Chapter 6 — The Test Has No Name

Sheet Of Paper In A Schoolbag

At eight thirty in the morning, Nguyen showed up at the auditorium, still a little nervous but much calmer than last night. He wore his father's old watch on his hand, checked his student ID card in his pocket one last time, then walked in line with Khanh Thu and Vy.

"According to the scholarship exam regulations, all school bags and personal items must be left at the front examination table and cannot be brought into the seat," an elderly male supervisor, sent by the provincial training department, announced firmly as soon as the three people entered. "You are only allowed to bring pens, student ID cards, and clear drinking water. Please put your bags up here one by one so the inspection team can work."

Nguyen placed his bag on the table in order, feeling completely secure - he brought nothing outside the regulations, only the books he used to review last night, spare pens, and a few unused blank sheets of scratch paper. Vy put her bag down afterward, her hands shaking a bit but trying to keep her face calm. Khanh Thu placed the last pair, her eyes accidentally glanced at Nguyen's pair, which was being opened by a female supervisor to check each compartment according to the correct procedure.

Everything happened very quickly. The female supervisor opened the main compartment and flipped through the books, nothing unusual. But when she opened the side compartment - a compartment Nguyen almost never used - she pulled out a neatly folded stack of photo paper, opened it, glanced at it, then paused, her face suddenly changed color.

"This is a review document containing formulas and lesson formats directly related to the content of today's exam," she said, her voice serious, turning to the male examiner standing next to her. "Need to make a record immediately."

"What?" Nguyen stepped forward, his heart pounding. "That's not mine. I didn't know it was in my bag."

"Calm down," the male supervisor said, his voice still calm but his eyes filled with suspicion. "This is a document found in your briefcase, at the pre-exam inspection area, in accordance with sealing procedures. We are forced to make a record according to regulations."

"But I didn't bring that document in," Nguyen said, his voice starting to tremble, not from fear but from the panic of someone who has just been thrust into a completely incomprehensible situation. "I swear I don't know where that came from."

Around, other students coming to take the following exams - even though they were not related to the scholarship exam - began to gather and look, whispers quickly spread throughout the hallway in front of the hall. Khanh Thu stood frozen in place, her hands tightening the strap of her bag, her eyes looking at the stack of papers in the supervisor's hand, then looking at Vy.

Vy stood a few steps away, his face pale, his lips pursed, not saying a word. For a brief moment, his eyes and Khanh Thu's eyes met. She saw something in it — not exactly outright guilt, but the utter panic of someone watching the consequences of her own actions spiral out of control. She opened her mouth, intending to say something, but no sound escaped her throat at that moment.

"Do you have any explanation?" The male supervisor asked Nguyen again, his voice softened a bit but still maintained the principle.

"I... I don't know," Nguyen stammered, for the first time in his life he felt like his language had become so useless. "Someone put it in, I didn't do it, you have to believe me."

"We do not have the right to arbitrarily draw conclusions. This matter must be referred to the school's disciplinary board for handling according to the correct procedure," the female supervisor said, folding up the minutes. "But according to current exam regulations, students with illegal documents in the exam area will be suspended from participating in the exam immediately, pending the official conclusion."

"No, please teacher, I'm not cheating," Nguyen said, his voice cracking, no longer able to maintain his usual calmness. "This is my only chance, I can't..."

"Teachers understand how you feel," the male supervisor said, his voice somewhat low, perhaps because he also realized the helplessness of the student in front of him. "But the regulations do not allow us to be flexible at this time. Go outside and wait, the school will work with your family later."

The two invigilators led Nguyen out of the testing area, letting him sit down on a chair in the hallway, away from the hall door where the exam was about to begin without him. Nguyen sat there, holding his head in his hands, feeling like the whole world had just collapsed in just a few short minutes, so fast that he didn't even have time to understand what really happened.

