Chapter 2 — Two Sides of an Argument

Three days after the first practice session, Hạ Vy still hasn't decided whether she should return to the Debate Club living room on Thursday afternoon or not. She had written down in her head at least three reasons for quitting - too much homework, needed time to get used to the new school, it was simply not suitable - but every time she tried to tell Mỹ Duyên, she swallowed them back because of a vague stubborn feeling that she couldn't even name.

"You're planning on skipping practice this afternoon, right?" Mỹ Duyên asked directly at recess, not bothering to beat around the bush, still peeling a carton of milk. "I see you've been looking at the club poster since morning until now with your face looking like you're considering whether or not to jump into the cold pool."

"I'm not hiding," Hạ Vy defended, although her voice was so unconvincing that even she could hear the weakness in it. "I'm just thinking about whether it's worth continuing or not."

"It's worth it," Mỹ Duyên said firmly, placing the milk carton on the table with a small click as if for emphasis. "If you give up just because of Trần Việt Bách, it's just like letting him win the rest of this semester. He'll never know that he just made a good person leave the club, because he doesn't even care about it."

That statement, although somewhat teasing, touched a certain corner of Hạ Vy's self-esteem. She remembered Việt Bách's quick assessment eyes that day, his calm and careless words after the match — you should reconsider your approach — as if she were a problem that needed to be fixed rather than an opponent worthy of respect. The thought that she might become a faded footnote in his memory, someone who had tried her hand and then quietly disappeared, caused a surge of stubbornness to surge through her stronger than fear.

“Okay,” she said, straightening her back. "I'll go."

The club room that afternoon was more crowded than Hạ Vy expected. In addition to about fifteen familiar faces from the previous session, there were also a few tenth and eleventh grade students who curiously stopped by to take a look. Teacher Sơn is writing this week's debate topic on the whiteboard, with neat, decisive handwriting: "Should students be allowed to use phones during class for the purpose of looking up information?"

"Today I want to try a different arrangement," Mr. Sơn said, turning around to look at the whole room, his eyes lingering on Hạ Vy a little longer than usual, as if he were checking to see if she really came back because of passion or just because she didn't want to lose. "Hạ Vy, you still support. Việt Bách, you still oppose. I want to see your two styles rub together again, this time with more preparation."

Việt Bách, sitting in the front row with a tall friend, with slightly ruffled hair and a face always looking like he was about to burst into laughter, looked up at Hạ Vy with a somewhat unsurprised expression. "Okay," he replied briefly, then turned to his friend next to him and whispered something that made the other boy laugh out loud.

"That's Hồ Tuấn Kiệt," Mỹ Duyên whispered, pulling Hạ Vy to sit in the chair next to her. "Việt Bách's best friend, also his former teammate last year before Kiệt switched to being an internal judge for the club because he was busy studying for the Chemistry exam. His personality is completely opposite of Việt Bách, funny, easy-going, and often teases his friends to the point of madness."

This time Hạ Vy had ten minutes to prepare instead of having to completely improvise like before. She sat down in the corner of the room, took out her notebook, and instead of just writing down the story she intended to tell, she tried to remember the advice—if it could be called that—from Việt Bách the day before. Without solid evidence, emotional arguments would always be easily defeated. She hated to admit that there was some truth to that statement, but she also wasn't about to give up something that was part of her nature just because an overconfident person told her she should.

So this time, she wrote a story about an old classmate who was punished for secretly using her phone to look up new words during an English test, even though the purpose was just to understand the topic correctly - but she also spent the remaining five minutes searching her memory about an article she once read, talking about a small study at an international school that allowed students to use their phones in a controlled manner during class and noted a significant increase in proactive searching. She didn't remember the exact number, but she remembered enough to mention it as a fulcrum, instead of relying entirely on her emotions like last time.

When it was her turn, she stood up, took a breath, and began.

"I want to talk about a friend of mine who was suspended from an exam because she took out her phone to look up an English word she didn't understand in the test — not to cheat, but just because the pressure to understand the question correctly was greater than the fear of being caught. She cried a lot after that, not because she was punished, but because she felt the school didn't trust her motives." She stopped for a moment, looked around the room, and saw a few eyes starting to pay attention. "But this is not just a sad story. A study at a number of international schools that allow controlled phone use during class has recorded that students actively looking up and studying on their own increased significantly, because they no longer have to choose between understanding the lesson and following rigid rules."

She didn't give a percentage exact number like Việt Bách usually did, and she knew he would realize that immediately. But this time, when it was his turn to argue, Việt Bách's eyes paused longer than usual before he stood up.

"The story about Hạ Vy's friend is still as touching as before," he said, his voice still calm but something different — no longer completely dismissive. "But the study you just mentioned, if I remember correctly, was conducted on a very small scale, only about two schools, and could not control the number of students who already had a good sense of self-study. It cannot represent all high school students, especially in the context that many of them use their phones to do other things during class other than look up."

He still won that argument, but this time when Mr. Sơn announced the results, his voice was somewhat different from before. "Việt Bách wins in terms of technical criticism," the teacher said, "but I have to note that this time Hạ Vy showed us a much more balanced approach than last week. This is exactly what I want you to learn from each other."

After practice, when Hạ Vy was packing up her notebooks, Hồ Tuấn Kiệt suddenly approached, his smile reaching from ear to ear. "Hey, you're the first person in two years that made that dry guy use the words 'if I remember correctly'," he said, nodding towards Việt Bách who was exchanging something with Mr. Sơn in the corner of the room. "Normally he just says the exact numbers like a computer, he never has to admit that he might remember it wrong."

"So what does that mean?" Hạ Vy asked, half curious and half skeptical.

"That means you made him think more than usual," Kiệt chuckled. "Don't let his cold face like a freezer fool you. Việt Bách isn't easily swayed, but you just made him really try, and that's very rare."

"Is he always like that?" Hạ Vy asked, unable to contain her curiosity. "Like... just believe in data?"

The smile on Kiệt's lips faded a bit, fleeting like a cloud passing across the sun. "It's a long story," he said, his voice a bit softer. "But I think that's not necessarily the nature he chose, but the way he was taught to live. Slowly you will understand."

That unfinished sentence made Hạ Vy more curious than satisfied, but Kiệt quickly changed the subject, inviting her and Mỹ Duyên to the cafeteria to drink milk tea before she could ask more. On the way out of the living room, Hạ Vy accidentally caught Việt Bách's eyes from the other side of the room. He didn't say anything, just nodded briefly - not a compliment, not quite an acknowledgment, but certainly no longer the indifferently evaluating look of the first meeting.

That evening, while sitting at her desk, Hạ Vy reopened the old debate notebook she brought with her from her old school, and for the first time in many months, she no longer felt heavy when flipping through those pages. She started writing a new list, not a list of moving stories she could tell, but a list of numbers, studies, and specific evidence that she could learn to weave underneath each story, so they no longer stood alone and were easily broken.

She didn't know if she would ever win against Việt Bách in an official match. But for the first time since last year's fateful finals, she felt like she was moving forward instead of just trying not to go back, and that feeling, however small, was still enough to make her smile alone in the quiet room, outside the window the last summer cicadas of the school year still chirped endlessly.