Chapter 24 — Two Sides of an Argument

It took Hạ Vy four full days to decide. She talked to Mỹ Duyên twice, to Mr. Sơn once, sat quietly in her own room countless evenings, weighing and weighing back and forth between the fear of being hurt again and the regret of letting everything she and Việt Bách had built together disappear just because of one bad evening. In the end, what convinced her was not the apology at the park, even though that apology was so sincere that it surprised her, but a statement from her mother herself, when she realized her daughter had been worrying for several days.

"What are you more afraid of," her mother asked over dinner, her voice gentle but thoughtful, "of being hurt one more time, or of never knowing whether things could have been better if you'd given it one more chance?"

The following Monday morning, Hạ Vy went to see Mr. Sơn before class, informing him that she wanted to withdraw her decision to resign, but with one condition - she needed time, needed to be treated as a true equal partner, not just an emotional puzzle piece to be added to complete the set. Teacher Sơn, his eyes shining with rare relief, agreed immediately, and suggested something that neither of them expected.

"I won't be there for practice this afternoon," he told both of them when they arrived at the clubroom after school. "No judges, no scores, no hypothetical opponents. I think you two need a training session not to prepare tactics, but to find a way to work together again, in your own way." He looked at them both, his eyes both serious and warm. "I believe you two know what you need to do better than I think."

When the door closed behind Mr. Sơn, the room suddenly became so silent that Hạ Vy could clearly hear the wall clock ticking. She and Việt Bách stood facing each other, the same distance as the first time they met, but everything between them was completely different.

"Where do we start?" Hạ Vy asked, her voice a bit hesitant.

"I don't know," Việt Bách replied honestly, a rare honesty in him, who always has an answer ready for everything. "Perhaps not from a debate topic."

They sat down on two chairs facing each other, not in the position of preparing for a fight, but almost in the position of two friends chatting. There was a long silence, not uncomfortable but full of hesitation, until Hạ Vy, almost without forethought, began to speak.

"You know the story I told you about last year's finale," she said, her voice slow. "But I never told the whole thing. I only told the part of what the judge said, the part that everyone knows. I never told the rest."

Việt Bách was silent, just nodded slightly, signaling her to continue without urging.

"The topic that night was urban environmental policy," Hạ Vy began, her eyes gradually becoming distant, as if she were going back in time to that moment. "I started with a story about my grandfather. He passed away when I was in tenth grade, due to lung disease, after many years of living near an industrial park without a standard exhaust treatment system. I told about the last mornings, when he no longer had the strength to go to the garden to water the flower pots he planted himself, so he had to ask me to push the wheelchair out to help him, and he still smiled, still telling me that the air today was fresher than yesterday, even though the doctor had told the whole family that his lungs were almost dead. I could still function. I cried when I told that story on stage, really crying, not acting. And at that moment, the whole auditorium was silent, I could feel that everyone was really listening, really moved."

She stopped for a moment, her hands clasped together in her thighs. "But when that judge commented, he said right in front of the entire auditorium, in front of my team, in front of my parents sitting in the audience, that my presentation was 'too emotional, lacking in science, only good at moving people's hearts and not having a solid argument'. He also added something I've never told anyone, including Mỹ Duyên." Her voice trembled. "He said, 'Maybe you should consider whether you're really suited to academic debate or whether you're simply trying to exploit your personal pain to gain sympathy points.'"

Việt Bách clenched his hands, a feeling of anger rising in his chest even though it happened a year ago and was not directly related to him.

"I stood frozen on stage," Hạ Vy continued, tears began to flow but she didn't stop. "I looked down the row of seats, saw my dad bowing his head, not daring to look up, and my mom was crying. My team lost that match, and after leaving the stage, I ran straight to the bathroom, locked the door, sat down on the floor and cried until I couldn't make a sound anymore. My team captain, someone I used to be very close to, knocked on the door, but when I opened it, he only said one sentence, 'Next time, remember to prepare the data more carefully,' and then left, as if the painful part was most of me didn't exist, as if I had just made a simple tactical mistake, not just been exposed in front of hundreds of people. I quit the debate club the next week. I deleted all messages related to the team, blocked that judge's social network account, but I still kept exactly one video - the video from that day - even though I never had the courage to watch it completely again to remember every sentence he said exactly, as a way to punish myself every time I think I'm doing something well."

Việt Bách reached out, uncertain, then gently placed it on her shaking hand, not squeezing it tightly, just a small fulcrum. “Thank you for telling me,” he said, his voice hoarse. "I'm sorry for making you relive that again, at our practice session."

