Chapter 17

Minh and Ngoc only crossed that line exactly one time.

One single time.

On the rooftop.

That night the wind was very strong. Strong enough that the old sheet metal on the roof next door kept shaking in bursts, making a sound like an animal trapped in an iron cage. The city below was still lit up, but that light did not reach where they were. It only lay far away, in little dots, like tired eyes looking up from the bottom of a well.

Minh did not clearly remember what he had thought that night.

He only remembered Ngoc crying.

Remembered her hand was cold.

Remembered his body still full of the smell of hospital medicine, the smell of sweat, the smell of a life dragged through too many days without an exit. He remembered wanting to say something very clearly. A sentence like: “I’m grateful to you.” Or: “I’m sorry.” Or: “Don’t leave me behind.”

But none of them was right.

Because between people, there are times when language is only a small spoon trying to scoop dry a dark lake. Scoop and scoop, and the water is still there. Black, deep, and cold.

After that night, there was no other time.

Not because they were disgusted by each other.

Nor because they regretted it in the way people often talk about in movies. Only that the next morning, when sunlight shone down on the rooftop mottled with green moss, both Minh and Ngoc understood that the thing that had happened could not be repeated. It was like an out-of-season rain. It fell, wet everything, then disappeared. If they tried to call it back, it would no longer be rain, but something else, heavier, more frightening.

Minh had epilepsy.

There were days when he was holding a bowl of rice and his hand began to shake. Sometimes while walking across the rental yard, he suddenly stopped dead, eyes fixed on a point that was not real. Sometimes at night, his breathing grew hurried, and he had to walk by himself into the small room with the frosted glass door, shutting himself inside like putting a knife back into its sheath.

Ngoc understood.

Minh understood too.

Because of that, between the two of them there was a very strange distance. They were closer than ordinary husband and wife in some things, but farther than strangers in other things. Ngoc cooked rice for him. Minh brought money home to Ngoc. Vy called him stepfather. Old Tu called him youngest son. Everything had its name. But feelings did not.

Many times Minh asked himself: did he love Ngoc, or did he owe Ngoc?

That question was like a coin falling into a crack in the floor. He heard it fall, knew it was somewhere under his feet, but had no way to pick it up.

If it was love, why every time he looked at Ngoc did he always feel a pain inside like kneeling before a grave?

If it was debt, why when Ngoc coughed lightly in the kitchen did his heart tighten?

Minh did not know.

He was not good at telling apart the things lying in the heart. The human heart, to Minh, was like a dark room with too much old furniture. He walked into it, stumbled, touched dust, touched broken glass, touched boxes without labels. Some thing was called love. Some thing was called debt. Some thing was called pity. Some thing was called responsibility. But when darkness covered them, their shapes were strangely alike.

In the end Minh stopped asking.

He only held on to the thing he was most certain of.

Responsibility.

To him, that was enough.

A man did not necessarily have to understand clearly what he was living for. Sometimes it was enough to know that tonight he had to go home, tomorrow he had to earn money, the person waiting for him was not allowed to go hungry. That was already enough to keep going.

That evening, Minh accepted one more delivery order.

He should have gone home early. But the app showed an order near the central area, with a surcharge higher than usual. Minh looked at the phone screen for a long time. He thought of medicine money. Thought of physical therapy money. Thought of Ngoc’s rent collection notebook, where every number was written carefully as if she were mending a torn shirt with thread too thin.

Minh tapped accept.

The city night opened before him.

Wind slipped through the two sleeves of his orange delivery jacket. The roads shone slick under the lights. Late-night food shops steamed. Couples sat close together on the sidewalk. Drunk men stood smoking under awnings, eyes looking into empty space as if waiting for a train that would never come.

Minh rode through all of it.

The leg that had once been broken ached each time he stopped at a red light. The pain was not fierce, but stubborn. It reminded him that his body had once been taken apart and put back together. Some things could be put back. Some things could not. Bone could knit. Skin could close. But inside a person, there was always a small sound coming from the old break.

By the time Minh finished the last order, it was already late.

