Chapter 4: Chapter 4 Making the Garden Rows — Where the Sun Returns

By the fourth day in the countryside, idleness began to gnaw at Miên.

In the city, she was used to her brain always having to operate at 200% capacity, jumping from chat window to email. Now, facing a long day of only eating, sleeping and listening to birds sing, Miên felt an indescribable restlessness. Her body was used to the hustle and bustle, stopping suddenly made her feel like a car moving at high speed had its brakes suddenly applied.

She tried lying down on a bamboo bed and re-reading the novel she bought in college but never had time to open, but after only a few pages, her mind wandered elsewhere. She tried to help her grandmother mend some old shirts, but the needle and thread was so crooked that her grandmother had to take it back, laughing and telling her that her "hands and feet were as clumsy as a chicken with its hair stuck in it". That uselessness made Miên more angry with herself than with anyone else. She was used to being evaluated by productivity and clear KPI numbers; Now with nothing to measure, she felt like she was floating aimlessly.

Early in the morning, Miên put on a pair of rubber boots she borrowed from her grandmother and decided to go out to the back garden.

Hoàng Phong was still there, rhythmically swinging his pickaxe into the hard ground, turning up red clay blocks. The back of his shirt was drenched with sweat.

Miên stood for a while, observing Phong's every move. There was a strange rhythm in the way he worked, not hurried but not slow either, like he had calculated in advance where each blow of the hoe would fall and with how much force. She suddenly realized that this was probably the first time in her life that she had seen someone doing manual labor so passionately, not because of being forced by a deadline or pressure from superiors.

She cleared her throat. "Hey... do you need a hand?"

Phong stopped, rested his chin on the handle of the hoe, and squinted at the city girl in cartoon-patterned pajamas and wide boots.

"Do you know how to hold a hoe?" He asked, his tone a bit skeptical.

"Don't look down on people," Miên raised her chin, walked over and grabbed the spare hoe that was standing at the corner of the fence. "It's just digging, not designing a spaceship. You just tell me what to do."

"Okay," Phong shrugged, pointing towards the empty lot. "Your task is to break up those clay blocks, then rake them to form a bed about twenty centimeters high and one meter wide. Remember to make it flat, today I will sow fat lettuce seeds."

Miên rolled up his sleeves and eagerly swung his pickaxe.

*Pap.*

The hoe blade hit the ground, reverberating with a shock force that made Miên's arms numb. Basalt red soil in the dry season is hard as rock, not as soft and spongy as she imagined.

She gritted her teeth and used all her strength to give the second and third blows. Soil splashed. After only fifteen minutes, sweat was pouring down Miên's forehead. Her breathing increased with each beat. My hands, which were only used to typing on a keyboard and holding a computer mouse, were now red and sore from friction with the rough wooden handle.

The morning sun began to rise, casting harsh yellow rays onto the back of Miên's neck. The back of her shirt was soaked, sticking to her skin. She panted, her chest tightened due to lack of oxygen, but strangely, in that exhaustion, she felt her mind comfortably empty, no longer entangled with thoughts about deadlines or boss Hà's scolding. All her concentration was focused on each stroke of the hoe, on the feeling of her muscles tensing and then sagging with each rhythm of labor.

Half an hour later, her result was a pile of distorted, concave soil that did not have the shape of a bed.

Miên threw the hoe to the ground, breathing heavily, her hands on her hips. She felt extremely embarrassed and frustrated.

A bottle of cold mineral water pressed against her cheek. Miên turned around in surprise. Hoàng Phong was standing there, holding out a water bottle and a pair of thick canvas protective gloves.

"Drink some water. And these gloves, put them on if you don't want to have blisters on your hands tonight," Phong said, his voice losing its usual sarcasm.

Miên silently accepted it. The cold water soothed her anger.

"I messed up, didn't I?" Miên hesitantly looked at the tattered soil under her feet.

Phong did not answer immediately. He walked over and picked up Miên's hoe. "Phoeging soil is like graphic design, Ms. Mộc Miên. You can't just use buffalo strength to pound haphazardly. You have to know how to follow the grain of the soil."

He stands with his legs shoulder-width apart, knees slightly bent. "Don't use the strength of your arms. Use the strength of your hips and shoulders. The blade of the hoe must strike decisively, borrowing the weight of gravity."