"I know," Hạ Vy replied, taking a breath to regain composure. "But that's why I need to tell you all about it today, not to make you feel worse, but because I think if we want to rebuild things, we need to really understand each other, not just on the surface."

She wiped her tears, then looked at him, her eyes were now calmer but there were still traces of the emotions she had just experienced. "What about you? You once said your father was a strict law lecturer, but I think I never really understood what that meant."

Việt Bách was silent for a moment, retracted his hand, wondering where he should start. "Since childhood, everything in my life has been graded," he began, his voice slow. "It's not just tests at school. The way you talk at the dinner table, the way you respond to visitors, the way you react when you lose a match, it's all scrutinized like an essay that needs editing. My dad has a notepad—really, a real notebook—where he jots down the reasoning errors I make in everyday conversations, and then at night, before I go to bed, he'll sit down and point out each mistake, like a case law review. By the age of twelve, I could distinguish the fallacy of personalization from the fallacy of hasty induction, before I knew how to cook a simple meal for myself."

Hạ Vy listened, her eyes full of sadness that she tried not to show too clearly, afraid of making him stop.

"The worst thing is not the strictness," Việt Bách continued, his voice becoming heavier. "It's the feeling of never having enough. You win first prize in a competition, your dad will ask why you didn't get a perfect score. You get a perfect score, he'll ask if your opponent is strong or not, because if the opponent is weak, then the victory isn't worth anything. I grew up feeling like I was always an unfinished version of a certain expectation, and the only way I found to survive in that house was to become very good at control — controlling my emotions, controlling my words, and controlling everything that could make me look weak in my father's eyes. Debate is the only place where I feel truly good at something according to what my father taught me—the only place where I feel completely in control."

He stopped, looking down at his hands. "Then you showed up, stood in the middle of the training arena that first day, and told a story that made the whole room quiet, something that all my numbers couldn't do. I wasn't just upset because you challenged my style, Hạ Vy. I was scared, because you showed me there was another way to exist, a way that didn't need to control everything to the point of suffocation but could still be strong, and that made the entire foundation I'd built for eighteen years suddenly become shaky. When my father applied pressure, my first instinct was to cling to the only thing I believed to be safe—absolute control, pure logic—and eliminate what threatened it, even at the cost of hurting the very person who showed him another way of life.”

Hạ Vy was silent for a long time, letting those words sink in, then she smiled slightly, a sad but sincere smile. "So we both carry the same type of wound, just different shapes," she said. "I'm afraid of not being strong enough. You're afraid of not being perfect enough. Both come from someone, at some crucial moment, telling us that our true self isn't good enough."

"That's right," Việt Bách said, surprised at how accurately she expressed what he had never said out loud so clearly.

They sat in silence for a while, not an awkward silence, but a loaded silence, as if they both needed time to fully appreciate what had just been shared. Finally, Hạ Vy stood up and walked out to the small "arena" in the middle of the room, where they had faced each other in that fateful first match.

"Let's try a topic," she said, her voice regaining some life, almost mischievous. "Not to fight each other. To see if we can build an argument together, really together, not just putting two separate parts together."

Việt Bách stood up and walked a little closer to her than usual. "What topic?"

"Something we can both really contribute to," Hạ Vy said, thinking for a moment. "Family pressure on high school students — whether or not there should be a limit to the expectations parents set."

Việt Bách laughed softly, for the first time in many days he actually laughed out loud. "The topic couldn't be more appropriate," he said.

They spent nearly an hour building their argument together, not in the way each person prepares their part and then puts it together, but actually together, interrupting each other, complementing each other. Hạ Vy gave a story and then stopped to ask Việt Bách if there were any data to support it. Việt Bách gave a statistic and then asked in return if there was a story that would make that number more meaningful to the listener. By the time they tried to perform in front of an imaginary "audience", they both realized that something had changed completely from every previous rehearsal - no one was trying to dominate the other, no one considered their style superior, just two voices blending together so naturally that they even surprised themselves.

When the sunset began to dye the living room window orange, Hạ Vy sat down, panting lightly with excitement, looking at Việt Bách with a smile brighter than any smile she had given him before. “This,” she said, “this is what we can be.”

Việt Bách looked at her, feeling something warm spread in his chest, a feeling he had never allowed himself to fully feel before, for fear it would make him lose control. But this time, he didn't try to push it away. "Yes," he replied, his voice gentle. "This is what we can become."