Chapter 19 — Unfinished Music

In the small hall of the Youth Union, the long silence after Gia Bảo rushed out the backstage door still weighed heavily on everyone, like a thick layer of fog that had not yet dissipated. The remaining eleven members stood on stage, no one dared to speak first, their eyes kept moving back and forth between the door where Gia Bảo had just disappeared and Ms. Hạnh's face, which was pale with worry.

"Let me call her," Ms. Hạnh said, trying to keep her voice calm, but her hand was shaking as she pulled the phone out of her coat pocket. She dialed the number, put the phone to her ear, waited for a few long seconds before sighing and lowering the phone. "Didn't pick up the phone."

The young reporter was still standing there, his camera hanging at his side, his face showing extreme guilt when he realized that his own actions, even though completely unintentional, were the direct cause of what had just happened. "Miss, I'm sorry, I didn't know... I didn't mean to scare her."

"It's not your fault," Ms. Hạnh replied, her voice calming down even though she was still a little panicked. "Can you pause today's filming? We need to take care of the students first."

The reporter nodded repeatedly, quickly packed his things, bowed and left the hall with a still confused expression. Ms. Hạnh turned to the group, trying to sound as calm as possible even though she herself was shaking with anxiety.

"Okay, everyone calm down," she said. "I'll go find Gia Bảo. Tường Vy, you..."

"I'll go find him," Tường Vy interrupted, stepping down from the stage and quickly walking towards the door that Gia Bảo had just rushed through.

"No," Ms. Hạnh called back, her voice suddenly stern. "Let me go find her. You stay here and keep the group stable, okay? If you run after her at this time, she might panic even more because she feels surrounded."

Tường Vy paused, her face full of struggle, but in the end she nodded and stood still while Ms. Hạnh hurriedly walked out of the hall, a hurried gait rarely seen in a teacher who was always calm.

The remaining eleven members stood on stage, no one bothered to clean up their instruments, a heavy silence enveloped the whole room. Minh Thư stood close to Ngọc Diễm, her eyes were red, while Anh Kiệt sat down in front of the piano, his head in his hands, his face pale.

"Vy," Anh Kiệt spoke up, his voice trembling, "there are only seven days left. If Gia Bảo can't sing, we... what should we do? We can't change the whole arrangement in a week."

"I know," Tường Vy replied, her voice also began to tremble, but she tried to maintain the appearance of a team leader in front of the team, even though inside she was more confused than anyone. "I know it's urgent. But I can't think about that right now, I'm only thinking about whether Gia Bảo is okay."

"But what if he doesn't come back in time?" Anh Kiệt continued to ask, his voice did not mean to blame, it was simply an uncontrollable worry. "Do we have a backup plan?"

Ngọc Diễm spoke up, her voice much firmer. "Anh Kiệt, this is not the time to discuss that. Gia Bảo is my friend, he just really panicked in front of the whole team, it wasn't a technical problem that needed replacing parts."

The atmosphere in the room became even more stuffy. Tường Vy stood in the middle of all those worried looked, clearly feeling the weight of responsibility falling on her shoulders from many sides at the same time - worry for Gia Bảo, worry for the whole team, and even fear that perhaps, in just a few short minutes, everything they had built together for nearly a year was in danger of collapsing.

Meanwhile, after somewhat regaining consciousness from the panic behind the gymnasium, Gia Bảo sat for a while longer, until he felt his legs were steady enough to stand up. He looked at the time on his phone — almost forty minutes had passed since he ran off the stage. He suddenly remembered that his backpack was still in the hall, along with the house keys he had put in the front compartment, and the pen he used to write down the lyrics.

He stood up, brushed the dust off his pants, his legs still shaking a bit, then followed the deserted path around the gymnasium, trying to avoid the main paths where he might meet someone he knew. He didn't want to see anyone right now, didn't want to have to explain, didn't want to face worried or pitying eyes.