In the hall, the proctor announced that the exam would start on time with the remaining two candidates. Khanh Thu sat at table number three, her hands shaking so much that she couldn't hold the pen steady, her eyes constantly glancing towards the door, where she knew Nguyen was sitting alone outside. She wanted to stand up, wanted to run out and tell the supervisor what she saw yesterday afternoon, but her legs felt stuck to the chair, and another voice in her head — small but persistent — kept reminding her that she didn't really see clearly, that if she said something wrong, she would ruin someone else equally unjustly, that her father would never forgive if the family name was involved in a school scandal.

"You have three hours to complete the exam, starting now," the proctor announced, the stopwatch ringing dryly in the suffocating silence.

Vy lowered his head to the exam paper, held the pen in his hand but couldn't write a word during the first five minutes, his mind still echoed with Nguyen saying "I swear I don't know where that came from" - a statement so true that it made him, the only person who knew the whole truth, feel nauseous.

In the hallway, Nguyen sat alone, listening to the sound of the clock coming from the hall, hearing the teachers' footsteps going back and forth, hearing the chirping of sparrows on the tiled roof - all the normal sounds of an ordinary morning, while his life had just turned in a direction that he had never imagined, even in his worst nightmares.

He took his father's old watch from his hand, squeezing it so tightly in his palm that the metal edges dug into his skin, as if only that physical pain helped him believe that he was still alive, that this was not a dream from which he would soon wake up.

Hearing that something happened in the scholarship exam area, Ms. Tuong Bich Loan - homeroom teacher of class 12A - rushed over, panting as she walked quickly through two hallways. She saw Nguyen crouching on the chair, so she sat down next to him, didn't ask right away, but just put her hand on his shoulder first.

"I'll tell you what happened," she said, her voice gentle but firm.

Nguyen narrated the whole story, his voice was broken, sometimes he had to stop because his throat was tight. Ms. Loan listened without interrupting, just nodded, her eyes growing heavier and heavier.

"I trust you didn't do it," she said when he finished. "But I also have to tell you the truth, the current exam regulations do not allow me to intervene at this time. This will have to go through the disciplinary committee, and I will be there to protect you to the best of my ability."

"What if no one believes me?" Nguyen asked, his voice shaking, for the first time completely revealing the helplessness of an eighteen-year-old student before a system much larger than him.

"I don't promise everything will be okay," Ms. Loan replied, not wanting to lie to him with empty words of comfort. "But I promise I will investigate carefully, will ask everyone present yesterday and today, to see if anyone saw anything unusual. The truth is, even arriving late, is still better than never arriving at all."

Those words did not calm the panic in Nguyen's heart, but at least made him feel that he was not completely alone in this cold hallway. Ms. Loan sat with him for a while longer, until someone called her into the office to prepare related documents.

In the hall, three hours of homework passed strangely slowly for Khanh Thu. She read the same essay question three times and still couldn't understand the content. She held the pen in her hand but her mind kept drifting to the closed door, to Nguyen's pale face as she was led out, to Vy's panicked eyes when the supervisor opened the stack of papers. She wrote a few lines, then crossed them out, rewrote them, crossed them out again. It felt like all the knowledge she had studied for many months had suddenly disappeared, giving way to a single question that kept repeating in her head: Should I stand up right now, in the middle of the exam, and say what I saw?

She glanced at table number two and saw Vy bent over writing, his hands were still shaking a bit but his handwriting had stabilized, as if he had found a way to suppress his panic to continue working. That fake calm, instead of reassuring Khanh Thu, made her more confused — if Vy was really innocent like he said yesterday, why was he able to focus on doing his homework so quickly, right after witnessing his classmate being suspended from the exam in pain?

In the end, she didn't get up. She told herself that the middle of the exam was not the right time, that she needed time to think more carefully before making an allegation that could affect another person's future, that she would speak later, when she had more clear evidence. She bowed her head, trying to complete the exam in a semi-conscious state, knowing full well that no matter what the score was today, it didn't mean much compared to what had just happened outside the hall door.