Chapter 30: The Suffocating Wait
Night. Ngan’s apartment. The argument in the group had died down, leaving only a heavy silence, like a curse.
Ngan sat before the large balcony glass, looking at her hazy reflection in the darkness. Her memory was no longer focused on the orgy. It was focused on the morning after, on the naked moments of deception.
She remembered Tung’s face as he dropped the fork, his utter shame. She remembered Minh’s exaggerated fake smile, his shamelessness. And she remembered herself. She remembered her sweet, calm voice as she told the perfect lie: “I slept well too.”
She shuddered. A disgust greater than physical disgust rose up in her, a terrifying realization. She realized, she not only loathed them. She loathed herself. She loathed the cold, cruel part of her that had allowed her to play such a perfect act amid the ashes, amid the ruins of men.
The beast inside her was not just a beast of lust. It was also a beast of control and perhaps a little cruelty. This truth was more terrifying than any man. She sat there, in the darkness, facing her own reflection, a stranger. The deathly silence did not come from outside, it was echoing from deep within her soul, an echo of disgust.
Two days have passed since the virtual civil war between Tung and Minh. No one has said another word. The virtual space is now as heavy and dead as a digital grave, burying all the laughter and joy.
Minh kept opening the group chat, staring at the curses between himself and Tung. Regret and fear of losing his most fun “game” were gnawing at him, like a worm. Tung was the same. He felt ashamed of losing control, and devastated by Ngan’s silence, like someone who had just lost everything. Quan watched silently. He knew the “tribe” as they once knew it was dead. He was waiting to see what would rise from the ashes. Ngan did not open the group chat anymore. She was in her “cocoon”, isolated from the outside world. Minh and Tung’s goal was to break the silence, but did not know where to start. The conflict was that Ngan’s silence was too high a wall, and shame prevented them from taking action.
Minh picked up his phone, typed a message: “Nuoi, I’m sorry…”, but then deleted it. He didn’t know what to say. The apology seemed too cheap, not strong enough to break the wall of silence. Tung also opened a private conversation with Ngan, looking at the two cold words “Seen” from two days ago. He didn’t dare to send another message, only feeling a sense of utter helplessness.
A thought flashed through Quan’s mind: “Silence. Interesting. Disintegration has its own order. Now it’s time to see who will be the first to succumb to this silence.”
The silence stretched, suffocating. Someone had to do something, or everything would fall apart forever. Minh, who could never stand boredom, gritted his teeth. He would make one last gamble, one desperate move.
The Zalo group “Skip Work Weekend -4you”, where the heavy silence had lasted for two days, was suddenly torn apart.
Minh didn’t text. He started spamming the group with a series of professional, breathtakingly beautiful photos of Ha Giang. The winding passes like ribbons of silk. The sea of white clouds below. The Mong girls in colorful dresses. The majestic, wild images, like a wordless invitation.
After attracting attention with his image, he began his “speech”, a dramatic monologue.
Minh: [@all] BROTHERS!!!
Minh: Enough silence.
Minh: We were wrong. All of us. What happened in Quy Nhon… was a mess. It was my fault, @Tung’s fault. And maybe… it was partly yours too, @Bao Ngan.
Minh: Resorts, noisy cities… they make us fake. We need a truly naked, truly wild place to wash it all away. To find ourselves again.
Minh: HA GIANG. There are only high mountains, deep valleys, mist, and us. A trip to fix everything. Or to destroy everything once and for all.
Minh: I bet everything on this trip. Who dares to play with me?
Minh’s call, half earnest, half dramatic, exploded like a bomb in the silence. It was both an apology and a challenge. Everything was on the table. And everyone was waiting for the answer of one person, the one who would decide the fate of this “tribe”.
Minutes passed like centuries. No one replied. “Read” icons appeared under Tung’s messages, then Quan’s, and finally Ngan’s.
Minh’s heart was pounding in his head. He was all in. If Ngan refused, or continued to stay silent, it would really be over. “Please, Sister Nuoi. Say something. Insult me. Just don’t stay silent.”
Tung read Minh’s words. “Repair everything.” Did he want to? Yes. “Destroy everything.” He was ready too. The only thing that mattered was Ngan. “If she goes… I’ll go too. No matter where.”
Quan smiled. Minh’s move was quite clever. Using a bigger chaos to heal an old chaos. “A new stage. Wilder. More uncontrollable. Interesting. But will she accept this role?”
All three men, in different ways, were staring at the phone, waiting for the Queen’s decision. Her silence at this moment was more powerful than a thousand words.
Inside Ngan’s apartment, she was standing by the window, looking down at the city, where the lights twinkled like stars. The phone lay on the table, the screen still lit, displaying pictures of the majestic Ha Giang, like an invitation.
In her head, a fierce internal struggle took place, between reason and instinct. Reason spoke up, sharp and clear: “Are you crazy? Go with them? After all that happened? This is the perfect opportunity to cut loose. Block them all. Delete the group. Start over. You have to run away from this madness.”
But another voice, darker and more seductive, whispered, like the call of a wild animal. “Run away? But you’re curious, aren’t you? You’re curious about the beast that roared that night. You want to know why you moaned when you were tormented. You want to know how crazy you can be. This isn’t about them. This is about you.”
She looked at the pictures of Ha Giang. The rugged mountains. The deep abysses. A place with no rules, no judgment. A perfect place to unleash the beast within.
A realization dawned on her: “Minh is right. This isn’t about fixing. This is about destroying. Destroying what’s left of the old me. Let’s see what the beast inside me will do when I have nothing left to lose.”
The fight was over. Curiosity had overcome fear. She did not come to forgive them. She came to discover herself, even if the discovery would burn her, reduce her to ashes. This was the beast’s stage, and she was its queen.
Ngan walked to the table and picked up the phone. Her fingers flew over the keyboard. She did not type a long paragraph. Her decision was as stark and decisive as her motive.
Bao Ngan: Okay.
That single word caused the group chat to explode, like a bomb had just been detonated.
Minh typed a long string of nonsense, followed by a series of celebratory stickers. “YESSS! I KNEW IT! I KNEW MY FOSTER WOULDN’T DISAPPOINTE ME! BROTHERS, LET’S DRESS UP!”
Tung only dropped a symbol 👍. But for him, that raised hand contained a world of relief and hope, a wordless forgiveness.
Quan waited for Minh’s noise to die down before answering. “Then I’ll see you all in Ha Giang.”
Ngan read their reactions, then locked the screen and threw the phone on the sofa. She didn’t feel happy or excited. She only felt the cold calm of someone about to enter the eye of a storm, an acceptance of fate.
The call was answered. The meeting in Ha Giang was set. Ngan did not go as a sister in need of correction. She went as an explorer entering the most dangerous land: her own wild soul, where all limits would be broken.