Chapter 16 — Two Sides of an Argument

Part IV — Rift

Việt Bách arrived home just after nine o'clock in the evening, still feeling a bit of the excitement of the afternoon's victory, a rare warm feeling that he had never allowed himself to fully enjoy since entering the Debate Club. His team and Hạ Vy had just won the school-level qualifying round, officially retaining the only spot in the National School Debate Tournament, and that evening he and everyone in the club celebrated with cans of soft drinks and bursts of laughter in the common room, an atmosphere that he, during his two years as the school's number one debater, had never really lived in, because winning had always been his own thing, with no one to share it with.

But as soon as I walked through the gate, that warm feeling began to cool. The light in his father's office was still on, the door was slightly open, just enough for him to see the familiar figure of Mr. Trần Quốc Hùng sitting behind the desk, his back absolutely straight as always, a thick stack of documents arranged neatly in front of him. Việt Bách immediately knew this was not a normal evening. Your father never stays up late waiting for you to come home just to ask.

The call he made this afternoon, right in the middle of the team cheering and celebrating, still echoed in his head. His voice through the phone speaker was so cold and steady that it was almost completely separated from the bustling atmosphere around him, saying only a short sentence of congratulations, then immediately switching to a vague but powerful reminder: didn't forget what was truly important. At that time, Việt Bách tried to put that sentence aside, telling himself that it was just his father's habit, always finding ways to remind him even in moments that should only be full of joy. But now, standing in front of the brightly lit office door, he understood that saying that was not a harmless habit. It was a warning.

"Come in here," Mr. Hùng said, without raising his head, his voice calm as if calling a student into the room to return an exam.

Việt Bách walked in, put his bag down next to the door, and stood opposite the desk according to a habit ingrained since childhood. The light from the table lamp cast familiar cold lines on his father's face, the eyes behind the thin-rimmed glasses looked at him with undisguised appreciation, the eyes that Việt Bách grew up with, the eyes that made him, at the age of eight, stand sobbing in front of the scoreboard with a red number seven in the middle of a long row of ten points, because for Mr. Hùng, a seven was not a good achievement, but a question that needed to be answered clearly: why not? must be ten.

"I heard that our team won today," Mr. Hùng said, his voice neither rising nor falling. "School qualifiers."

"Yes, that's right." Việt Bách replied, cautiously, sensing right from this opening sentence that the conversation would not go in the direction he expected.

"I saw it," Mr. Hùng continued, gently pushing a phone forward, the screen displayed a short video, perhaps recorded by someone in the auditorium and posted on the club's page. "Your opening presentation, the data section about the policy, was quite solid. But the middle part, the story about the woman who lost her job because of the policy — that wasn't yours to write, right?"

Việt Bách was silent for a second before answering. "That's the part of Hạ Vy, my team mate. The whole presentation is built together, interwoven between data and real stories, that's the strategy that makes my team win, dad."

"Strategy," Mr. Hùng repeated, almost whispering, as if tasting an unfamiliar word. He took off his glasses, put them on the table, gently rubbed the bridge of his nose, a gesture Việt Bách knew clearly what it meant: his father was preparing to say something he had thought about very carefully, not a spontaneous reaction. "I met that girl once, the day I came to pick you up after late practice. I still clearly remember the way she presented the problem - all about emotions, personal stories, no specific numbers could withstand a serious critical question. I don't deny that she has the ability to move the listener. But you are a future lawyer, Việt Bách, not a storyteller. The real world will not forgive arguments based solely on emotions."

"My team doesn't just rely on emotions," Việt Bách said, trying to keep his voice calm even though he felt a choking rising in his chest. "It's that combination that can defeat the opponent. Me and Hạ Vy won consecutively from the internal selection round to the school qualifying round, dad. It's not a coincidence."

"Dad didn't say it was a coincidence." Mr. Hùng's voice still retains that terrifying calmness, the calmness of a person accustomed to standing in court, accustomed to having every word he says is considered before being uttered. "Dad says you're wasting your time and energy on a weak, unsustainable style of debate that has no place in the truly tough arenas. The school qualifiers are one thing. The national tournament is another thing entirely. There, you'll be facing off against well-trained teams, opponents who will rip apart any emotional story with the simplest question of logic. Dad doesn't want to see you stand on that stage and lose, just because you chose to believe in a method with no solid scientific foundation."

Việt Bách stood still, his hands clasped behind his back, trying to organize an argument strong enough to refute in his mind, but before he could speak, Mr. Hùng pushed the stack of files on the table forward, signaling him to look at it.

"Do you still remember this program?" Mr. Hùng said, lightly tapping his finger on the cover printed with the words High Quality Bachelor of Law Program - Direct Admission Combined with Academic Sponsorship of Hanoi Law University. "Twenty targets nationwide each year. The application not only considers academic records and achievements, but also requires an academic sponsorship letter from a reputable lecturer in the field, who is willing to vouch for the candidate's ability and orientation. Dad has sat on the advisory board of this program for four consecutive years. I talked to the program director about you last semester. If I sponsor, your application will almost certainly pass the qualifying round, something that hundreds of other good students across the country must compete fiercely for it."

