Chapter 7 — Vegetarian Restaurant Behind the Temple Gate

Ms. On Bich Ha started visiting An Tam Vegetarian Restaurant every Thursday afternoon, so regularly that Yen Nhi could set her watch to the time she walked through the gate — always four-thirty in the afternoon, when the sun had softened and the shadow of the ancient Bodhi tree in the temple yard stretched down to the beginning of Bo De Lane. Yen Nhi first noticed her one afternoon nearly a month ago, when she sat quietly at the innermost corner table, ordered only a bowl of longan lotus seed sweet soup, ate slowly, spoon by spoon, looking far away at the yard with the Thien Ly flower trellis.

Mrs. Nu was the first person to tell Yen Nhi about her situation. That evening, as the two of them sat and picked peanuts to prepare for the next batch of sweet soup, Mrs. Nu peeled the shells and spoke, her voice slow, as if she were telling a story that she knew by heart. "That girl's name is Ha, she lives in the market neighborhood. In the past, there was a boy named Bo, very handsome, who often ran here to play with the kids in the neighborhood. Three years ago, he got sick, had some kind of blood disease, went to the hospital for a year but couldn't be saved. He died at the age of eight." Mrs. Nu stopped, her hands still quickly peeling the bean pods, but her eyes were slightly sad. "Since then, Ms. Ha often comes here to eat lotus seed sweet soup. When Bo was still alive, he liked that dish the most, and my mother used to cook it for him every time he got a high score in school."

Yen Nhi was silent, her hand stopped midway through picking beans. She remembered Ms. Bich Ha's face this afternoon - not the face of someone who was openly suffering, but the face of someone who had learned to carry that pain with her every day, as gently as carrying a familiar bag, heavy but no longer making people fall.

The following week, at exactly 4:30 p.m. on Thursday afternoon, Ms. Bich Ha came again, still sitting at her familiar corner table. Yen Nhi brought out the cup of tea herself, instead of letting the kitchen assistant do it like usual. She put the cup of sweet soup on the table, hesitated for a moment and then asked, her voice as gentle as possible: "Ha, how long have you been eating sweet soup here? I see you often order this dish."

Ms. Bich Ha looked up, a bit surprised that Yen Nhi took the initiative to start a conversation, but then smiled slightly, a thin but not forced smile. "Eating it since my mother was still young, Miss Xuan cooks sweet soup very well. Now I cook it almost the same, but..." She paused, as if considering whether to continue or not.

"Is there something?" Yen Nhi asked, sitting down in the opposite chair, a gesture she rarely did with guests, but at this moment she felt the need to do so.

"It doesn't taste exactly the same, but I can still eat it and it still feels warm." Ms. Bich Ha said, looking down at the cup of tea, loose lotus seeds soaked in light sugar water dotted with a few amber longan petals. "My son used to like to eat Ms. Xuan's longan lotus seed sweet soup. Every time he got a score of ten, I would bring him over here, order a bowl, and we would share it. He kept saying, Mom, Ms. Xuan's sweet soup is just right, not like the sweet soup on the market." She smiled, but her eyes were filled with tears. "Bo passed away three years ago. I still come here often, have a cup of sweet soup, and it's like... I still get to sit with him for a while."

Yen Nhi felt her throat tight. She didn't know what to say, so she just quietly placed her hand on the table, near Ms. Bich Ha's hand, a wordless gesture of comfort. In her mind, the image of her mother standing at the stove, stirring the pot of sweet soup, appeared clearly - Yen Nhi used to think her mother was simply cooking a familiar dish for regular customers, but now she realized that every time her mother cooked lotus seed sweet soup for Bich Ha, she must have known the story behind it, and cooked it with all her sympathy for a mother who had lost a child.

That night, after the restaurant closed, Yen Nhi stayed in the kitchen alone, opening the old recipe book her mother left behind — not yet the mindfulness notebook she would find later, but just a regular recipe book, meticulously recording the dosage and cooking method for each dish. She turned to the page of longan and lotus seed tea, re-reading each line of her mother's familiar italic writing. The recipe is nothing special — fresh lotus seeds, dried longan, rock sugar, a little salt for sweetness. But on the margin of the page, her mother wrote a small line with a pencil, the handwriting was a bit blurred: "Cooking sweet soup for someone who is sad, reduce the sugar a little, so that the bitterness of people's hearts still has a place to creep in, don't overwhelm it all."