He modeled a few strokes. Each piece of soil crumbled gently, obediently lining up in a straight line.

Miên looked attentively. She put on gloves, picked up the hoe and followed Phong's instructions. This time, although it was still awkward, the pickaxe hit the target and the shock force was also significantly reduced.

"That's right. Just keep that pace. Agriculture is not for the impatient," Phong stood next to him and said leisurely.

He squatted down next to the bed, picked up a handful of soil, squeezed it gently in the palm of his hand, then let it go, observing the way it crumbled. "Do you see? Good soil will break into small, loose particles like this, not sticky into clumps nor loose like sand. That's a sign of soil with enough organic humus and balanced moisture. If one day you look at a handful of soil and guess what it needs and what it lacks, then it's like you've understood half of the secret to growing crops."

"It sounds like a fortune teller reading the land," Miên replied under her breath, but her eyes couldn't hide the rising curiosity. She imitated Phong, picked up a handful of soil and squeezed it, feeling the cool moisture seeping through her fingers.

All that morning, Miên worked diligently hoeing the ground. Her back was tired, sweat was drenched, sticking her sideburns to her forehead. But strangely, she didn't feel depressed at all. Each blow of the hoe into the ground seemed to carry some of the invisible pressure in her chest buried to the bottom. The sound of the hoe hitting the rocks, the sound of the wind rustling through the leaves, all created a sound healing more effective than any music she had ever heard on Youtube.

Occasionally, Phong would stop, glance over to see Miên's progress, and then give a few short comments. There was no impatience or irritation in his voice, only the calm patience of someone used to waiting for seeds to sprout. Miên realized that this was the first time since leaving her old company that someone guided her in her work without yelling or looking at her with murderous intent.

By noon, a complete bed of soil, although not as straight as Phong's, was completed.

Miên wiped the sweat from her forehead with her sleeve, looking at her "work" with a radiant smile, her most genuine smile in many months.

Phong turned to look at her. Under the bright sunlight of the highlands, the mud-stained face of the urban girl suddenly radiated a strong vitality. The engineer's heart, which was dry, suddenly skipped a beat.

He quickly turned away and threw her a small paper package. "Put this on your hands. The herbal medicine Mrs. Tám made. I'll invite you to eat a boxed lunch this afternoon, as payment for hoeing."

Miên held the herbal packet and smiled slightly. This engineer guy, it seems like he's rough on the outside, but the inside isn't too bad.

She sat down on the grass and rubbed the newly formed calluses on her palms. The pungent herbal smell wafted into my nose, but the cool feeling that spread immediately afterward made the burning pain visibly subside. She looked up at the bed she had just completed, then looked at Phong's straight, even beds stretching in the distance, suddenly feeling a small, excited feeling of competition rising in her heart.

"Tomorrow I'll make a more beautiful bed for you to see," Miên announced, her voice filled with determination even though her body was exhausted.

Phong laughed softly, his eyes flashed with a rare ray of amusement. "Slowly, Ms. Marketing Director. Learning goes hand in hand with practice, don't rush to burn the stages. Agriculture, like people, needs time to mature."

Miên pouted but did not argue back. She looked down at her dirt-stained hands, feeling proud for something that had nothing to do with a paycheck or a title for the first time in her life. The brisk afternoon breeze blew through, carrying the smell of new land and a bit of the warm sunshine of the highlands, as if whispering to welcome her to join the slow but persistent rhythm of life here.

The boxed lunch that day was only white rice, fried eggs and a little cucumber dipped in fish sauce, but Miên ate surprisingly well. Perhaps because of real hunger after a morning of manual labor, perhaps because for the first time in many years, she ate a meal without chewing while glancing at the phone screen waiting for work messages. Phong sat opposite, eating slowly, occasionally glancing at her who was sobbing from the spicy taste. The corner of his mouth slightly curled up in a secret smile that he didn't even realize he was smiling.

"Are there any more beds that need to be raised tomorrow?" Miên asked, her voice less vicious, replaced by an immature excitement that she never thought she would have before such a hard physical job like this.

"There's a whole garden waiting for you," Phong replied, his eyes looking out to the horizon where the sun was standing. "If you're not afraid of back pain for a few more days."

"I'm not afraid," Miên replied firmly, even though inside her tired body was silently groaning in protest. But she would never reveal that in front of this taciturn engineer.