He rode back to the rental block.

The gate to the block was still cracked open. The yellow bulb under the awning flickered because insects were flying around it. Upstairs, someone had just pulled an iron door, the sound falling down dry and harsh. In the ground-floor kitchen, Ngoc had probably left his portion of rice in the pot. Minh imagined the small tray, the bowl of cold soup, the plate of stir-fried greens gone soft from sitting too long.

He had just turned off the engine in front of the door when a figure from inside the rental block hurried out.

A girl wearing a long sun-protection skirt, the kind people usually wore in the daytime to avoid dust and sun. But now it was night. That skirt under the yellow light looked out of place, like a scrap of daytime forgotten in the dark.

The girl wore a hat, a mask, and held a small bag in her hand. She seemed to be in a hurry.

As soon as she saw Minh’s bike stop in front of the door, she stepped over very fast, almost hopping onto the back seat, speaking in a natural voice as if this bike had been called for her from the start:

“Right on time. Take me to Cafe DJ XX, okay?”

Minh did not turn back right away.

He heard that voice.

A very old voice.

So old it no longer lay in ordinary memory, but in a deeper drawer. A place where afternoons on the court, laughter by the riverbank, cold beer cans, and things never said still lay quiet under a thin layer of dust.

Minh put his foot down.

He turned his head back.

“Quynh?”

The girl behind him froze.

Then she jumped down from the bike.

A fast, light movement, almost like the old days. She pulled her mask down and stared at Minh. Yellow light fell on her face, making the makeup around her eyes look heavier, but still could not hide the familiar lines.

Those eyes.

The way she looked at other people as if both teasing them and wanting to understand everything.

One second passed.

Then her eyes widened.

“Minh?”

He nodded.

“Yeah.”

Quynh stepped closer, looking at him from head to toe. Orange delivery shirt, old jeans, sun-darkened face, tall body but with a little hitch in the left leg. She looked as if she wanted to compare the person before her with someone who had once existed in her memory.

Then she burst out laughing.

“Oh my God. It really is Minh. You drive motorbike taxi now?”

Minh scratched his head a little.

“Close enough. I deliver things.”

“Where did you disappear to for so long? How many years has it been?”

Minh did not know how to answer.

There were years that, if told, would be too long. But if summed up, they became almost nothing except a few words: accident, hospital, memory loss, medicine, epilepsy, poverty, home. Those words were too dry. They could not hold the smell of blood in the emergency room, the sound of people crying in the hallway, the feeling of waking up and not recognizing himself.

So Minh only smiled.

“It has been long.”

Quynh looked at him a while longer.

The smile on her lips softened.

“I thought you had disappeared for good.”

Hearing that sentence, Minh felt something move inside him.

Disappeared for good.

Maybe that was true.

A part of him really had disappeared. The part that knew how to run on the basketball court, the part that knew how to laugh when Thai clapped him on the shoulder, the part that knew how to stand far away looking at Quynh and feel that day suddenly become brighter. That part had maybe died somewhere in the accident night, or stayed behind on a stretch of road no one remembered anymore.

Minh bent down and started the bike again.

“You want to go to Cafe DJ XX, right? Get on. I’ll take you.”

Quynh looked at him, then smiled.

“Yeah. Take me. But ride slowly, okay, I’m wearing a skirt.”

She sat back on the bike.

This time, Minh clearly felt her weight behind him. Very light. Lighter than memory. People in memory were often heavier than real people, because they carried along the years we could not set down.

The bike left the rental block.

Night wind blew through the small road, then opened onto the avenue. Signs drifted past beside them one by one. A pharmacy. A pho shop. A phone store. A closed wedding dress shop, with a mannequin in a white dress standing motionless in the glass case, eyes looking out at the road as if waiting for a groom who had entered the wrong life.

Quynh sat behind him and said nothing for a while.

Minh was quiet too.

Both of them seemed to be listening to the sound of the past running parallel with the sound of the engine.

