Lâm found Minh on the walkway beside the canal behind Dạ Nam, where the water carried plastic cups and reflected broken neon below the railing.
Minh had been waiting badly. He stood too still, which meant he had been rehearsing control like a punishment.
"Say it," Lâm said.
Minh frowned. "Say what?"
"The thing you're trying not to ask."
Minh looked at his hands.
Good. At least he knew where the danger started.
"If they come back," Minh said, "what do you want me to do?"
There it was.
Lâm leaned against the railing. The metal was damp against his back. His right hand sat in its brace, uselessly present.
"Part of me wants you to hurt them."
Minh did not move.
Lâm appreciated that. He also hated that he had to appreciate it.
"Not scare them," Lâm continued. "Not warn them. Hurt them. Quân, Khánh, Hùng. The boys who moved like it was a drill. The ones who knew which hand to hit."
The words tasted clean and poisonous.
"Then another part of me imagines you doing it. Really doing it. And I see your face after." Lâm looked at him. "That's the part where revenge starts using both of us."
Minh's breath shook once.
"I don't know how to make this right," Minh said.
"Maybe it doesn't get right."
"Lâm--"
"No. Listen." Lâm pushed off the railing. "If I tell you to avenge me, I become the leash they already think I am. If you go because my hand hurts, Huyền Kha gets exactly what he wants."
Minh's eyes sharpened at the name.
"You think he is still using this?"
"I think people like him don't throw away a hook that works."
Lâm held up his braced hand. He wanted to make a joke. Nothing came.
"I want them hurt," he said. "That's why I can't ask you to do it."
Silence moved between them.
Not forgiveness.
Not peace.
Something harder.
Minh bowed his head slightly, not formal, not dramatic.
"Then what do I do if they stand in front of me?"
Lâm's answer came slower.
"Stop them."
Minh looked up.
"Not for my hand. Not because you see the clip. Not because you imagine me missing shots alone." Lâm swallowed. "Stop them because they are standing in the way of someone else being used."
That was the closest thing to permission he could give without becoming bait.
Minh understood.
That did not make it easier.
It only made it clean enough to carry.
They did not look at each other for a while after that.
The first conversation should have ended there.
It did not.
Lâm's hand began to ache from standing too long, and Minh noticed before Lâm admitted it. Minh did not offer an arm. He had learned that help could feel like proof of damage if given too quickly. Instead he pointed toward the coffee stall near the alley mouth.
"Latte?" Minh asked.
Lâm almost laughed. "You think milk fixes revenge?"
"No," Minh said. "It gives you something to hold with the hand that still works."
That was annoying enough to be kind.
Minh bought one iced latte and carried it until they reached the small recovery apartment Lâm's family had rented near the clinic. Lâm took the plastic cup only after sitting down, because accepting coffee felt easier than accepting pity.
The apartment room had too many ordinary things in it. A schoolbag slumped beside the bed. The latte cup sweating on Lâm's desk. Tape around Lâm's exercise grip. A tournament poster folded at one corner because nobody had known where to put it after the injury became real.
Lâm sat on the floor with his back against the mattress. Minh stayed near the window, not because he wanted distance, but because if he sat too close, the conversation might turn into comfort. Comfort would make Lâm softer than he could afford to be.
"I keep replaying it," Lâm said. "Not the hit. After. The way they looked at me when I missed in the match. Like they had bought the ending and were waiting for delivery."
Minh's jaw hardened.
"See?" Lâm said. "That's why I can't tell you everything."
"You can."
"No. I can tell my friend. I can't feed the thing standing behind him."
Minh did not answer because the sentence had found the room where Gomboc lived.
Lâm looked at his wrapped fingers. "If you hurt them because they hurt me, then I'm still on that court. Still being used. Different team, same game."
The words cost him. Minh could see that. They were not forgiveness. They were not peace. They were Lâm refusing to let his broken hand become a leash around someone else's neck.
Lâm had rehearsed the conversation in crueler versions.
In one version, he told Minh to break their hands. In another, he said nothing and let Minh understand from silence. In the ugliest version, he cried first so Minh would carry the tears into the fight and return with proof that friendship still had power.
He hated all three versions.
The real conversation came out smaller and therefore more painful.
"I keep thinking if you don't do anything, then what happened to me becomes normal," Lâm said. "Like they can just injure someone, smile for a poster, and wait for everyone to get tired."
Minh's eyes lifted.
"But if you do something because I need it, then they still decide who we become."
Outside the window, a motorbike passed with music leaking from a cracked speaker. Someone shouted downstairs about parking. The city kept throwing ordinary sounds into extraordinary wounds.
Minh sat beside him at last, leaving enough space that Lâm did not feel handled.
"What do you want me to do?" Minh asked.
Lâm hated him for asking correctly.
He looked at the tournament poster and the tape around his fingers. "Find out who used them. Stop that. If the Thälmann boys stand in the way, move them. But don't let my hand be the reason you enjoy it."
Minh absorbed the sentence like a strike.
"And if I do enjoy it?"
Lâm's throat tightened. "Then come back and tell me. Don't hide it and call it justice."
The conversation ended without a hug. Both boys would have found that too clean. Instead Minh stood, picked up the empty latte cup from Lâm's desk, rinsed it in the kitchen sink, and set it upside down beside the basin. The small chore gave his hands something harmless to do. Lâm heard the water running and understood the gesture well enough not to thank him.
After Minh left, Lâm sat with the clean cup drying beside the sink and wondered when friendship had become this careful. They used to insult each other freely, waste afternoons, argue over games. Now every sentence checked whether it might become ammunition. Growing up, he decided, was sometimes just learning how many ways love could be misused.