting security forces — there was no public funeral, no relatives were allowed to claim the body, a strange absence when he was too young and too scared to ask questions. As for the others taken away with that group, including the mother and child, the announcement only contained a short line: transfer to a technical quarantine area to re-evaluate their professional capabilities."

"Job transfer." Khe Lam repeated, her voice bitter. "Not death. Not an accident in the Root Layer like my grandmother said."

"That's right." Bui Dac Sinh nodded. "And for the past nineteen years, he has never heard any more official news about the people taken away that day. Not a single line of news about their release. Not a single line of news about their deaths. They simply disappeared from all public records, as if they had never existed, while on paper, they were still listed as 'under review,' a status with no end, no expiration date, lasting indefinitely over the years like an ongoing administrative curse that no one bothered to erase."

"So that means..." Khe Lam stopped, not daring to finish her sentence, afraid that if she said it out loud, the fragile hope that had just sparked in her heart would shatter like a baseless illusion.

"I can't confirm that your mother is still alive, little girl." Bui Dac Sinh said, reading the desire in her eyes, his voice was cautious as if he were walking on a thin layer of ice. "Nineteen years is a long time, and I don't know what happened to them after they were escorted away. But I also don't have any proof that your mother is dead, other than the silence of a system that has become accustomed to not explaining anything it doesn't want to explain. And to me, a silence that lasted nineteen years doesn't feel like a death declaration. It's more like a locked door — a door, not a wall."

Khe Lam sat quietly, letting those words slowly sink into her heart, feeling like the whole world she knew was breaking apart and rearranging itself in a completely different shape. For twenty years, she grew up with a neat, sad but closed story: her mother died in an accident, her father raised her alone, and then his father also died, leaving her with her grandmother. A pain that has a clear shape, can be embraced and carried for a lifetime. Now, that pain had lost its old shape, becoming a bottomless open question, both more painful and — although she did not dare admit it frankly even to herself — carrying a glimmer of hope she had never allowed herself to have.

"Why didn't the Council kill them all right then and there, if they were so dangerous?" She asked, trying to think clearly rather than just letting her emotions wash over her. "Why keep them, even if it's a secret?"

Bui Dac Sinh nodded approvingly at the question, like a teacher satisfied when his student knows how to ask the next question correctly. "He also wondered that for many years. The closest answer he found was: killing a group of people publicly would create martyrs, creating a story for the rest to spread to each other, making the secret even harder to keep. But making them disappear quietly, without explanation, without confirmation of life or death, would create a much more vague fear, a fear without a specific shape for people to resist. No one dares to mention their names, because no one knows for sure. what happened, and that uncertainty is itself a punishment, both for the captured and for those left to live with the unanswered question."

"I need to find out the truth." Khe Lam said, her voice now carrying a new fierceness, beyond the pain. "Whether she's alive or dead, I need to know for sure, sir. I can't live another twenty years with an unanswered question."

"I understand." Bui Dac Sinh said, placing his old hand on her hand. "And I will help you as best I can, even though the strength of an old man like me is not much anymore. But you must promise me again: be twice as careful as you were before. If Than Bao Nghiem is approaching you through your father's name, he may sooner or later find out your mother's name. And once he knows that you are Lam Vinh Chi's daughter, everything will no longer be an ordinary administrative investigation."

Khe Lam nodded, clearly feeling the weight of that warning, but also feeling, stronger than ever, that she had passed the point of no return. She was no longer a girl who accidentally stumbled upon a technical secret during her shift. She was the daughter of a woman who dared to stand up for the truth, and whether her mother was alive or dead, Khe Lam knew, with a new certainty that had just formed in her chest, that she would not let that story end in silence again.

Before leaving the workshop, she asked one last question, the question that had been hanging in her mind throughout the conversation. "Do you think my grandmother knows everything you just told me?"

Bui Dac Sinh pondered for a long time before answering. "I don't know how much she knows, little girl. But I know one thing: a mother who lost her daughter-in-law in such circumstances, hearing only part of the truth, is enough to choose to stay silent for the rest of her life, if she believes that silence is the only way to keep her granddaughter safe. Don't be too quick to blame her, no matter how angry you are when you know she has kept you hidden for so long. There are silences that come from fear, not from lies."

That sentence stayed in Khe Lam's mind all the way home, weaving in between the pain and the fragile hope that had just arisen, reminding her that her next battle, perhaps, would not be with the Council or the Guard, but with the woman who had raised her for the past eight years in a loving but also torn silence.