When Minh entered university, he was tall, quiet, handsome in the way of someone who did not know he was handsome. He joined the basketball team because Thai invited him. At first it was only to move his body, later it became part of life. The court had the sound of shoes rubbing on the wooden floor, the sound of the ball hitting the ground, the sound of people shouting, the referee’s whistle. Those sounds made Minh feel he existed more clearly.

He and Thai were the two best players on the team.

Thai was quick, bright, full of tricks. He had the kind of smile that made it hard for people to stay angry long. Minh was the opposite, quiet, strong, enduring, each time he jumped to the basket it was as if there were a rubber cord inside him pulled tight and then let go.

The two became close friends.

So close that when people mentioned Minh, they mentioned Thai. Mentioned Thai, they mentioned Minh.

Then one day, in a game more crowded than usual, Minh saw Quynh.

She was standing in the cheering section.

White ao dai.

Hair tied behind her neck.

Her face bright under the afternoon sun.

She was not beautiful in the way that made everyone turn their heads at once. She was beautiful in a more private way, a more dangerous way: people only needed to happen to see her once, and afterward found they kept wanting to look again. That beauty did not strike the eye. It went around, opened a small door, then sat still in there.

Minh was running in the middle of the court when he saw her clapping.

A very short moment.

But there are moments that do not obey time. They do not pass. They stay, lying in a person’s chest like a small stone picked up at the riverbank. Many years later, when everything else has lost its shape, that stone is still cold.

Minh had planned to get acquainted after the game.

Only ask her name.

A very simple sentence.

But when the game ended, the girl in the white ao dai ran down onto the court and hugged Thai.

“You were so good!”

Thai laughed and bent down to kiss her forehead.

That kiss was light.

Light enough that no one noticed.

But to Minh, it was like a door had just closed in front of his face. Not loud. Not hurting right away. Only that from that moment, he knew he was standing outside a room not meant for him.

Thai pulled Quynh close and introduced her:

“Minh, this is Quynh. My girlfriend.”

Quynh looked at Minh and smiled.

“I hear Thai talk about you all the time.”

Minh nodded.

“Yeah. Hi.”

Only that.

But in life, there are greetings that are like farewells spoken many years early.

Quynh and Thai had loved each other since they were small.

They were neighbors. They grew up near each other, knew each other from afternoons coming home from school, from times eating the same tamarind fruit, from rainy days standing under a cramped awning. Later Quynh moved to the city for high school, and Thai also went up there for university. They met again like two threads already tied into a knot beforehand.

Minh had no place in that story.

But strangely, Thai still pulled him in.

At first Thai was awkward. He was afraid Minh would be sad, though Minh had never said anything. Thai divided his time clumsily. On days he went out with Quynh, he felt guilty toward Minh. On days he went with the team, he kept looking at his phone because Quynh was texting.

Finally Minh said:

“The three of us can go together.”

Thai looked at him.

“You sure?”

Minh smiled.

“What’s the big deal?”

So the three of them went together.

A very strange triangle.

Thai and Quynh usually walked in front. Quynh held Thai’s arm, talking as she walked. Thai laughed, sometimes turning back to call Minh to hurry up. Minh walked behind, hands in his pockets, watching the shadows of the two of them under the streetlights.

He had once thought he should avoid them.

A normal person probably would avoid them.

But Minh did not.

He did not understand why.

Maybe because being near Quynh, even only from behind, was still better than not seeing her. Maybe because Thai was his friend, and seeing Thai happy made some part of him feel settled too. Maybe because people sometimes choose a familiar pain instead of an emptiness with no shape.

Minh was both hurting and happy.

That feeling followed him through all the years Quynh was in high school.

It was like hearing a sad song in a cafe on a beautiful morning. You know the song is sad, but you do not want it to stop. Because if it stops, the morning might become even emptier.

When Quynh entered university, the three of them became even more natural.

They went out for late-night food. Went to cheap movies. Wandered the walking street. Some days Thai and Quynh argued, and Minh was dragged along to be the referee. Some days Minh got sick, Quynh bought porridge, Thai brought medicine. All of those things, remembered now, had a very old color, like a faded film photograph.