Chapter 7 — Two Sides of an Argument

The second week of the selection round passed at a much more stressful pace than the first week. The scoreboard posted outside the club's living room was updated after each match, and every time Mr. Sơn pinned a new result sheet on it, the entire third-floor hallway gathered to watch, discussing the narrowing score gap between the two top names: Nguyễn Hạ Vy and Trần Việt Bách.

Hạ Vy won two more matches in a row, one against Nguyễn Đình Phúc by a narrow margin, the other against a member of last year's reserve team with a wider margin thanks to a story about her father working as a motorbike taxi driver that she overheard from a neighbor, which she cleverly integrated into the topic of insurance policy for freelance workers. Việt Bách, as expected, also maintained his absolute form, winning all four matches in the selection round with logical arguments without any loopholes, to the point that someone in the club started joking that perhaps the judges should give him the exam spot directly to save him the trouble of organizing the internal finals.

But at the end of the second week, when the final scorecard was announced, the atmosphere in the living room suddenly fell into a stunned silence. Both Hạ Vy and Việt Bách had the highest total score, and - something that had never happened in the history of the club's selection round according to Mr. Sơn - the two had absolutely equal scores, down to the smallest fraction that the judges could score.

"I rechecked three times," Mr. Sơn said, his voice a rare bit of confusion mixed with his usual calmness, holding a scoreboard that was wrinkled from being turned over and over again. "Ms. Hạnh and Mr. Quang also independently compared. The results remain unchanged. The two of you will have to play a decisive internal final match this Saturday to determine the official representative."

The internal final took place in the school's small hall, with almost the entire club and a few curious teachers watching. The topic was drawn on the spot, no one had time to prepare in advance: "Should the high school graduation exam be completely eliminated and replaced with a thorough learning process assessment?" Hạ Vy was supported by the side, Việt Bách was opposed.

This was the most stressful match that Hạ Vy had ever experienced since joining the club. She opened with the story of an old classmate, a student who was good at every subject but always fell into a state of panic before every big exam, to the point of fainting right in the exam room in eleventh grade just because of the pent-up pressure of a whole semester waiting for just one morning. She spoke slowly, letting each detail sink in to the listener, then turned to the evidence - studies in school psychology show that formative assessment helps significantly reduce the rate of students suffering from test-related anxiety disorders, and more accurately reflects a student's true ability than a single test of chance.

Việt Bách argued with his usual sharpness, but this time Hạ Vy realized that he was also changing his approach. Instead of just throwing data straight at her argument like the first time, he started with a more humane question — was eliminating the graduation exam really fair to students in schools with poorer teaching conditions, where formative assessment could be affected by bias or lack of uniformity among teachers, before presenting a series of data on the difference in educational quality between regions.

The match lasted nearly forty-five minutes, far beyond the usual time limit because the judges continuously requested additional rounds of criticism to make a clear decision. When finally Mr. Sơn, Ms. Hạnh and Mr. Quang retreated to a private room to consult, the whole hall waited silently in an almost tangible tension.

Fifteen minutes later, the three judges returned, and Mr. Sơn's face carried an expression that Hạ Vy had never seen on him before — both serious and a bit close to genuine confusion.

"This is the first time in the twelve years I have been in charge of this club," Mr. Sơn said, his voice slow, "that the three independent judges have given an absolute draw, not only on the total score but also on each individual criterion. Hạ Vy is superior in emotional connection, presentation skills and overall persuasiveness. Việt Bách is superior in argument structure and ability to immediately criticize. None of the three judges can make a fair decision in favor of one person."

The buzz immediately spread throughout the hall. Hạ Vy stood still, her heart beating fast, not knowing whether to feel relieved or more confused by this result. She glanced at Việt Bách and saw that he was also standing motionless, his jaw clenched, his eyes looking at Mr. Sơn with an undisguised tense expectation.

"I need more time to consider the next step," Mr. Sơn said, raising his hand to signal the hall to return to order. "I won't make a hasty decision just to have a single name to meet the deadline. I will announce the final decision at the next meeting."

