Chapter 21 — Two Sides of an Argument

Part V — Finding Common Voice

Three days after the practice session in which Hạ Vy officially informed Mr. Sơn that she wanted to withdraw from the team, the Debating Club living room still maintained its familiar appearance — chairs arranged in two rows facing each other, the whiteboard with a few hastily scribbled lines left over from their last practice session as a team — but the atmosphere in there had changed completely, as if a layer of cold dust had covered everything and no one bothered to brush it off.

Việt Bách sat alone in the corner of the room after the regular class had ended for nearly an hour, a stack of notecards in front of him, a pen rotating in his hand in an unconscious rhythm. He told himself that he was preparing a backup set of arguments, in case teacher Sơn was forced to let him compete alone or pair him with another member in the remaining days before the deadline. But half an hour had passed, and the piece of paper in front of him still had exactly three lines, and all three of those lines he had written and erased, written and erased, not because they were wrong, but because they were blankly correct — precise, tight sentences, with no gaps for the other person to criticize, and no trace of life that made them worth saying.

The past three days had been the longest days in the two years he had been with the club. Mỹ Duyên looked at him with eyes he had never seen in her—not angry, just cold, as if he had turned himself into a stranger. Several other members, including Anh Khoa and Ngọc Hân, who were once formidable opponents of him and Hạ Vy in the school qualifiers, now avoided talking to him during breaks, not because they hated him, but because no one knew what to say to someone who had just publicly hurt the teammate who won with them. As for Mr. Sơn, who had always looked at him with both strict and trusting eyes for the past two years, now he only looked at him with quiet fatigue, like someone who had hoped too much for something and now had to learn to accept that it might not work out.

Việt Bách put down his pen and rubbed his face with his hands. He had told himself a hundred times in the past three days that he had no choice that night of the big practice—that the pressure from his father was too much, that he was just trying to save his own future, that what he said, however cruel, was at least logically true. But every time he repeated that argument in his mind, another part of him—the part of him that found it increasingly difficult to keep quiet—asked the opposite: if it was all logic, why did he choose those exact words, that sentence structure, that cruel, cold way of speaking? He could criticize Hạ Vy's strategy in dozens of different ways. He chose to almost copy verbatim a judge's words that Hạ Vy herself once told him, late one night in this very room, her voice trembling as she repeated each word.

The door to the living room opened, interrupting his thoughts. Hồ Tuấn Kiệt walked in, no longer his usual humorous and carefree look. He pulled out a chair, sat down opposite Việt Bách, placed his hands on the table, and looked straight into his friend's eyes for a long time before speaking.

"How long are you going to sit here?" Kiệt asked, without any joking in his voice.

"I'm preparing a backup plan," Việt Bách replied, his eyes still glued to the paper in front of him. "If Hạ Vy really withdraws, I need to have something to present to teacher Sơn before the deadline."

"Are you kidding yourself?" Kiệt asked directly, without beating around the bush. "You sit here for three days straight, writing and rewriting three lines you don't like, and you call that preparing a backup plan? Bach, look at me."

Việt Bách reluctantly raised his head.

"Do you know what you just did?" Kiệt continued, his voice still calm but each word was as heavy as stone. "It's not about you suggesting to change the strategy. It's not about you wanting to focus more on data. I understand that, I also find it reasonable. What I'm saying is that you stood in front of the whole club, in front of teacher Sơn, and told Hạ Vy exactly like this." Kiệt lowered his voice, but still emphasized each word, almost repeating verbatim. "'Hạ Vy's presentation may move the audience, but it does not have a solid argument. If you want to win in the national arena, it's better to minimize emotions and focus entirely on data.' Do you still remember when you said the exact same thing?"

Việt Bách was silent. Hearing it again from someone else's mouth, those words sounded even more cruel than he imagined when repeating them in his head.

"I remember," he said softly.

"Did you know that's almost verbatim what a judge once said to her in front of an entire room at her old school? The sentence that made her almost quit debating for a whole year?" Kiệt asked, and when Việt Bách didn't answer, he nodded slowly, as if he had just confirmed what he had suspected from the beginning. "You know. She told you once, right? In this very room, after some late practice session."

"I know," Việt Bách admitted, his voice almost silent.

"Then don't sit there and tell me you're just arguing against strategy." Kiệt's voice was a bit harsh for the first time. "You're not attacking an argumentative tactic, Bach. You're attacking her old wound — a wound she trusted you enough to talk about, and you knew exactly how much it would hurt. That wasn't cold, heartless logic. It was a choice."

"I have no other choice," Việt Bách shot back, his voice suddenly tense. "You don't know what my dad said to me. He threatened to withdraw his sponsorship of my early admission application, Kiệt. My whole future."

"You are not." Kiệt interrupted so decisively that Việt Bách was stunned. "Don't blame it all on your dad. He puts pressure on you, yes, and he's cruel in his own way—I don't deny that; I've seen enough to know how terrible he is. But it's you who chooses how to react to that pressure. You can stay silent. You can kindly suggest a change of strategy. You can talk to Hạ Vy in private first instead of publicly degrading her in front of the whole room. You choose the way that hurts the most, as fast as possible, before anyone can see that you're scared yourself. That's what I want you to look straight at, not torment you further, but because this isn't the first time I've seen you do that."