When he approached the music room area — not the Youth Union hall where the rehearsal took place, but the familiar room where the club practiced every day, not far away — he heard voices coming from the half-closed door. Perhaps the whole group moved here after the rehearsal was interrupted, gathering to discuss.

He stopped walking, not necessarily because he intended to eavesdrop, but because his feet suddenly didn't want to continue, as if a part of him still wanted to know what people were saying about him behind his back.

"There are only seven more days left," Tường Vy's voice rang out, urgent and tense to the point that she could barely maintain her familiar calmness. "If Gia Bảo doesn't come back in time, we have to immediately consider another plan. We can't wait any longer."

Gia Bảo stood dumbfounded right outside the door, each word in that sentence was like small needles piercing straight into his tired chest. He did not hear the next part of the conversation, did not know that right after that sentence, Tường Vy turned to tell the group that she would find him herself, that she had no intention of abandoning him to run for a backup plan. He only heard exactly one sentence, exactly one moment, and in his confused mind because he had just experienced the worst panic attack in the past three years, that sentence was imprinted in his heart like a verdict.

So just as he had secretly feared since the first days of joining the club, perhaps for everyone, he was just a link that needed to operate smoothly to meet the deadline, a pawn in a larger game called the competition. He thought of all the private practice sessions in the dimly lit music room, of the moment he sang a complete piece of music for the first time in three years just for Tường Vy to hear, and now, all those warm memories were suddenly tinged with a different, more bitter color, making him wonder if from the beginning, her patience with him was just because she needed a male voice to perfect her exam.

He knew, in some corner of his conscious mind, that thought was unfair, that he was hearing a sentence taken out of context, uttered in a moment of extreme panic by someone who was under no less pressure than he was. But right now, his body and heart were too tired to be rational, too hurt to be able to clearly distinguish between a spontaneous statement and an exposed truth.

He quietly turned his back, didn't go in to get his backpack anymore, just followed the empty path out of the school campus, away from any eyes that might catch him in this state. He walked home instead of waiting for the bus as usual, letting the longer, more tiring journey numb some of the emotions swirling in his heart.

When she got home, it was almost sunset, Ms. Thanh was in the kitchen preparing a late lunch, unaware of what had just happened. Gia Bảo quickly passed through the living room, only having time to tell his mother that he was a bit tired and wanted to rest, then went straight to his room, closed the door, sat down on the floor, his back leaning against the edge of the bed.

The phone in his pocket continued to vibrate, Gia Bảo finally pulled it out, seeing dozens of messages and missed calls - from Ms. Hạnh, from Tường Vy, from Quốc Huy, from the entire club chat group. He glanced through each line of messages without opening them and reading them carefully, only seeing the words "are you okay", "call me back", "I'm very worried", but in his mind right now, all those words of concern were drowned out by the single sentence he overheard outside the music room door.

He turned off the phone screen, threw it on the bed, then sat there for a long time in the darkness of the room as the afternoon light gradually disappeared from the window. He didn't cry anymore, his tears seemed to have dried up since he sat behind the gymnasium, leaving only a heavy emptiness, a feeling of failure covering his entire being.

He thought about the journey of nearly a year - from the afternoon standing at the back of the music room secretly humming, to the evening singing a complete piece of music for the first time in three years for only Tường Vy to hear, to the moment he stood in front of the whole club and overcame his fear to sing the first chorus. All those small, difficult steps, now seemed to have completely collapsed in just one morning, just because of a sudden flash of light and an accidental sentence he heard at the wrong time.

Maybe, he thought, I never really recovered. Perhaps the past three years were just a temporary lull before the old storm returned, proving that what his mother had always feared was true — that he should never touch the stage again, that the safest, only path, was always silence.

Gia Bảo lay down on the floor, not bothering to climb into bed, eyes staring at the dark ceiling, and in his heart, a vague but persistent decision began to form - perhaps, it was time for him to stop, before he hurt anyone else, including himself, again.