Chapter 8 — The Ten-Million-Dollar Patent

Khuong Tu Tu was hardly in a position to look after herself. The Chu family had recently introduced Chu Tu to a new potential suitor—a young woman, also from Hai Thanh, whose family background mirrored Tu Tu’s own, yet she possessed the distinct advantage of youth. Every day, Tu Tu obsessively monitored the step count on Chu Tu’s fitness application, desperate to decipher his movements and whereabouts; she had no spare time to visit the hospital and care for Mother.

Conversely, Mother spoke of me to everyone who would listen. "I have another child," she would say, her voice thick with pride. "A doctor of biomedical engineering, the most obedient and dutiful child I have ever had. When I fell ill, she was the one who brought me my medicine and poured my water, never fearing contagion, showing me such filial devotion." After a while, she would inevitably break down in tears. The child she once deemed the most obedient had become the one most estranged from her life.

These fragments of news drifted toward me like debris on a slow-moving current. Sometimes, a business partner would inadvertently mention them during casual conversation; other times, I would stumble upon them while aimlessly scrolling through social media feeds, or perhaps a piece of gossip would arrive at my doorstep after passing through the hands of half a dozen old classmates. Whenever I heard these things, I felt no agitation, no swell of emotion. It was not that I had grown numb; it was simply that my existence had become entirely saturated with the rigors of experimental data, academic conferences, and international collaborations. Those old debts and grievances no longer held enough weight to occupy even a single slide in my professional presentations.

In my world, there were far more complex problems waiting to be solved. There were vast, uncharted territories of knowledge yet to be mapped and conquered, and I had no space left for the echoes of a past that no longer mattered.