That evening, when everyone had dispersed, Hạ Vy lingered alone on the steps in front of the school gate, waiting for her mother to pick her up. She still felt confused, partly because of the intense match she had just played, partly because the result was unclear, making her not know whether to be happy or worried. There were footsteps, and she looked up to see Việt Bách standing there, hands in his pockets, eyes equally complicated.

"Are you sitting here alone?" he asked, his voice a bit more reserved than usual.

"Yes, wait for my mother," Hạ Vy replied. "Aren't you coming back?"

"I'm waiting..." Việt Bách hesitated, then sat down on the steps at a polite enough distance from her, "waiting to see if I should talk about this with you or not."

"What are you talking about?"

"I don't know how to feel about the draw," he admitted, a rare frankness in his voice. "Part of me wanted to win, win clearly, so no one would have any doubts. But another part of me thought... maybe this draw wasn't an accident, but an answer."

Hạ Vy looked at him, not completely understanding what he wanted to say. "The answer to what?"

"I'm not sure," Việt Bách said, looking out at the gradually darkening yard in front of him. "But during the forty-five minutes I played with you today, there was a moment when I realized I was trying to copy your approach, using human questions before giving facts, and it made my argument much stronger than usual. I don't know if that's a coincidence or not."

That statement made Hạ Vy pause for a moment, because she had felt the same thing about herself throughout the match — that the times she had tried to prepare a logical framework before letting the story guide her had made her argument much stronger than in the earlier matches of the year.

“Maybe we're just learning from each other,” she said, carefully. "Nothing strange."

"Maybe so," Việt Bách replied, but his eyes still held something unsaid. Hạ Vy's mother's car just arrived in front of the gate, interrupting the conversation. She stood up, slung her bag over her shoulder.

"See you at the next event," she said.

"Yeah," Việt Bách replied, then added, more as if muttering to himself than to her, "no matter the result, today was the best match I've ever participated in."

On the car ride home, Hạ Vy told her mother the whole story, her voice still full of excitement and confusion. Her mother listened attentively, occasionally nodding, then when her daughter finished, she just smiled gently.

"You know, sometimes a draw isn't a deadlock," her mother said, looking straight ahead at the road ahead. "Sometimes it's the universe trying to tell you something you're not ready to hear."

"What do you mean?"

“I mean, maybe the right question isn't who's better,” her mother said, glancing meaningfully at her daughter. "It's about whether two people can be stronger when standing together."

Hạ Vy didn't answer, just turned her head to look out the window, letting those words quietly permeate her for the rest of the trip. She didn't know what Mr. Sơn would decide at the next activity, but for the first time, a vague, almost unbelievable, thought began to form in her mind—a thought about whether the path ahead would necessarily be one of confrontation, or could be something else entirely.

When she got home, she went to her room, but did not open her books as usual, but sat in front of the desk, her fingers lightly tapping on the desk in an unconscious rhythm. She thought back over the entire forty-five minutes of the final, trying to separate the moments she was truly proud of, and the moments she was just trying not to lose. Strangely enough, the passages she remembered most clearly and vividly in her mind were not when she gave the most accurate data, but when she saw Việt Bách pause for half a second before a human question that he asked himself, as if he was also asking himself that question, not just to argue.

She opened the window, letting the night breeze flow into the room, and looked down at the empty street below, where the pale yellow streetlights stretched into dim streaks of light on the dew-wet street surface. Over the past year, she had always imagined debate as an arena where only one person emerges victorious, while the other person was forced to leave with their own wounds — exactly like what happened to her in the finals last year. But tonight, for the first time, she wondered if that vision was always true, or if it was just the only way she had ever known to see herself in relation to others—always a winner or a loser, with no space in between for either of them to stand on.

Before turning off the light to go to bed, she texted a short message to Mỹ Duyên, even though she knew her friend was probably asleep for a long time: "Absolute draw. I don't know whether to be happy or worried." She put the phone down on the table, turned the screen face down, and lay still in the dark for a long time, listening to the fading sound of traffic on the street, letting her mind drift between two extremes — the familiar fear of not being good enough, and a new, fragile but real feeling that perhaps she had found someone who, in the strangest way imaginable, understood exactly what she was fighting for.