Chapter 12 — The Test Has No Name

A Name on the List

The School Integrity Week organizing committee meeting took place on Monday morning, in the small conference room that fifteen years ago had been where the disciplinary committee announced its conclusion on Nguyen's case — a coincidence that only Khanh Thu noticed, and she did not tell anyone.

"We need to finalize the list of guest speakers this week so we can send the official invitation letter in time," the principal said, opening a slideshow of the preliminary list. "Miss Thu, have you looked at the proposals yet?"

"I saw," Khanh Thu replied, her voice trying to keep it steady, her eyes scanning the list on the screen, pausing a little longer than necessary on the line with Nguyen's name.

"I think Mr. Huynh Dang Nguyen is the brightest choice," a young teacher in the organizing committee spoke up, his voice full of excitement. "He is a former student of the school, now famous nationwide for his technology platform to combat exam cheating. Who else is more suitable to talk about the topic of school integrity? The press will definitely be interested if our school invites him."

A few others nodded in agreement, another teacher added that she had seen an interview video of Nguyen talking about his inspirational self-study journey, affirming that his story would be a great source of motivation for the school's poor students to overcome difficulties.

"Miss Thu, do you know this Nguyen who studied at our school in the past? He's in the same class as you," the young teacher added, not suspecting anything. "Do you miss him?"

That seemingly harmless question made Khanh Thu's heart skip a beat. She felt the eyes of everyone in the room, even if not intentionally, waiting for her answer - the only person in this meeting room who really knew who Nguyen was, besides Ms. Bich Loan.

"Yes, I remember," she replied, trying to keep her voice as neutral as possible. "Same course, same class for several years in high school. He studied very well, always in the top group of the grade."

"Then it's more convenient, it will be easier for you to invite because you already know each other," the young teacher said, smiling happily, completely unaware of the tension in Khanh Thu's forced smile in response.

The principal tapped lightly on the table, bringing the meeting back to focus. "So Mr. Nguyen is the main speaker for the opening session. As for sponsorship and guests of honor, I propose to invite more representatives of some scholarship funds affiliated with the school, including the scholarship fund where Mr. Chu Dinh Vy is working - I heard that this fund has just expanded cooperation with many schools in the province."

Hearing the second name, Khanh Thu was even more stunned. Within just a few minutes, both names associated with that fateful afternoon fifteen years ago were brought back to the same event, the same school, at almost the same time — as if fate, after many years of silence, decided to force her to face it all at once, leaving no room for further delay.

Khanh Thu sat still, feeling like the room was shrinking around her. She could object, she could come up with some reason to remove Nguyen's name from the list - busy schedule, difficult to contact, not suitable - but every reason she came up with sounded fake right in her mind, and she knew clearly that if she deliberately dismissed the most suitable candidate just for unspeakable personal reasons, she would betray the very role she was trying to do well for the past six years.

"Mr. Nguyen is truly the most suitable choice," she said finally, her voice somewhat forced but no one in the room recognized it except herself. "I'll be in charge of sending invitations."

The meeting ended, everyone left one by one, only Ms. Bich Loan stayed behind, packing up the papers more slowly than usual. When there were only two people left in the meeting room, Ms. Loan spoke up, her voice gentle but with a questioning intention.

"Are you okay, Thu? I saw you seemed stressed from the moment you heard Mr. Nguyen's name."

Khanh Thu looked up and met the eyes of her old teacher - the person who always had a way of seeing through everything without asking directly. During her six years as a colleague, Ms. Loan never once brought up the past, but Khanh Thu always felt that she still kept a question hanging in her heart.

"I'm fine," Khanh Thu replied, but her voice was not strong enough to convince even herself.

"I still clearly remember Nguyen's incident that year," Ms. Loan added, her voice low, her eyes looking straight at Khanh Thu as if she was considering what to say. "She never believed that boy was cheating, even though there wasn't enough evidence to defend her. For many years, she still wondered if one more witness had dared to speak up that day, would things have been different?"

Khanh Thu clenched her hands under the table, not daring to look up and look directly at her old teacher, afraid that just one look would be enough for Ms. Loan to read everything she had been hiding for the past fifteen years.

Ms. Loan nodded, did not ask further questions, just gently placed her hand on her former student's shoulder before leaving the room, but her last words left an echo that made Khanh Thu sit alone for a long time afterward.

"Sometimes life gives you a second chance not to correct the past - because the past cannot be corrected - but to choose how to behave in the present. I think you should consider carefully, no matter what the outcome."

In the afternoon, alone in the office, Khanh Thu opened her email and began to compose an official invitation to send to Nguyen. She could have let the office staff take care of this like she did with the other invitations — just fill out a pre-existing form, sign the organizers collectively — but her hand kept lingering on the keyboard, unable to surrender to such an emotionless process.

She erased and rewrote many times, each word carrying its own weight. Writing "Dear Mr. Nguyen" was too distant, writing "Dear Nguyen" was too close compared to a distance of fifteen years and a lie that had never been corrected. In the end, she left it as a formal, business-standard invitation, without adding any personal messages — not because she had nothing to say, but because she knew clearly that if there was anything to say to Nguyen after all these years, it couldn't be contained in a few lines of a work email.

Before pressing send, she read it one last time, her hand shaking slightly on the computer mouse. She thought of Nguyen's face when he was eighteen years old, standing in an empty classroom, asking her if she saw anything unusual. She thought of her own answer at that time — "I didn't see anything" — the lie that had followed her for the past fifteen years like an inseparable shadow.

She pressed send. The email flew out in an instant, carrying an official invitation and, although not written in words, a silent question that Khanh Thu wasn't sure she was ready to answer: would Nguyen accept returning to the place that destroyed part of his youth, and if so, would she have the courage to tell the truth this time, when that rare second chance finally appeared.

After sending the letter, she sat for a long time in the empty office, looking out the window at the school yard being dyed by the late afternoon sun, the last students of the extra class were leaving. She remembered the afternoon fifteen years ago, also in this very scene, when she stood silently watching Nguyen leave the classroom, carrying with her the last lie she ever told him.

She opened her desk drawer, where she kept a personal notebook unrelated to work — the new diary she started writing from the day she accepted the position of Vice Principal, as a way to remind herself of the real reason why she chose this path. She flipped to the next blank page and wrote down a few short lines.

"Today I sent a letter inviting Nguyen back to school. I don't know how he will respond, or whether he will still remember me the way I remember him — not the gentle remembering of school age, but the heavy remembering of someone in debt. But I know, if he accepts, this could be the last chance for me to correct a very small part of what I failed to do that year."

She closed the notebook, turned off the office light, and walked out into the quiet hallway. The hallway light automatically turned on with each step she took, illuminating the plaques honoring excellent students hanging along the wall - among which, somewhere in a hidden corner that few people noticed, there was still a plaque from the old school year with her name at the top of the twelfth grade transcript, right next to a small space where there should have been another name.