Chapter 33 — The Ship That Never Looks Back

The Bottom Chest

"Grandma, I want to look at dad's things." Khe Lam said, standing in the doorframe of her bedroom, her voice trying to keep it as normal as possible even though her heart was already preparing for a refusal.

Doan Bich Thu was folding a thin blanket, her hand paused for a moment, then continued her work as if nothing had happened. "There's not much left of your father's things, son. I cleaned them all out a long time ago."

"I know there's still a chest at the bottom of Grandma's closet." Khe Lam said, her voice more determined than she had ever dared to show in front of her grandmother. "I've seen it since I was little, every time my grandmother opened the closet to take things out. She never showed me what's inside."

Doan Bich Thu stood silently for a long time, the blanket still in her hand, her eyes looking out into the space ahead, as if considering a decision that had been delayed for too long. Finally, she put the blanket down on the bed and sighed, a sigh heavier than any sigh Khe Lam had ever heard from her.

"You're really grown up." She said, her voice carrying a grudging acceptance. "Okay. I'll show you. But not because you ask, but because I think, maybe it's time."

She knelt down in front of the old wardrobe, pulled out a small wooden chest covered with dust, locked with a simple lock that she opened with a small key that she always wore around her neck, hidden under her clothes, an object Khe Lam had seen glimpses of but never dared to ask about it.

Inside the chest were Do Viet Khiem's old belongings — a small, rusty set of repair tools, a badge recognizing outstanding achievement in the maintenance of the Primordial Core, several neatly folded clothes, and at the bottom of the chest, a notebook with a thick cloth cover, the corners of the cover worn from being flipped through many times.

Khe Lam picked up the notebook, her hands shaking no less than when she held her mother's business card a few days ago. She flipped through the first pages — routine technical notes, maintenance data, sketches of circuit diagrams in neat, careful handwriting, a meticulousness that she immediately recognized, with a feeling both warm and painful, as the source of the habit of observing small details that she still prided herself on.

Between the pages of technical notes, a small photo fell out, yellowed over time. Khe Lam picked it up, her heart beat fast when she recognized the scene in the photo - a group of young engineers standing in front of the Primordial Core door, wearing maintenance uniforms, smiling brightly after a certain shift. Her father stood at the edge of the group, much younger than she remembered, and right next to him, a young woman with familiar sharp eyes was looking straight into the camera, not smiling but her eyes shining with a calm confidence. Her mother. On the back of the photo, a faint handwritten note read: "Core Engineering Team, cruise year two hundred and twenty." Eight years before the Night of Broken Roots. Her father and mother were colleagues, working in the same team, long before Khe Lam was born.

"They knew each other through work." Doan Bich Thu spoke softly, looking at the photo over her granddaughter's shoulder, her voice carrying a distant nostalgia. "My father once told me that my mother was the only person in the team who dared to argue frankly with the team leader when she discovered a mistake in the process. My father said he loved her from that day, because of that uncompromising straightforwardness - something that he later learned from her, even though it did not bring him a better outcome."

"Your father is the most careful person I've ever known." Doan Bich Thu said, sitting down next to her, her voice softened. "He wrote down everything, even the smallest things, as if afraid his memory would betray him if he didn't write it down."

Khe Lam turned to the last pages, near where the notebook had been left unfinished, and her heart skipped a beat when she saw that the handwriting on these pages was different from the rest - more hurried, some places were crossed out, some places were just written with a few words with unclear meanings. One page reads: "Compare access log for week 3, detect unusual points that match old notes in V.C's notebook — check again before reporting." On another page, the handwriting was even more hasty: "It can't be a coincidence. Need to talk to the team leader before..." — the sentence was not finished, broken in the middle of the line.

"V.C." Khe Lam whispered, a cold feeling running down his spine. "Lam Vinh Chi."

Doan Bich Thu did not answer, but her face turned visibly pale, her hands clasped the hem of her shirt tightly in her lap.

"Your father knows about what your mother discovered." Khe Lam said, not a question anymore, but an affirmation that was gradually forming in her mind. "He found her old notebook, or heard it from someone, then compared it himself in the Primeval Core, many years later, and he also discovered the same thing your mother discovered."

"She's not sure what he saw." Doan Bich Thu spoke, her voice trembling, revealing for the first time a weakness Khe Lam had never seen in her. "He never told her the details, just said that there was something he needed to clarify before reporting to his superiors, that he wanted to be sure before getting anyone in trouble unjustly. A few weeks later, he died."

That last sentence hung in the air, heavier than any direct accusation. Khe Lam looked at the notebook in her hand, then looked at her grandmother, feeling a new puzzle piece, more painful than all the previous pieces, just fitting into its correct position.

"She thinks father's death was not an accident." She said, her voice shaky but clear.

Doan Bich Thu closed her eyes, a tear rolled down her wrinkled cheek. "I've been wondering that every night for the past eight years, honey." She said, her voice choked. "But she had no proof, only an unfinished notebook and the fear of an old woman who doesn't want to lose anyone else. She chose to believe the official explanation, because to believe anything else would mean having to live every day with the thought that her son was murdered, and that there was nothing she could do to get justice for him."

Khe Lam hugged her, the first time in many years she actively did so, feeling her skinny body tremble in her arms. "I don't blame her." She said, her voice equally choked. "I understand why you chose to stay silent. But I can't choose to stay silent anymore, grandma. I need to know the truth, no matter how painful it is, both about mom and about dad."

Doan Bich Thu nodded and squeezed his niece's hand. "I know, child. I've known for a long time, when you were a child wandering around old areas, asking me questions she didn't dare answer, that one day you would go looking for it, no matter how hard I tried to stop you. You're too much like your parents to be content with what people tell you to believe."

That night, after her grandmother fell asleep, Khe Lam sat alone at the table, her father's notebook placed next to her mother's business card, two mementos of two people she never had the chance to fully understand when they were still alive with her. She copied every last line of notes in her father's notebook onto her personal device, carefully and meticulously, just like he did with all the notes of his life, then texted Bach Van a short line: "I just found out something new. My father may also know. When we meet tomorrow, I need to tell everything."

She turned off the light and lay down, but sleep did not come. In the darkness, she thought of her father, sitting alone in the dead of night some eight years ago, painstakingly comparing numbers, finishing that unfinished sentence before being interrupted by something — a call, a meeting, or the very death that awaited him just a few weeks later. And she wondered, with a new fear creeping into the growing determination in her heart, whether the path she was on was the same path that had led both her parents to the same end, eleven years apart but rooted in the same secret that refused to stay in the dark.

She thought of the old photo, of her father's smile and her mother's calm eyes at the door of the Primordial Core, two young people who never knew what was waiting for them ahead. There was a painful irony in the fact that the very place where they met, the very place where their love began, was also the place that brought them, in different ways and more than a decade apart, the same fate of being swallowed up and willfully forgotten by this ship. Khe Lam clutched the photo in her hand until sleep finally came, bringing with it intermittent dreams of a noisy machine hall and two faces she had never really known.