Yen Nhi read that line over and over again, feeling like her mother was standing right behind her, whispering in her ear. She realized that for many months, every time she cooked lotus seed sweet soup for Ms. Bich Ha, she only followed the recipe technically - the right dosage, the right time to simmer the lotus seeds until they were crumbly but not crushed, and to the right standard sweetness. She never thought about having to reduce the sugar a little, having to cook more slowly, having to think about who would eat that cup of tea, and what feelings she would bring.

The following week, when Bich Ha arrived, Yen Nhi personally cooked a new batch of sweet soup, doing exactly as her mother had instructed — reduce the sugar, add a more delicate pinch of salt for balance, simmer the lotus seeds over low heat longer than usual so that each lotus seed is soft but still retains its round shape, not falling apart into porridge. She also meticulously selected large, thick longan petals, soaking them in warm water to bloom evenly before dropping them into the pot, so that when eaten, the sweetness of the longan blends with the fleshy taste of lotus seeds without overwhelming each other.

When Ms. Bich Ha tasted the first spoonful of sweet soup, she paused for a moment, then looked up at Yen Nhi, something strange in her eyes. "Today the tea tastes different than usual." she said, her voice soft. "Just like when Ms. Xuan was still cooking."

Yen Nhi smiled, but in her heart there was an emotion that was hard to name — both the chef's small joy when the dish was recognized, and also a deeper awakening. For the first time since returning to Ben Truc, she cooked a dish not because it was a task that had to be completed before the restaurant opened, but because she was thinking of a specific person, a specific pain, a child named Bo that she had never met but had now become a part of her mind every time she stood in the kitchen.

She sat down opposite Bich Ha again, and this time, the conversation between the two of them lasted longer and more naturally. Ms. Bich Ha told about Bo - a boy who likes to draw pictures of animals, likes to have his mother read stories before bed, likes to run barefoot on the temple grounds in the afternoons when his grandmother takes him to worship Buddha. She talked about the last days in the hospital, when Bo, despite being weak, still asked her mother when she could come home to eat Ms. Xuan's lotus seed sweet soup. Her voice was even, without sobs, but Yen Nhi could hear an ocean of pain hidden behind that calmness.

"I don't tell this story to many people." Ms. Bich Ha said that when the story was almost over, it was already dark and the shop only had a few customers left. "But you asked, and I feel... it's a relief to say it."

"Thank you for trusting me to tell me." Yen Nhi said, her voice sincere. "From now on, every time you come, I will personally cook sweet soup for you."

Ms. Bich Ha nodded, her eyes shining with a rare ray of warmth. "Thank you. Maybe that's why I still come back here every week, even though my house is nearly three kilometers away. Here, I still feel that Bo is still somewhere near me."

After that afternoon, something in the way Yen Nhi worked in the kitchen changed, even if very slightly. When cooking soup for Mr. Lanh Van Dat, she began to pay attention to the seasoning more slowly, remembering the story about his late wife. When preparing vegetarian meals for older Buddhists who often visit the restaurant after chanting, she pays more attention to chopping vegetables, knowing that many elderly people have weak teeth. She realized that cooking "for someone" is a completely different thing from cooking "to finish" — something that requires her to slow down, to see the person sitting across the table not just as an order to be completed, but as a person walking into the restaurant with his whole life story.

That night, while cleaning the kitchen, Yen Nhi opened her mother's recipe book again and looked at the small writing on the margin of the lotus seed sweet soup page. She suddenly wondered, during her twenty-five years working in the kitchen, how many notes like that had her mother written, for how many guests with so many different stories. And she promised herself that from now on she would read more carefully, learn more carefully, not only the measurements in the formula, but also what her mother had quietly sent between those lines.

Outside in the yard, the night wind gently shook the Thien Ly flower trellis, bringing a gentle fragrance into the kitchen. Yen Nhi closed the notebook and carefully placed it in a drawer near the kitchen, where she could easily take it out whenever needed. For the first time in many months, she felt that cooking was no longer a burden, but began to have a meaning she had never thought of - a way to retain, to comfort, to bridge the gaps that loss leaves in people's hearts.