Chapter 6 — Two Sides of an Argument

Part II — Forced Pairing

The notice board posted outside the door of the Debate Club's living room Wednesday morning caused a stir in the third floor hallway during recess. Mr. Sơn printed out an A3 sheet with a red border and bold title: "FORMAT FOR THE SELECTION ROUND TO CHOOSE REPRESENTATIVES FOR THE NATIONAL SCHOOL DEBATE TOURNAMENT." Below is a list of six names selected by the teacher from all twenty official members, ranked in order of draw: Nguyễn Hạ Vy, Trần Việt Bách, Lâm Bảo Trân, Nguyễn Đình Phúc, and two other names from last year's reserve squad.

"Just six people?" Mỹ Duyên read through the paper, her voice filled with regret mixed with excitement. "I thought I would get a chance to challenge myself, but it turns out the teacher only chose those with the most stable performance from the beginning of the year."

"You're not sad, are you?" Hạ Vy asked, even though inside she was trying to keep her heartbeat calm as her own name appeared at the top of the list.

"It's not sad," Mỹ Duyên waved her hand and smiled brightly. "I still have the entire twelfth grade year to practice, and I'd rather be your strategist standing outside cheering you on. Honestly, I think this is your chance, Hạ Vy."

Teacher Sơn explained in more detail during the activity that afternoon. Six members would compete in alternating round-robin competitions over the next two weeks; each person had to face at least four different opponents according to a randomly arranged schedule, and topics would be drawn right before each match, so no one could prepare specifically for a particular opponent in advance. The jury, consisting of the teacher and two other teachers in the school—Ms. Hạnh, who taught Literature and was famous for being demanding when evaluating persuasion, and Mr. Quang, who taught History and always focused deeply on the logic and accuracy of evidence—would score independently according to a criteria sheet consisting of five items: content, argument structure, critical ability, presentation skills, and overall persuasiveness. The scores of each match would be accumulated over the rounds, and the two people with the highest total score after two weeks would enter the decisive internal final.

"I want to make one thing clear," Mr. Sơn added, his eyes scanning all six faces listening attentively. "This is not a competition to tear each other down. You are still teammates in this club, no matter the final result. I hope you will respect each other throughout the process, and learn something from the losses, if any."

When the meeting ended, Hạ Vy stood for a moment, looking at her name on the wallpaper, feeling both excitement and pressure mixed together, hard to put into words. This was the first real opportunity since she transferred schools, a chance to prove, not only to Việt Bách, not only to teacher Sơn, but to herself, that her style deserves a place in the real arena, not just in internal practice sessions.

That evening, she called Mỹ Duyên as soon as she got home, her voice full of determination. "I need your help. I can't practice alone. I need someone to criticize me, someone to point out where I'm weak."

"You found the right person," Mỹ Duyên replied, her voice equally excited. "Tomorrow I'll bring some newspapers and notebooks, we'll practice right after class."

And so, for nearly two weeks after that, Hạ Vy spent almost all of her free time practicing. Every afternoon after regular classes, when most of the other students had gone home or gone to extra classes, she and Mỹ Duyên find a quiet corner in the school library, spread out on the table cut-out newspapers, printouts of research articles Hạ Vy found online, and a notebook that had begun to curl at the edges because it had been turned over and over again too many times.

"What is today's topic?" Mỹ Duyên asked, opening the notebook to a blank page, playing the role of judge with a fake seriousness that made Hạ Vy couldn't help but laugh.

"You choose big," Hạ Vy replied. "The more unexpected the better, I need to practice my reflexes, not just practice what I've prepared."

Mỹ Duyên quickly flipped through a newspaper, skimmed the title, then looked up, her eyes sparkling with mischief. "Okay. Should high school students be banned from using electric motorbikes to school? Which side are you on?"

"Support," Hạ Vy replied immediately, and began thinking out loud, a habit she learned from her own rehearsals with Việt Bách — instead of just finding a touching story, she forced herself to stop for a few seconds, visualizing the structure of three arguments in her mind before letting the story guide her.

