The steady cok… cok… crack echoed from the outer room. It was the most familiar sound in Tiểu Hạ's life—a rhythm that both reassured her of her father's presence and stirred a dull, lingering ache in her chest. In the dim light of early morning, when fog still lay thick over the surface of the Lạc River, ông Diên sat there beside a rotting wooden stool, his thin hands—gnarled like the roots of an old tree—carefully shaving a strip of mahogany wood.
Their house was heavy with the scent of sawdust and damp timber. Scraps of leftover wood lay scattered across the floor—some warped, some cracked, none fit to make even a proper table. Yet in ông Diên's hands, they became small toys, hairpins, or cheap wooden clogs to sell to the villagers.
"Hạ, get up and cook some rice," ông Diên said, his voice hoarse and broken by a long, dry cough. "The carpenter from the district town is coming at noon to collect the goods."
Tiểu Hạ stepped out from the inner room, sleep still clouding her eyes, but her hands already reaching for the bamboo broom. She looked at her father's hunched back, and her heart tightened. His work jacket was patched beyond counting, dried sweat leaving pale white salt stains across the fabric.
"Father, rest for a bit. I'll make you some ginger water, all right?"
Ông Diên didn't look up, only waved his hand faintly. "Rest? How can I? If I don't finish this order on time and they deduct the deposit, what will you use to pay next month's tuition? Where's Khải? Why hasn't he come over to help saw the wood this morning?"
As his name was spoken, Quốc Khải appeared at the gate. He wasn't wearing his usual mud-stained clothes. Instead, he had on a white shirt yellowed with age—the nicest shirt he owned—and his hair was neatly combed. The difference made both Tiểu Hạ and ông Diên pause.
"Good morning, chú Diên," Khải greeted. "I came to ask for your permission to take the day off. I'm going to the district town… to look for a way forward."
His voice was clear, but carried a faint distance.
Ông Diên stopped chiseling altogether. Slowly, he lifted his head, his clouded eyes studying the young man before him—from the worn cloth shoes to the resolute gaze in Khải's eyes. He sighed, a sigh heavy with both wisdom and helplessness, the kind that comes only from living through half a lifetime.
"A way forward? You're really planning to go to the city?" he asked, his hand still gripping the chisel.
"Yes. All there is here are scraps of wood and mud, year after year. I want to do something bigger, chú. I don't want Tiểu Hạ to spend her life in a house filled with sawdust like this."
A heavy silence settled over the small house. Tiểu Hạ leaned against a wooden pillar, gripping the broom tightly. She looked at her father, then at Khải. Deep down, she feared his "clean" appearance—it felt like preparation for a departure with no promised return.
Ông Diên picked up a piece of scrap wood at his feet and tossed it onto the pile of dry firewood in the yard. "Look at that piece of wood. It could have been part of a fine wooden platform. But because it couldn't endure the heat of the sun or the damp of the rain where it was born, it became scrap. The city is dazzling, Khải—but it has no place for wood that isn't hardened enough."
Khải didn't retreat. He stepped closer, his voice firm. "If I'm scrap wood, then I'll carve myself into something else. Please believe me, chú. I will succeed."
Ông Diên said nothing more. He bent down and resumed his work. The sound of the chisel rang out again—crack… crack…—but this time it was dry, heavy with worry.
That noon, when ông Diên had collapsed into sleep on the bamboo daybed, Quốc Khải pulled Tiểu Hạ into the back garden, where old jackfruit trees blocked the view from the house. From his pocket, he took out a small gift: a wooden comb carved with a tiny summer flower.
"This… where did you get the wood to make this?" Hạ asked in surprise.
"I picked it from the scraps chú Diên was going to throw away. I stayed up all night carving it," Khải said softly. "Hạ, wherever I go, you have to use this comb, all right? Think of it as… me brushing your hair every day."
Hạ held the comb, her heart tangled with emotion. Under her father's hands, scrap wood meant hard-earned survival; under Khải's, it became a romantic promise. Suddenly she realized—Khải had the ability to turn the ordinary into something special. And that talent—more precisely, that ambition—would be the very thing that carried him far away from her.
"How long will you be gone?" she asked, her voice trembling.
"I don't know. When I've earned enough to buy chú Diên the best medicine, and buy you the finest silk fabrics in the city—I'll come back."
Quốc Khải took Hạ's scarred hands and kissed lightly between her fingers, still scented with tree sap. Somewhere in the wind, the sound of his bamboo flute echoed in her imagination—but this time it was no longer pure. It was thick with calculation, and with fear of an uncertain future.
That afternoon, Quốc Khải left the village on the only old bus running to the district town. Tiểu Hạ stood beneath the ancient tamarind tree, watching the bus disappear beyond the bamboo grove. When she returned home, her father was still bent over the pile of scrap wood.
"He's gone?" ông Diên asked without looking up.
"Yes… he's gone, Father."
"Mm… going is good. But Hạ, don't place too much hope in someone who goes searching for gold. Those who seek gold often forget the color of the earth."
Tiểu Hạ didn't reply. She quietly sat beside her father, picking up the scattered scraps of wood and placing them into a basket. She didn't yet fully understand his words—she only knew that from this day on, the Lạc River would become nothing but longing to her, and the city—where Khải was heading—was the hidden enemy stealing away the last of her peace.
In the house now emptied of flute music, with only an old man's coughing and the wind slipping through wooden walls, Tiểu Hạ gently lifted the wooden comb to her hair. The small summer flower carved into it seemed to tremble, bracing itself against the storm inside the heart of a seventeen-year-old girl.