Chapter 22

The next morning, the whole family sat eating breakfast in the apartment.

The apartment in the morning had a pale, too-clean light, as if last night had never happened. The curtains were pulled half open. Sunlight fell on the dining table, touched the porcelain bowls, the plate of bread, the bowl of porridge for the boy. The air conditioner ran very softly. Somewhere in the house there was still a faint smell of Van’s perfume, old cigarette smoke on Mr. Quan’s shirt, and a silence hard to name.

Tung sat at the head of the table, a little thin, eyes dark, glasses low on the bridge of his nose. He ate very slowly. Not the way a man enjoyed breakfast. More like a man trying to remember he had to chew, had to swallow, had to keep sitting there as a husband, a father, the head of a family.

Old Tu sat beside him. Now and then he looked at Tung, then at Van, then lowered his head to his own bowl. He said nothing. Since the day he entered this house, he had more and more of a feeling that he was sitting in a bright place where it was hard to breathe. Nice house. Nice dining table. Plenty of food. But everyone seemed to be hiding a little knife under the sleeve.

Mr. Quan was the first to speak.

He picked up a piece of food, chewed slowly, then said very naturally:

“Tung.”

Tung looked up.

“Yes, Dad?”

“See if you’ve got fifty million. Lend Dad some.”

The room stopped very lightly.

No one dropped their chopsticks. No one looked openly surprised. But Old Tu heard something inside himself tighten.

Tung looked at Mr. Quan.

“Fifty million, Dad?”

“Yeah.” Mr. Quan smiled, his voice light, like he was borrowing a few hundred thousand for coffee. “Friends invited me out. Right now I don’t have a single dong on me. A man going out with empty pockets looks bad.”

Tung did not answer right away.

He lowered his head to his bowl and used his chopsticks to nudge a few pieces of vegetable. A very small movement, but Old Tu saw it. It was not ordinary hesitation. It looked like a man hearing one more stone set on a back that had been bent for a long time.

Van was sitting across from Tung.

She wore house clothes, but still neat. Her hair was loosely tied, her face bright, the smell of skin cream still faint on her body. After the wedding party, she looked a little tired, but that tiredness did not make her ugly. It made her softer, lazier, like a woman used to life lifting her up.

She looked at Tung, then suddenly asked:

“Do you know what day today is?”

Tung looked up.

For one second, he truly did not remember.

His eyes were absent, like someone just pulled out of a dark room. Then he smiled faintly, a thin smile that came late.

“Our wedding anniversary?”

Van raised an eyebrow.

“Good that you still remember.”

Tung stayed silent.

Van set down her chopsticks and leaned forward a little.

“But I don’t see any gift for your wife.”

Tung looked at her.

“What gift do you want?”

Van laughed, half spoiled, half reproachful.

“You know and still ask?”

Tung kept looking at her, as if he did not understand, or as if he no longer had the strength to pretend he understood faster.

Van said it straight:

“Give me fifty million.”

Fifty million for Mr. Quan.

Fifty million for Van.

In the same breakfast.

Asked of the same man.

In the same tone, as if the money inside Tung was water from a faucet, just turn it and it would flow out.

Tung frowned very slightly.

“I just sent you a hundred million.”

Van immediately furrowed her brow.

“So what if it was a hundred million? I paid for the gym, the spa package, makeup. It’s all gone.”

She said it very naturally. She did not feel she was asking too much. Did not feel any need to explain more. To Van, those expenses were obvious. A woman had to be beautiful. Beauty cost money. And Tung was her husband. A husband earned money so his wife could be beautiful, so his child could attend a good school, so the house could be proper. What was wrong with that?

Tung raised a hand and pushed his glasses up gently.

“What spa package runs out that fast?”

“What kind of question is that?” Van sounded a little annoyed. “Do you know how much a good makeup set costs? Then gym, skin care, hair. You want me to look sloppy like those housewives at the market?”

Tung said nothing more.

He looked at her for a while. That look was not angry. Not blaming. Not exactly sad either. It was like the look of a man standing before a machine swallowing money, knowing it would keep swallowing, but unable to find the off switch.

