Chapter 35: A Voice From the Past
The voice was calmer than he remembered, every word placed
with perfect clarity. And it was precisely that too-perfect calm that made him
certain. It was Hoa.
“You were the one who got me out of that psychiatric
facility.”
The words spilled out fast.
“The ambulance was stopped on the river road. You told me
to follow the wall to the old pier.”
Around them, a few passersby had begun to slow, curious.
The woman was silent for several seconds. Then:
“You really do have the wrong person. I don’t know what
you’re talking about.”
She turned and walked away.
Khai Minh’s hand strangled the cane. Something raw and
bitter crossed his gaunt, grimy face.
One more call. A few steps after that voice. It might have
been enough to hold her there. For four years, he had assumed the woman who
saved him that night was dead too, or had fled Dong Cang for good.
Now she was standing right in front of him.
But Khai Minh didn’t follow.
Because threaded through the noise of the street, he could
hear another set of footsteps holding a fixed distance behind her.
When she stopped, they stopped. When she walked on, they
fell in after her at once, never faster, never slower.
It wasn’t that she hadn’t recognized him. She was being
followed.
And walking away from him, instantly, was the only way to
keep those people from recognizing him too.
Khai Minh stood motionless on the sidewalk, listening to
Hoa’s footsteps fade.
A gust of wind passed, carrying a faint thread of perfume,
the same scent he had caught on the coat she had placed around his shoulders
the night they fled the facility.
There was no mistaking it. Hoa was alive. And she had
known him at once.
Khai Minh didn’t go back to his corner that afternoon.
He looped through street after street before returning to
the bridge, stopping again and again wherever the crowds were thickest,
listening for any footsteps keeping pace with his own.
No one was following.
But the unease refused to lift.
Old Tu was mending his bag when Khai Minh got back. At the
tap of the cane, he looked up.
“Back early today?”
“Did any strangers come around here?”
“Didn’t see any.”
Khai Minh sat down.
“If anything happens tonight, take Mo and the others out
of here first. Please.”
Old Tu’s hands went still.
“What trouble did you get yourself into now?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“Don’t know yet, and your face already looks like
someone’s coming to collect your life.”
Khai Minh didn’t answer.
He wasn’t going to speak about Hoa until he understood the
situation. One loose word now could drag everyone under this bridge down with
him.
That night, Khai Minh sat propped against the pillar until
dawn, the cane within reach. Every engine slowing out on the road snapped him
fully awake.
But no one came in.
The next day passed just as quietly.
Then, at dusk, Mo came pelting in from outside, out of
breath.
“Blind Brother, there are strangers out there.”
Khai Minh was on his feet at once.
“How many?”
“I don’t know. They’re standing spread apart, just
watching in here.”
“Any vehicles?”
“Two. One parked at the top of the road, one across the
bridge.”
His fist clenched hard.
What he had feared most had finally come.
The people shadowing Hoa had found this place.
Or worse, they had taken her, and forced her to admit that
he was still alive.
Khai Minh turned to Old Tu.
“Take Mo and go first. It may not be safe here tonight.”
“And you?”
“I’ll find my own way out after.”
“It’s you they’re after?”
“Maybe.”
Old Tu swore under his breath.
“Damn it all. Four years you’ve been here, and you never
once said who you are. The moment someone comes looking, you want to walk off
alone.”
“The less you know, the safer you are.”
Khai Minh crouched down and rolled up his thin blanket.
Everything he owned came to a few old clothes, the bamboo cane, and the watch
hidden under the cloth at his wrist.
Four years of living under a bridge, and all of it still
fit into one small bag.
Mo ran over and caught the hem of his shirt.
“Where are you going, Blind Brother?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“When are you coming back?”
Khai Minh didn’t answer. He had once thought of this place
as nothing more than a temporary shelter. Yet four years had gone by, and this
damp stretch of ground under a bridge had become the only place in the world
that would take him in.
If he left tonight, he might never come back at all.
“Listen to Old Tu, all right?”
He laid his hand on the top of her head.
“Don’t follow strangers. Don’t get into any vehicle when
you don’t know where it’s taking you.”
“I know, I know. You say it all the time.”
Mo’s voice thickened.
“But you still haven’t told me your real name.”
Khai Minh froze.
After a moment, he only squeezed her small shoulder gently
and drew his hand back.
“Some things are safer for you not to know.”
He told Old Tu to lead everyone to an abandoned block a
few streets away. Only when the last footsteps had left the bridge did Khai
Minh sling the bag over his shoulder.
Outside, the strangers were still moving. He sank back
into the dark and felt his way along the path hugging the riverbank. He had
lived here long enough to know every way out, every patch of sunken ground,
every barrier low enough to climb.
All he had to do was wait for them to slip, and he would
be gone.
Near midnight, the two vehicles out on the road started
up, one after the other.
The engines faded into the distance.
The footsteps around the bridge melted away with them.
Khai Minh still didn’t move. He sat behind a concrete
pillar and quietly waited longer. No suspicious sound remained. Not one.
He had just levered himself up on the cane when he heard
someone coming down the slope above.
The footsteps were unhurried, but very careful. Whoever it
was stopped several times, as if making certain no one was trailing behind.
Khai Minh tilted his head.
That faint perfume drifted into the cold air under the
bridge.
“Miss Hoa?”
The woman stopped a few paces away from him.
This time, she didn’t deny it.
Khai Minh stood rooted to the spot, his throat closing.
“You were being followed that day, weren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Those people who came here. Who were they?”
“I led them off in another direction. They don’t know for
certain you’re here.”
“Then why did you come back?”
Hoa didn’t answer that. He heard her step closer, until
barely an arm’s length remained between them. And before he could say anything
more, she looked straight into his unfocused eyes and said, very softly:
“Your eyes have never stopped hoping.”
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