Chapter 5 — The Test Has No Name

The Night Before the Exam

The afternoon before the exam day, the school held a room inspection and dissemination of regulations in the large hall - where the scholarship exam will take place the next morning. Three candidates are required to arrive earlier than other students to receive registration numbers, check seats, and listen to the final regulations from representatives of the provincial training department.

The hall was empty at this hour, only the sound of footsteps echoed on the shiny tile floor and the afternoon sunlight filtered through the tall windows, pouring into long streaks on the three exam tables placed at the correct distance from each other. A training room employee posted registration numbers on each table and read each person's name out loud for confirmation.

"Huynh Dang Nguyen, table number one. Chu Dinh Vy, table number two. Vo Khanh Thu, table number three." She folded the list. "Remember to bring identification, pens, and do not bring any documents into the exam room, including your own scratch paper. Scratch paper will be distributed on the spot."

The three of them nodded, placing their school bags under their respective exam tables to get used to the position — according to the staff's instructions, this helps students feel less confused the next morning. After listening to the regulations, the employee asked permission to go out and call to confirm with the provincial training department about the number of supervisors, leaving three people in the hall for a few minutes.

Nguyen walked towards the notice board posted at the end of the hall, checked the seating chart again to make sure, then struggled to ask the security guard on duty nearby about whether the entrance tomorrow morning would be changed because he heard that the main gate was being repaired. Khanh Thu sat back at table number three, took out her notebook and reviewed a few formulas one last time, eyes focused on the page.

Vy stood up from table number two, making an excuse to go out and wash his face to wake up. But instead of going straight to the door, he walked around to table number one, where Nguyen's schoolbag was placed under the table. His hands shook slightly as he bent down, pulled out a folded stack of papers from his jacket pocket - photocopied pages of recipes he had pondered over many nights - and quickly stuffed them into the side compartment of Nguyen's briefcase, a place rarely opened by anyone.

Khanh Thu, who was bowing her head in the notebook, happened to look up at that moment. From a distance of more than ten meters, through the dim afternoon light pouring into the hall, she could only see Vy's figure bending down near table number one for a few seconds, his hand reaching under the table and then pulling it out very quickly. She couldn't see clearly what he was holding, nor was she sure what he was doing — maybe he just dropped something and picked it up again, maybe he was checking his own bag because the two bags were placed close to each other.

"What are you doing?" she asked, her voice not loud but enough to make Vy turn around in surprise.

"Ah, I thought this was my bag," Vy replied, his voice a bit hasty, standing up straight immediately. "The two are too close together, I looked at them wrong."

"OH." Khanh Thu nodded, without thinking further, bent down to continue reviewing. Vy's answer sounded reasonable - the two briefcases were indeed placed quite close to each other under two adjacent tables, and she had no reason to doubt a normally gentle, quiet classmate.

But there was something, so small that she couldn't name it, that still made her raise her head to look at Vy's back as he walked out of the hall. Perhaps it was the unusual haste in his steps. Maybe it was the way his hands were still shaking a bit when he stood up. She was about to call him again to ask more questions, but at that moment the phone in her pocket vibrated - her father called, reminding her to come home early because tonight there was an important guest coming to discuss the contract, and he wanted her to be there to say hello before going to his room to study.

"I'm at school, I'll be right back when I'm done," Khanh Thu said into the phone, stood up to pack up her notebook, her attention was immediately pulled to a completely different direction.

When Nguyen returned from the security position, everything in the hall had returned to the way it was before - the three briefcases were still lying under three tables, the afternoon sunlight was a little lighter, and Vy had returned to his seat, his face still a little pale but no one noticed because everyone thought it was a normal expression of stress before a big exam.

"Is it all done?" Nguyen asked, sitting down at desk number one, bending down to check his school bag out of habit - but only glanced at the main compartment, where he kept pens and student cards, and did not open the side compartment, where he rarely used it.

"Done," Khanh Thu replied, slinging her bag over her shoulder. "I have to go home first, I have something to do at home. Meet me here tomorrow, on time at nine o'clock."