Việt Bách looked at his friend, not understanding. "What do you mean?"

Kiệt sighed, leaned back in his chair, his eyes distant for a moment as if searching for an old memory. "Do you remember ninth grade? The time you won first prize in the city-level speech contest. I went to your house to celebrate, and I still remember clearly, because that was the first time I saw your living room filled with certificates of merit. Do you remember what your father said to you that night?"

Việt Bách was silent, his jaw clenched.

"He didn't say 'you're very good'. He took out his notebook, pointed to exactly one sentence in his speech — the one he used to open, about how his grandmother used to teach him to read under an oil lamp as a child — and said it was 'redundant, it dilutes the argument, a good lawyer doesn't need to open with tears'. He was fourteen years old, had just won the city, and the first thing he heard was a criticism of exactly the only part of his speech that came from your heart." Kiệt looked straight into Việt Bách's eyes. "I remember, because that night you didn't say a word on the way I took you to the gate. And then, I noticed you never started your speech with a personal story again. Not once, for four years straight, until Hạ Vy appeared."

Việt Bách felt his throat tight. He had never told that story to anyone, not even Kiệt - it turned out that Kiệt had witnessed it himself and remembered it all those years.

"Remember in seventh grade, you wrote short stories?" Kiệt continued, his voice softening a bit, but still not giving up. "There was a notebook you hid in your desk drawer, writing about all kinds of nonsense about adolescence. You once let me read a passage, I still remember it quite well. Then one day your father found that notebook, and after reading it, he told you 'wasting time on useless things, it won't help your future'. After that day you didn't write anything anymore. I'm not saying these things to reopen your wounds, Bach. I'm saying it because I think you need to see what's going on." The pattern is repeating in his life. Every time he reveals a soft, vulnerable part of himself, he's been taught that it's something to cut out, to hide, to underestimate. And now, every time he's scared, he does exactly what his father did to him — he attacks the other person's emotions, before anyone can see that he's scared too.

The room was silent for a long moment. Việt Bách bowed his head, his hands clasped together on the table, feeling as if something had just burst inside his chest - not a sharp pain, but a pressure that had been pent up for too long, only now finding a way out.

"I don't know what to do anymore," he said, his voice hoarse. "I know I'm wrong. I knew from the moment I saw Hạ Vy's face, but I don't know how to fix it, because I don't know where to start. What's the use of apologizing to her, if next week, next month, I do the exact same thing again when my father puts pressure on me again?"

"That's exactly what I wanted to say," Kiệt replied, his voice lighter, almost a rare gentleness he had for his friend. "You can't just apologize to Hạ Vy and call it a day, because the root of the problem doesn't lie with her. It lies with you, and in the way you never dared to stand up straight in front of your father to say what you really want. You just let him define who you are, define what's valuable and what's not, all these years. If you don't solve that problem first, no matter how skillfully you apologize to Hạ Vy, you will end up in this exact position again. Again, maybe not with her, but with someone else, or worse, with yourself."

Việt Bách sat quietly, letting those words slowly sink into him. He thought of his father, of the office that was always so neat and cold, of the desk lamp he kept on late into the night to grade papers, of the way he used to look at him — not with the eyes of a father, but sometimes more like an examiner, always finding the next mistake before he could acknowledge what was done right. He thought of the words his grandfather once said when he was young, one time he cried because his friends teased him: "No one cries in this house. Tears can't solve any problem, only reason can do it." He believed that for ten years, so much so that he didn't realize how much it had eroded him, until Hạ Vy came into his life and proved, over and over again, that what he said wasn't entirely true.

"You're right," Việt Bách finally said, raising his head to look at Kiệt, his eyes were different now - no longer avoiding. "I have to talk to my dad. Honestly, it's not like I'm just going to obey and get it over with like usual."

"It won't be easy," Kiệt said, his voice serious but somewhat relieved, as if he had been waiting for this for a long time. "He won't change after just one conversation. He probably won't change at all. But at least you'll know you actually stood up for yourself for once, instead of just letting things go the way he planned."

Việt Bách nodded slowly, feeling a new determination forming in his heart, still immature but firmer than anything he had felt in the past three days. He looked down at the paper with three lines of empty arguments in front of him, then crumpled it up and threw it into the nearby trash could.

"Tonight," he said, his voice more determined than at any time during that fateful final practice session. "I'll talk to my dad tonight."

Kiệt patted his friend's shoulder, didn't say anything else, just left a silence long enough for both of them to sit with that feeling - not relief, because everything was still too far to be called okay, but the feeling of a person who had just decided to step out of the loop that had imprisoned him for so long, even though he didn't know what was on the other side.

On the way home that afternoon, Việt Bách walked more slowly than usual, letting each familiar street pass slowly before his eyes, trying to rearrange in his mind what he wanted to say, knowing that no matter how carefully he prepared, he would not be able to predict his father's reaction. But this time, unlike all the previous times, he no longer tried to compose a perfect argument without loopholes to convince him. He only brought with him one thing - the truth about himself, something that he had never had the courage to say openly over the years.