Việt Bách felt a cold current run down his spine. He had known about this program for a long time, and had silently considered it as the surest and safest way to enter university without having to bet everything on a single exam, a path that his father had nurtured for him for many years with his own prestige and academic relationships. He had never really imagined a scenario without it.

"What do you mean by that?" he asked, even though he vaguely guessed the answer in his heart, he just didn't want to believe it was true.

"It means I need to see you clearly demonstrate, through the way you argue, that you understand what is the right path," Mr. Hùng said, each word clear as if he were pronouncing a verdict. "I don't forbid you from doing anything, Việt Bách. You're old enough to be responsible for your own choices. But I also won't be able to put my name and academic reputation on the line to sponsor a file where you, through every match, are proving that you believe in emotions over reason, in stories over scientific evidence. That's not what a future lawyer should portray, and I won't be able to stand up and vouch for such an image before the admissions council."

"I don't understand why those two things have to be mutually exclusive," Việt Bách said, his voice starting to shake with an emotion he was trying to suppress, a mixture of anger and panic. "I'm still me, Dad. I'm just learning to argue in a different, more effective way. That doesn't mean I've given up reason or logic."

Mr. Hùng looked at him for a long time, his eyes never wavering. "Dad has spent his entire career teaching students that in legal argument, there is only one truly reliable weapon: evidence, logic, and absolute accuracy. Emotion is what the best lawyer always seeks to eliminate from the opponent's argument, because it is a weakness, a gap to be broken. The sooner you understand this, the better your chance of real success, not temporary success in a student competition, but a lifelong career. I give you two weeks, Việt Bách. Two weeks before the preparation for the national tournament officially begins. I want to see you make a clear choice - not by words, but by the way you argue. If after those two weeks, I still see you going in this direction, I will withdraw my name from the sponsorship application.

That sentence fell into the room like a verdict, slowly, without any harshness in volume, but each word carried the weight of a door slowly closing. Việt Bách stood there, feeling like all the air in the room had been sucked dry. He wanted to refute, wanted to tell his father that the team of him and Hạ Vy was not a child's game, that it was that combination that brought victory that he alone, no matter how good, had never achieved for two years in a row. But he also knew, for a long time, that arguing with his father with emotions was a battle he could never win, because Mr. Hùng always had a layer of logic covering all his requests, making them sound reasonable, seemingly for his benefit, even when they were suffocating his very being.

"I understand," Việt Bách said, his voice almost whispering, bowing slightly before turning and walking out of the office, not having enough strength to say anything else.

He went back to his room, closed the door, stood with his back against the wooden door in the dark for a long time before turning on the light. On the desk, his and Hạ Vy's debate strategy notebook was still open on the last page, both of their handwritings intertwined, arrows connecting his logical arguments with her narrative paragraphs, notes in the margins with different colored pens, traces of the countless late practice sessions they had worked together to build what his father now called weak, unsustainable.

He sat down, picked up his phone, saw a text message from Hạ Vy sent an hour ago, still echoing the joy of the celebration: "Thank you for everything. Today is one of the happiest days I've had since transferring schools. See you next practice, captain." Accompanied by a small, simple, sincere smiley face.

Việt Bách looked at that message for a long time, his finger hovering over the screen, typing and deleting a few responses, none of which seemed enough to express the chaotic emotions that were torn in his heart right now. In the end, he just typed out a short, innocuous line: "Yes, thank you. Good night." Then he turned off the screen, placed the phone face down on the table, and sat quietly in the darkness, listening to the steady ticking of the wall clock. Each passing second felt like a countdown to a deadline he did not know how to answer.

He thought about the years gone by, about the childhood evenings studying under the desk lamp while his father stood behind him, checking each answer with a red pen in his hand, about the scoreboards neatly taped to the refrigerator, the perfect numbers circled not as praise but as a reminder that was the only accepted standard. He thought about how he grew up in a house where love always came with conditions, where each compliment came only after an achievement, and he understood, even though he didn't want to admit it, that it was that made him such a sharp logical debater — because logic, with its clear, unambiguous numbers, was always the only thing that made him feel like he was on his feet, good enough, worthy enough.

And now, standing between two options - on the one hand, the team that he truly believed in, a friendship, a bond that he had never had with anyone else during his two years as a lonely school debater, and on the other hand, the only door he knew for sure would lead him to the future that he had been trained to pursue all his life - Việt Bách didn't know which side he had the courage to choose. He only knew that, for the first time in many years, he felt that the ground under his feet was no longer as solid as the numbers he had always believed, and that fear, silently and persistently, had begun to creep into every little corner of his heart, even when he tried not to let it show.

That night, Việt Bách could hardly sleep. He lay looking at the ceiling for a long time, listening to the sound of traffic fading on the street, listening to the clock ticking emotionlessly, and in his head, his father's words kept echoing over and over again: two weeks, Việt Bách, two weeks before the preparation round for the national tournament officially began. He knew, even though he didn't want to admit it to himself yet, that the moment he stepped into the next training session, he would no longer be the same person he had been the past weeks. A part of him, the part that always craved his father's recognition more than anything else in the world, began to silently move, pulling him towards the safe door that Mr. Hùng had set up, even when he knew the price to pay for that move could be the most valuable thing he had ever had in his entire student life.