Mr. Quan sat beside them, sipped water, and acted like he heard nothing. But the corner of his mouth lifted a little. A very small smile. The smile of a man who understood he was not the only one wearing Tung down.

Van continued, her voice softer:

“Besides, today is our wedding anniversary. If you don’t give me anything, it looks bad.”

Tung lowered his head.

After a while, he said:

“All right. I’ll transfer it at noon.”

Van’s face lit up.

She smiled and picked up a piece of food for Tung, as if that answer alone made everything normal again.

“That’s more like it.”

Tung looked at the food in his bowl.

He did not eat.

Old Tu sat there and witnessed all of it.

He saw Mr. Quan ask for fifty million. Saw Van ask for fifty million too. Saw Tung sit between the two of them, tired, eyes behind his glasses always seeming covered by a layer of fog. Old Tu felt sorry for him. That pity went from his belly up into his chest, slow and choking.

But he did not dare say anything.

He knew what good would his words do? Mr. Quan was Tung’s father. Van was his own daughter. His daughter was scraping money off her husband. His own daughter, who else? Who could he scold? Scolding Mr. Quan would be easy. But scolding Van? Scolding the daughter he had missed for so many years, the one he had only just found again in a house too bright, too beautiful, too strange?

Old Tu lifted his bowl and pretended to eat.

In his mouth, the rice tasted flat.

The boy beside them kept eating breakfast without care, not understanding what numbers the adults had just placed on the table. Fifty million. One hundred million. Gym. Spa. Makeup. Friends inviting him out. Wedding anniversary. Those words flew over his head like the sound of the television in the living room.

At last, Tung picked up the food Van had put in his bowl.

He brought it to his mouth and chewed slowly.

No one knew what he was calculating in his head then.

Only Old Tu faintly felt it: some people did not die in one day. They died slowly in breakfasts like this, in front of the whole family, while still nodding, still transferring money, still being called husband, son-in-law, father of a child.

After Tung took the boy to school, the apartment suddenly grew wider.

Old Tu sat on the balcony drinking tea. He set the small porcelain cup on the glass table and looked down at the city below. Vehicles moved like bright little ants, orderly and meaningless. The wind up high blew against his face, but it did not make him feel better. Since the day he stepped into this house, Old Tu kept feeling he was sitting inside a pretty cage. Everything was clean, bright, expensive, but inside there was some smell of rot quietly going bad.

Mr. Quan lay sprawled on the sofa.

His legs were up on the table, eyes staring at the ceiling, mouth smacking like a man short of liquor, short of money, short of women, short even of a reason to stand up. If Old Tu had not been there, maybe he would have drifted into the kitchen and found a way to tease Van with a few lines. One compliment about her waist. One joke about her perfume. One look held longer than needed. But Old Tu was sitting out on the balcony, silent, still like a stone blocking the middle of the house.

Mr. Quan was irritated by that.

Van did not pay much attention.

She was sitting in the bedroom, phone open, calculating how to spend the money she had just asked Tung for. Part for the spa. Part for a new skin-care package. Part to pay the card. The rest to keep in the account, at least in theory. But money in Van’s hand never lay still for long. It was like perfume sprayed on skin, fragrant for a while, making a person feel different, then gone.

The phone vibrated.

It was her young lover.

“Baby, can you help me with a little funding today?”

Van looked at the message, the corner of her mouth lifting. A lazy, satisfied smile.

“Fine. Ten million, right? I’ll transfer it later.”

The other side answered almost at once:

“Oh, you really are my love.”

Then another message:

“Are you going to work out this afternoon?”

Van typed:

“Work out what? Work out and end up tired or feeling good?”

He sent a laughing icon, then wrote:

“Good enough to make you high.”

Van giggled.

The laugh was very small, but it still slipped from her throat like sugar water. She lay on her side on the bed, one hand holding the phone, the other stroking her hair lightly. Tung had not been gone long. Old Tu was on the balcony. Mr. Quan was on the sofa. The child had gone to school. The apartment was quiet, bright, polite. And in that quiet, Van texted another man with the calm of someone already used to being forgiven before she even sinned.

A little later, Mr. Quan’s phone rang.

