Chapter 4 — The Tea House at the End of the Street

The blue tarp covering the front of the house next door was pulled down a corner Monday morning, revealing a crew installing large panels of tempered glass to replace old wooden doors. Nhien stood in the tea room, through the barred window, watching the scene unfold as if watching a fast-forward movie - where there used to be an old peeling brick wall, a shiny steel frame now appeared, the sunlight reflecting brightly.

She tried not to pay too much attention, focusing on her morning work: cleaning tables and chairs, checking tea inventory, preparing charcoal to boil water. But the sounds of drilling, hammering, and workers shouting to each other kept echoing through the common wall, breaking the silence that was the soul of the tea room. A regular customer stopped by that morning. After sitting for ten minutes, she stood up and apologized, saying that the noise prevented her from fully enjoying her tea as usual.

Nhien looked at the back of the woman disappearing behind the wooden door, her heart sank. That was the first time in her many years of working, she witnessed a customer leave for reasons that had nothing to do with the quality of her tea or her service.

At noon, when the noise calmed down because the crew took a break for lunch, Nhien took the opportunity to go out and buy some old tea tools that needed to be replaced. On her way past the construction site, she accidentally heard a conversation between two workers resting on the sidewalk, one was smoking and talking to the other.

"I heard that this company is very big, the chairman is Mr. Dong, there is a tea plantation in the hills, now expanded to become a modern beverage chain. He entrusted his son and grandson to manage it. It is said that the grandson is young and very good, having studied abroad."

"No wonder the rental price in this area is so high. The surrounding houses are also being asked to buy them together. I don't know if that's true."

Nhien walked slowly, even though she tried to look like she was looking at the pottery shop next door, her ears still perked up to hear the whole story. Collect and buy the whole area. That phrase made her stomach tighten. If that rumor is true, then not only her tea house, but also Nguyet Tra street - where there is Mr. Ba Nghi's old bookstore, Thuy Duong's bakery, and even old houses that have existed for many generations - could be at risk of disappearing.

She returned to the tea room, her mind still lingering on the story she had just heard, when she saw Nhat Vy waiting at the door, holding the phone in her hand, an unusually excited look on her face.

"Sister Nhien, sister Nhien, I just read this article!" Nhat Vy took out her phone and saw an article on a local news site with the title: "Suong Mai Tea Lab officially landed in Wen Xuyen - a revolution in the traditional beverage industry?"

Nhien skimmed through the article, the words seemed to pierce her eyes: "...backed by Dong Xuan Group, one of the largest tea groups in the region with a plantation system spanning hundreds of hectares... the model combines traditional tea with modern brewing technology, targeting young customers... expected to expand more branches in the Central and Central Highlands regions in the next two years..."

"Such a big corporation," Nhat Vy marveled, then suddenly remembered Nhien's expression and quickly corrected it. "I mean... don't worry, our tea room has something of its own that they don't have."

Nhien nodded, trying to smile and reassure the girl, but inside, the disparate pieces began to piece together: the blue tarp, the iron scaffolding, the story of the two workers, and now this article. This was not a single store that happened to open next to her tea room. This is part of a systematic expansion plan of a large corporation, and Nguyet Tra Street - with its old houses, small shop owners like her, like Thuy Duong, like Mr. Ba Nghi - is probably just a stop on their business strategy map.

Right after Nhat Vy went home to do her homework, Mr. Ba Nghi also walked over from the used bookstore next door, his face full of rare anxiety. He placed a notice on the table - the invitation to the neighborhood meeting had been posted on the bulletin board at the entrance of the alley since early morning.

"Have you read it yet?" he asked, his voice lowered. "A representative of a real estate company sent an open letter to nearly a dozen households on this street, offering to buy the house at a price two or three times higher than the market price. My family also received a copy."

Nhien picked up the paper, skimmed through the words, which were formal and polite to the point of coldness: "Dear householders... Our company wishes to cooperate in developing the region... The proposed price is in good faith and can be further negotiated..."

"What are you going to do?" Nhien asked, trying to keep her voice calm even though her heart was confused.

