The next bait came from the canteen line.
Not from Bảo Khang.
That was the improvement.
For two days after the unsigned form, Bảo Khang became almost absent.
He still appeared where useful students belonged, but he stopped standing close enough to be named. No water bottles. No notes. No quiet reminders from behind Lâm's shoulder.
The school relaxed around that absence.
Lâm did not.
Absence could be a hand pulling back before a slap.
On Wednesday morning, a rumor moved through the lower classes that someone near the gate was selling imported energy candy. Not drugs. Not pills. Candy. The kind of thing students could joke about while teachers rolled their eyes. Red wrapper, sour taste, supposed to keep you awake through afternoon math.
Lâm heard three versions before lunch.
One said it made you brave.
One said it made you hot.
One said it was just sugar and stupidity.
The third version was the most dangerous because it gave adults permission not to look.
A first-year boy behind Lâm breathed like he had run up five flights of stairs, though he had only walked from the courtyard. His eyes were too bright. Sweat gathered along his upper lip in a room cooled by three lazy fans.
He held a red candy wrapper between two fingers and kept crushing it flat, then letting it open, then crushing it again.
Borrowed courage had a smell.
Sugar.
Fear.
Cheap body spray.
Something bitter under the breath.
Lâm stepped out of line.
The boy followed half a step.
Too quick.
Not because he wanted food.
"You're cutting?" the boy said.
Students turned.
The canteen loved a small argument. It was close enough to class to feel safe and crowded enough to make shame efficient.
Lâm looked at the boy's hands.
No phone.
That meant the phone was elsewhere.
"Take my place," Lâm said.
He moved away.
The boy blinked, confused by receiving what he had accused Lâm of taking.
Across the canteen, Bảo Khang stood near the water machine with two cups.
He did not smile.
The first-year's confusion became panic. Panic became the need to recover.
"Scared?"
Lâm kept walking.
"No wonder your friend--"
The room tightened around the missing word.
Lâm stopped.
That was enough.
The boy came forward, shoulder high, candy wrapper still in hand. His movement was worse than the stairwell boy's. Too much speed. Too little control. The kind of body that had been told it would feel strong and then betrayed by its own heat.
Bảo Khang watched the angle.
Lâm saw it now.
Not the boy.
The gap between tables. The reflective metal of the soup station. The teacher at the payment box. The phone in a girl's hand that was not aimed at the food.
Room first.
Body second.
The rehab specialist would have hit him with a towel if he forgot.
Lâm moved behind a plastic chair and put one hand on the backrest.
The first-year grabbed the other side.
For one second they looked like two students arguing over a seat.
Good.
Let the camera have furniture.
The boy yanked.
Lâm did not yank back. He pushed the chair sideways, not toward the boy. The boy's own pull brought his hip into the table edge. Soup sloshed. A metal spoon hit the floor.
Noise broke the scene.
The canteen auntie shouted before any teacher could choose a narrative.
"Enough! You want to pay for broken bowls?"
The first-year froze.
Adult anger not shaped by paperwork had a different force. It was crude and local and wonderfully useless to the script.
Lâm let go of the chair.
"Sorry, cô."
He meant it.
The canteen auntie pointed at both of them. "Outside if you want to act like this. Not near food."
The girl with the phone lowered it.
Bảo Khang poured water into both cups.
Only then did he walk over.
"Are you okay?" he asked the first-year.
The boy's breathing shook.
"He started it," the boy said, but he sounded uncertain.
"I saw," Bảo Khang said.
Lâm looked at him.
It was the gentlest lie he had heard all week.
Then Bảo Khang did something worse.
He did not accuse Lâm.
He guided the first-year to a bench and told a nearby student to get water. He spoke to the canteen auntie with his head slightly lowered. He apologized for the spill. He called the boy "em" even though the age gap was nothing.
By the time a teacher arrived, the scene had already been softened.
A nervous younger student.
A recovered senior with a history of stress.
A helpful transfer boy calming everyone down.
Lâm stood beside the plastic chair and understood the shape of the story without hearing it.
The camera did not need to catch him hitting anyone.
Sometimes the camera only needed him standing near a mess.
At the clinic, the rehab specialist listened to the canteen story and asked only one question.
"Did you touch him?"
"No."
"Did you want to?"
"Yes."
"Where?"
Lâm frowned.
"What?"
"Where did you want to hurt him?"
The question was too direct.
"Shoulder," he said finally. "Then face."
"Good. Know the map before the anger does."
She handed him a hand towel.
"Today, chair."
He almost laughed.
"Everything is furniture with you."
"In a school, furniture is honest. People are not."
At the old Vovinam floor, Thuận heard the description of the first-year's breath and stopped moving.
"Wrapper color?" Hạo Nhiên asked.
Tân Phong checked the message. "Red."
Hạo Nhiên's expression did not change.
That was how Thuận knew the answer mattered.
"Low grade?" Thuận asked.
"Maybe nothing," Hạo Nhiên said.
"Maybe?"
"Maybe sugar. Maybe panic. Maybe a cheap stimulant with a story sold beside it."
"Huyền Tinh?"
Hạo Nhiên folded his hands behind his back.
"If someone wants to hide a blade in a school, they do not start by bringing a sword. They start by teaching children to call the handle candy."
Thuận looked toward the window.
Outside, afternoon traffic moved along Nguyễn Thị Minh Khai with ordinary impatience.
He felt the old guilt rise again.
Lâm was learning to survive chairs and wrappers.
Minh had walked into a warehouse.
Thuận did not know which thought hurt worse.
"Should we find the seller?" Tân Thành asked.
"No," Hạo Nhiên said.
Tân Thành hit his own thigh with an open palm. "Always no."
"Find the pattern first."
"Pattern does not stop a boy from swallowing something."
Hạo Nhiên's voice stayed calm. "Neither does beating the first seller if the second seller is already waiting at another gate."
Thuận understood the lesson and hated it.
Lục Hoa restraint did not feel noble here.
It felt like watching fire through glass.