A transfer notification.

He sprang up from the sofa like someone had pumped blood back into him. Fifty million. The number lay neat on the screen, shining prettier than any morning greeting. Mr. Quan looked at it again and again, then laughed out loud.

“Good.”

He said it to himself.

Then he went into the room and changed clothes very quickly. Clean shirt, trousers, belt, hair combed back with the little wax left. Cheap perfume sprayed more on his neck and wrists. In only ten minutes, the man who had been lying dead on the sofa from boredom had turned into an old player getting ready to step out into life.

He opened the door and left.

Said nothing to anyone.

The apartment was missing one more person.

At a cafe downstairs, Tung sat alone.

In front of him was a glass of coffee already cold. His glasses rested on the bridge of his nose, his eyes dropped into the empty space before him. The server walked past several times, meaning to ask if he needed anything else, but saw his face and stopped.

Tung was calculating money.

Two hundred million.

At first he had thought that amount would be enough to live two more months. Two months did not sound like much, but to a man standing near the edge of a cliff, two months sometimes felt like a borrowed piece of life. He had already divided it in his head: this month for school fees, food, living expenses for the child; next month keep back one hundred million, and if he could not turn anything around, he could still breathe.

But only one week had passed.

School fees, food, gas, little expenses had gone first. Then this morning, Van fifty. Mr. Quan fifty. The one hundred million meant for next month, he transferred it away in one morning. Now Tung had only a little change left on him, enough for coffee, gas, one careless meal if he needed it.

He opened his phone and looked again at the transactions he had just made.

The numbers left the account cleanly and without feeling. No sound of blood running. No sound of a knife cutting. Only a few neat lines of notification, as if the banking system had been programmed never to understand human despair.

Tung smiled very softly.

For some reason, he remembered Van’s face that morning. The way she raised her eyebrow and asked if he knew what day it was. The spoiled tone asking for a gift. The satisfied smile when he said he would transfer money at noon. It had been a long time since he held her. A long time since there had been any gesture between the two of them that truly belonged to husband and wife, apart from transferred money and questions about their child.

Tonight was their wedding anniversary.

Maybe...

The thought appeared in Tung’s head weakly, but it was still warm. Maybe tonight he would buy something. A small bouquet. A cake. Maybe the whole family would eat together. Maybe he would tell Van that lately he was tired. That he missed her. That maybe they could start over. Maybe he would try to hold her, even if it was only an awkward hug, like a man picking up an old thing that had been covered in dust too long.

Tung looked at the cold coffee.

Then he smiled again.

A smile almost out of strength.

That noon, Van was at the spa.

She lay in a room fragrant with essential oil, soft lights, gentle music flowing evenly like water. The worker put a mask on her face, massaged her shoulders, said a few lines praising how beautiful her skin still was. Van closed her eyes and listened, feeling more comfortable inside. Money was hard to earn, but spending it in the right place always gave her the feeling that she still controlled her life.

When it was done, she changed into a dress with a slight opening at the chest and stood before the mirror taking a few selfies. She chose a side angle, lowered her chin a little, so her face looked smaller, her eyes softer, the neckline just suggestive enough. After adjusting the light a few times, she posted online:

“At this age I’ve aged so much. I feel ugly.”

As usual, compliments immediately came flooding in.

“Ugly where, sis? Gorgeous.”

“A woman with one kid and still easy on the eyes.”

“If you’re ugly, the rest of us might as well not live.”

“So pretty, girl.”

Van read every comment, the corner of her mouth curving. She knew some of the praise was social courtesy. But social courtesy was fine. A woman like her did not need every compliment to be one hundred percent true. She only needed enough of them, steady enough, enough to make her feel she was still above water.

Then a strange message appeared.

“Hi Van, remember me?”

She looked at the sender’s name.

Khang.

Van stopped for a few seconds.

Khang had once sat beside her. Khang from the old class, from the years when she was still dark, awkward, country, did not know makeup, did not know how to choose dresses, did not know what men liked to look at in a woman. Back then, Van had liked Khang. Quietly, stupidly, to the point that if he borrowed a pen or turned to ask her about a lesson, her whole school morning would light up.