Chapter 11 — Unnamed Perfume Shop

After the evening at the noodle shop, a new rhythm quietly formed between Bao Nghi and Bach Nguyen. Every few evenings a week, after the shop closed and his mother had fallen asleep, he would stop by, sometimes carrying a newly borrowed lamp, sometimes a set of documents on architectural heritage law that he was preparing for his uncle, and they both sat at the mixing table, one in charge of the paperwork to save the shop, the other in charge of piecing together lost memories, occasionally stopping to exchange and compare, like two pieces of the same puzzle gradually fitting together.

Tonight, they opened the wooden box under the stairs again, this time not looking for the customer book, but looking for the specialized recipe books that Ms. Anh Nguyet kept separate - where she recorded the details of the mixing ratio, not mixed with customer information like the previous book. There are a total of seven books, numbered by year, and Bach Nguyen, with many years of experience organizing architectural records, suggested that they read them in chronological order instead of flipping through them randomly like before.

"If she started thinking about the Hoai Huong formula when she was nearly sixty years old, as her mother said, then perhaps the first experimental notes would be in the penultimate book, before the last one burned," he analyzed, opening the notebook with a moss-green cover, the year written on the spine showing that it belonged to the period two years before his grandmother's death.

Bao Nghi nodded, impressed by his systematic way of thinking, completely different from the way she used to do it - following intuition, following emotions, following what her sense of smell told her. Perhaps because of those two different approaches, when combined, they discovered much more than when she did it alone.

Sure enough, in the moss-green notebook, they found a series of disjointed pages of notes, not in the same order as the other recipes in the notebook, interspersed between regular orders - evidence that the grandmother was still quietly working on the idea of "Hoai Huong" in parallel with her daily work, not daring to devote her own time to it, perhaps because she was afraid that if she failed, it would be even more painful. One page reads: "First test: three drops of young grapefruit peel oil, two drops of dried honey grass, one drop of cedar wood. Result: too dry, lacking soil moisture after rain." Another page, a few weeks ago: "Fourth attempt: added a drop of patchouli oil for moisture, but the patchouli scent was overwhelming, not right. Had to find something else."

"How many times have you tried?" Bach Nguyen asked, turning a few more pages.

"I don't know," Bao Nghi replied, her voice both emotional and a little heartbroken as she imagined her grandmother, night after night, alone in the small back workshop, trying over and over again a recipe that probably no one else knew she was making, except maybe Mr. Ta Khac Nguyen. They kept flipping, and the number of tests increased—seventh, twelfth, eighteenth—each time accompanied by a short note about the reason for failure: too dry, too strong, lacking depth, artificial, unnatural chemical smell. By the twenty-third time, grandmother's notes changed in tone, no longer dry technical comments: "Perhaps I am trying to make something that cannot be made with a recipe. Mom is not a scent, she is a feeling. But I won't give up."

Bao Nghi had to stop, put her hand on her chest, trying to suppress her rising emotions. Bach Nguyen, realizing her condition, gently placed his hand on her shoulder, without saying anything, just to give her time to calm down. "My grandmother is so stubborn," she said finally, laughing through her tears. "Twenty-three failures and still not giving up."

"That's probably why that formula is so important," Bach Nguyen said quietly. "Not because it was difficult, but because she put her heart into it, over and over again."

While reading, Bao Nghi heard a slight noise upstairs and quickly asked Bach Nguyen for permission to go up to see if her mother was okay. Mrs. Bich Van woke up, sitting by the window looking out at the night, seemingly unable to sleep. "Aren't you sleeping, Mom?" Bao Nghi asked, sitting down next to her.

"I dreamed about my grandmother," Mrs. Bich Van replied, her voice still sleepy but quite alert. "I dreamed that my grandmother was standing in the workshop, holding a small bottle in her hand, shaking her head, looking very sad. I don't remember clearly anymore, but that feeling is still there, Nghi, the feeling that she was sad because she hadn't finished something."