"Yeah, see you tomorrow." Nguyen nodded, not noticing anything unusual.

The training room employee returned, gave a few more instructions, and then let the three leave. On the way out the gate, Khanh Thu passed by Vy, intending to ask a question about what happened earlier - just to feel more secure - but seeing him walking quickly, his shoulders slightly hunched as if carrying an invisible burden, she stopped, telling herself that perhaps she was over-interpreting because she herself was equally stressed.

That night, at Khanh Thu's house, while receiving guests from her father as requested, she kept thinking about the image of Vy crouching under table number one. She took out her phone and intended to text Nguyen to ask if he had carefully checked his bag before the exam, but then deleted the unsent message, afraid that she was overreacting to something that could have just been a harmless misunderstanding.

At his home, Nguyen reviewed the outline one last time, turned off the lights and went to bed early to preserve his strength for tomorrow, his heart full of hope mixed with the usual nervousness of anyone facing an important exam.

And at Vy's house, after the dinner his parents cooked separately to "nourish" him before the exam, he sat alone in the room for a long time, his hands still shaking like they did in the afternoon. He told himself that it was done, there was no taking it back, and the rest was just waiting to see if the exam invigilator would find out tomorrow — a question to which he didn't even know what answer to hope for.

The guest party at Khanh Thu's house lasted longer than she thought. Her father, Mr. Vo Dinh Khuong, introduced her to his partner with a proud voice — "My daughter is taking the scholarship exam to study abroad this year. If she passes, the whole school will know the Vo family's name" — causing Khanh Thu to force a smile, nodding to each guest while her mind was still filled with the image of Vy bending over table number one. She poured tea, offered cakes, answered a few social questions about her plans to study abroad, but her mind kept drifting every time there was silence.

By the time the guests left, it was almost ten o'clock at night. She went up to her room, sat at the desk but didn't open the book right away, just sat and looked out the window, where the streetlight cast a pale yellow halo into the room. She thought back to the whole incident this afternoon, trying to analyze it as if she were solving a math problem: Vy stood near Nguyen's table, his hand went under the table, then pulled it out very quickly. If you just got the wrong pair like you said, why be in such a hurry? But if it wasn't the wrong pair, what did you do with it?

She shook her head, reassuring herself that her thoughts were going too far based on a vague image seen from more than a dozen meters away, in the dim afternoon light, that lasted only a few seconds. A normal person, a student with a reputation for being gentle like Vy, has no reason to do something nefarious right before the eyes of others like that. She turned off the desk lamp and climbed into bed, but sleep came later than usual, mixed with fragmented dreams that had no beginning or end.

At his home, Nguyen reviewed the outline one last time, turned off the lights and went to bed early to preserve his strength for tomorrow, his heart full of hope mixed with the usual nervousness of anyone facing an important exam. Before going to sleep, he took out his father's old watch and tried it on his wrist - for the first time after many years of just keeping it in the desk drawer - as a way to reassure himself that tomorrow, no matter the outcome, he would try his best, not ashamed of himself or of his deceased father.

And at Vy's house, after the dinner his parents cooked separately to "nourish" him before the exam, he sat alone in the room for a long time, his hands still shaking like they did in the afternoon. He opened the drawer, looked at the empty space where the stack of papers used to lie, feeling both relief and panic mixed together to the point where it was hard to tell which emotion was dominant. He told himself that it was done, there was no taking it back, and the rest was just waiting to see if the exam invigilator would find out tomorrow — a question to which he didn't even know what answer to hope for.

He lay down on the bed, pulled the blanket up to his chin even though it wasn't cold, his eyes closed but his mind was still awake. In the darkness, he heard his parents talking quietly in the next room, discussing who would take him to school early tomorrow so he wouldn't be late, their voices full of hope and absolute trust in their son. That voice, instead of comforting, made his chest tighten, as if every word of love his parents had for him right now was an accusation that only he could hear.

Three people, three houses, three completely different mental states, but one thing in common: none of them expected that the next morning would be the last morning that all three could still look at each other as fair opponents.