She told about a traffic accident involving an electric motorbike near her old apartment complex, about a sixteen-year-old boy who had to be hospitalized for nearly a month because the car's brakes could not react in time at high speed on a crowded street. But this time, right after the story, she immediately turned to the evidence: the number of traffic accidents involving electric motorbikes among students increased nearly forty percent in the last three years according to the report of the National Traffic Safety Committee, analyzed that the majority of students had not been trained in safe driving skills at speeds over twenty-five kilometers per hour, and finally connected back to the image of the boy in the hospital to close the argument with emotion.

Mỹ Duyên clapped her hands when she stopped, not in the usual spirit of cheering her friends, but with genuine surprise. "You just did exactly what Mr. Sơn said last week," the girl said, her eyes lighting up. "The story leads the way, the data protects the story, not the other way around. I feel completely different than I did a month ago."

Hạ Vy smiled, but in her heart she knew she still had a long way to go. She practices instant criticism - the skill she was still weakest at - by having Mỹ Duyên read out loud random opposing arguments she finds on debate forums, forcing Hạ Vy to react immediately, without time to prepare. There were times when she was confused and hesitant, had to stop and apologize and then try again from the beginning. There were times when she found a reply so sharp that she even surprised herself.

Not only did she practice with Mỹ Duyên, Hạ Vy also began to observe more closely how Việt Bách built arguments in the matches of the selection round that she did not directly participate in. She realized he had a very unique habit — before arguing, he always paused for exactly two seconds, no more, no less, as if running a quick calculation in his head, rearranging the entire argument into the tightest order before opening his mouth. She tried to apply the same rhythm to herself, although for a different purpose — not to organize data, but to choose which emotional details, out of dozens of details that could be told, would touch the listener's heart the most.

The first match of the selection round took place on Friday, Hạ Vy faced off against Lâm Bảo Trân, a year eleven member with a fast, attacking debate style but sometimes lacking depth. She won, though not by a large margin, and the feeling of her first victory in the selection round made her full of confidence going into the second week of practice.

Việt Bách, on the opposite side of the scoreboard, also won two matches in a row with an overwhelming score difference, no surprise given his reputation as the school's number one debater for two consecutive years. But Hạ Vy noticed something different - he no longer seemed indifferent and complacent like in the matches at the beginning of the year. After each win, he sat longer than usual, reviewing his notes with a tense expression, as if wondering whether his current form was enough to maintain his position.

One afternoon, when they both happened to stay late at the library - Hạ Vy practicing with Mỹ Duyên in one corner, Việt Bách sitting alone in the opposite corner with a thick stack of books on public policy - their eyes accidentally met through the distance of the silent room. No one spoke, but there was a tacit recognition in that moment, an understanding that they were both entering the same fight, in very different ways, and that the road ahead, no matter who won or lost, would not be the same as they had imagined when they first started this school year.

That night, before going to bed, Hạ Vy took out her notebook and wrote down a short line under the desk lamp: "Two weeks left. I don't know who will win, but this time, no matter the result, I know I debated according to my true self, not a copy of anyone else." She closed the book, turned off the light, and fell asleep with a strange feeling of peace, a feeling she hadn't had since the fateful finals last year.

But that sleep did not last peacefully. In the middle of the night, she was startled awake by a short but strangely clear dream - she stood in the middle of the familiar stage of last year's city-level final, but this time, the person standing opposite her was not her old opponent, but Việt Bách, sharp eyes as always, and the familiar judge from last year was preparing to make a comment. She woke up before hearing that sentence, her heart was beating fast, it took a while to realize she was in her own bedroom, not on any stage.

She sat up, poured a glass of water, looked out the window where the streetlights reflected the faint streaks of light on the wall. Perhaps, she thought, the old fear had not completely disappeared, it had just changed shape, taking on a new face, a new name. But this time, unlike a year ago, she no longer wanted to run away from it. She wanted to face it, step on that stage again, whether in her imagination or in real life, and prove that her story, her voice, was still valid.

The next morning, she arrived at school earlier than usual, bringing with her a new determination, sharper than at any time since the day she first set foot in the Debate Club's living room. The auditions had only just begun, but she could already feel, somewhere deep inside her, that what was about to happen in the next two weeks would shape not only that single audition, but also how she saw herself, once and for all.