Bao Nghi held her mother's hand, her heart tightening. "I'm trying to finish it for you, Mom," she said softly. "Mr. Nguyen and I are looking for the Hoai Huong formula. Do you remember anything else, Mom, about the ivory-white flower that grows on the riverbank?"

Ms. Bich Van frowned, tried to search her mind, but then shook her head, her eyes slightly disappointed with herself. "I'm sorry, I still can't remember," she said, her voice low. "But I believe you will find it, Nghi. You are always better than I think." Bao Nghi hugged her mother for a long time, then coaxed her back to sleep, her heart both warm and sad at that simple sentence, before returning downstairs to continue her unfinished work with Bach Nguyen.

They continued reading, finding a few more attempts before the notes in the moss-green notebook ended, transitioning—as they guessed—to the last notebook that had burned. Bach Nguyen recorded the entire list of tested ingredients, marking those her grandmother identified as "on track" and those she rejected, trying to reconstruct an overall picture of her thinking process. "If I understand correctly," he said, pointing to the list he had just written, "towards the end, she identified the base as dried honey grass, young grapefruit peel oil, and a bit of agarwood in place of the original cedar. What was missing most was the feeling of wet soil after rain, and the floral scent that your mother mentioned the other day—the ivory-white flower that grows on the riverbank."

"Yes," Bao Nghi nodded, her eyes still glued to the page, "those two parts are what was burned on the last page. If I find it again, maybe I can put together almost the entire formula."

"Can you think of any kind of flower that grows on the riverbank, small petals, ivory white?" he asked.

Bao Nghi thought for a while, reviewing in her mind everything she knew about the wildflowers commonly found in the riverside countryside - mop flowers, stinging nettle flowers, and land flowers, but none of them completely matched the description of "small, ivory white petals" that her mother tried to remember. "I'm not sure," she admitted, sounding somewhat frustrated. "Maybe it's a local flower that only grows in the countryside where my grandmother grew up. Now it may no longer exist, especially after many years of changes due to floods and agricultural development."

"So perhaps this is the reason why I came to see Mr. Ta Khac Nguyen," Bach Nguyen said. "He may be the only person who still remembers the exact name of that flower, or at least knows where your grandmother bought that ingredient."

Bao Nghi nodded, feeling a new ray of hope rekindled in her heart. She looked at Bach Nguyen, who was diligently rearranging the paperwork with as much meticulousness as she did when making the mixture, and felt extremely grateful to have had him accompany her on this journey. "Thank you," she said, her voice sincere. "If it weren't for you, I would probably still be struggling with these books and not knowing where to start."

"Don't thank me yet," he replied, smiling, "because I'm just as eager to find that recipe as you are. If I can put the whole thing together, maybe I'll ask you to make a small version, just so I can understand what kind of space my mother once stood in, what kind of air she breathed every time she came here."

"If I can put it together, I will let you smell it first," Bao Nghi said, her voice light and joking but her eyes unusually serious, "as a thank you for patiently sitting and reading book after book with me."

"I don't need to pay anything," Bach Nguyen replied, folding up the stack of papers, "but if you insist on thanking me, I won't refuse." He looked at the clock, realized it was almost eleven o'clock at night, quickly packed his things, and promised to come back on the weekend to go with her to meet Mr. Ta Khac Nguyen. Before leaving, he stopped at the door and turned to look at her again. "Remember to go to bed early, don't stay up late reading books alone," he advised, his voice containing a concern that made Bao Nghi feel strangely warm.

Bao Nghi smiled, nodded, and made an unspoken promise. Outside the window, it was late at night, Hang Diep Street was silent, only the sound of insects chirping and the yellow streetlights shining through the window. Inside the small shop, between old notebooks open on the table, two young people continue to work hard, not just because of a lost perfume formula, but because, each in their own way, is trying to retain something that won't allow time to completely erase it.