Mr. Ba Nghi shook his head, his eyes looking out the window, where the afternoon sunlight yellowed the stacks of old books neatly arranged in his shop over the years. "I'm seventy years old, Nhien, this bookstore is no longer a breadwinner, but a place where I spend the rest of my life. But I also understand that not everyone on this street has the conditions to maintain a strong stance like me. Mrs. Tu's family, which sells groceries, owes school fees for her two grandchildren. Hearing the proposed price must be very difficult to consider."

Those words made Nhien suddenly realize that the fight to keep her tea house was not an isolated story. The entire Nguyet Tra street, with people who have lived dependent on each other for generations, is standing at a crossroads. If each house in turn agrees to sell due to financial pressure or simply because it no longer has the strength to fight, there will come a time when her tea house becomes a lonely oasis among new projects, and will not be able to stand alone.

"Please keep your spirits up," Nhien said, although she wasn't sure if she was speaking to reassure him or to reassure herself. "I believe everything will be resolved."

Mr. Ba Nghi patted her shoulder, his familiar gentle smile returned to his wrinkled face. "My grandfather used to say that every time the tea house was in trouble. Perhaps that belief is the most valuable inheritance he left me, even more precious than the wooden sign up there."

That afternoon, Nhien called a few familiar tea suppliers, trying to renegotiate the import price to save costs. The results were not very positive - the price of raw tea increased this year due to adverse weather affecting the crop, while she could not increase the selling price for fear of losing more of her already few customers. She sat down to recalculate every expense, cutting back what she could cut down — one less day of buying fresh flowers for the table each week, repairing a few worn rattan cushions herself instead of buying new ones, turning off the lights in areas with few visitors in the evening.

But no matter how calculated, the number is still not enough to solve the forty-five day problem set by the bank.

Late at night, after closing the tea room door, Nhien sat at the table and opened her grandfather's recipe book again, not to look for anything specific, but just to feel closer to him at a time when she was filled with insecurity. She flipped through each page, re-reading the familiar tea recipes - lotus tea marinated in the night dew, jasmine tea marinated three times with scent, Oolong tea heated over gentle charcoal fire. Each page is a small story, a technique he has diligently researched and tested over many years.

Coming to the page with the recipe "Van Coc," she paused longer than usual. The words "alternative tea varieties, western hills" once again made her eyes pause. She remembered Mr. Ba Le's words the other day: "Your grandfather is a very good person at keeping his secrets... sometimes I wonder how many things he still carries in his heart that he has never told anyone."

A vague thought flashed through Nhien's mind — could it be that this short note was not simply a technical detail, but a trace of something larger, a story he had never told? But she quickly pushed that thought aside. She has too much on her plate — debt, competitors, falling sales — and doesn't have time to delve into mysteries from the past that probably have nothing to do with the present.

She closed the notebook, stood up and walked out to the back porch, where there was a small yard planted with a few pots of ornamental tea leaves left by her grandfather - not commercial tea, but just tea trees he planted for love, meticulously fertilized every morning before opening the door to welcome customers. Nhien stood there, looking at the green tea leaves in the dim moonlight, taking a deep breath of the slightly chilly night air.

From the nearby construction site, even though construction had stopped, there was still the smell of new paint, the smell of cement, scents that were completely foreign to the familiar smell of tea, old wood, and damp soil of this yard. Two worlds, separated by only a thin wall, are about to collide.

Nhien didn't know how to mentally prepare for that collision. She only knew that no matter what happened, she would not easily give up this place - not because of stubbornness, not because she could not see the difficult reality before her, but because she understood, more than anyone else, the value of what this tea house was preserving, values that, once lost, could never be regained.

She went back into the house, locked the back door carefully, then stood in front of her grandfather's altar for a long time, the oil lamplight casting her long shadow on the old brick floor.

"I'll find a way, grandpa," she whispered, her voice more determined than the previous nights. "I don't know what that method is yet. But I won't let this tea house disappear, no matter how big the opponent is."

Outside, the construction site lights still flickered through the cracks in the wall, a cold, artificial light, completely different from the warm oil lamp burning in the old house. But Nhien no longer felt as scared as she did in the morning when she heard rumors about buying up the whole neighborhood. In her heart, a silent determination began to grow, even though she had not yet imagined how bumpy the road ahead would be.