Months after the previous incident, Lê Quý Đôn began counting days.
Days until mock examinations.
Days until graduation photographs.
Days until the national examination reduced twelve years of school to rooms, seat numbers and black ink placed inside the correct boxes.
Thuận liked boxes when they admitted what they were.
On the first Monday of the final semester, he arrived before the classroom lights had been switched on. He opened the windows, moved a leaking plant pot away from a stack of revision papers and copied the week's deadlines onto the corner of the board because the class monitor had caught a fever.
By the time the first students arrived, nothing he had done looked important.
That was how Khánh Vy recognized his work.
She placed an extra black pen beside his notebook.
"Your old one is dying."
Thuận tested it. The ink started cleanly.
"Thank you."
"That sounded surprised."
"I thought I hid it."
"You hide injuries. You stare at broken stationery like it betrayed you."
He adjusted his glasses and looked toward the board.
Khánh Vy smiled. She knew the gesture as the place he put answers he did not want to give. To her, Thuận was the student teachers trusted with keys and classmates trusted with group assignments. He had missed several afternoons during the previous term and returned with explanations shaped like traffic, family matters or helping friends from another school.
She had known boys who called every fight outside a school gate "helping a friend." They gathered an audience, made loyalty sound like permission and left other people carrying their bags and excuses. Thuận had always seemed different. His grades were good without becoming a performance. He lowered his voice when others raised theirs. Most importantly, he arrived when he said he would.
She believed some of them.
She had not yet decided whether that was kindness or laziness.
Tân Phong entered carrying one workbook and three phones that did not belong to him.
"Lost-and-found," he said before anyone asked.
Tân Thành followed with a stack of folding chairs balanced against one shoulder. The brothers did not resemble each other until they stopped moving. Then the same impatience appeared around their mouths.
"The assembly hall needs these," Tân Thành said.
"Then why are they here?" Thuận asked.
"Because the assembly hall has people in it."
Tân Phong put the phones on the teacher's desk. "He means teachers."
The bell cut off Thuận's reply.
Their homeroom teacher entered with university guidance forms and a sealed envelope from the school office. She distributed the forms first.
Preferred field.
Preferred institution.
Expected residence after graduation.
Parent acknowledgment.
Thuận filled his name and stopped.
Across the aisle, Khánh Vy had already written two possible institutions in small, careful letters. One was in Hồ Chí Minh City. The other began with a country name before the university name.
She covered the line with her hand when she saw him notice.
"Choose your own future first."
"I was reading the form."
"Your eyes were on my form."
"The forms are close together."
"Excellent field control."
He almost laughed.
Almost mattered. Since the funeral, jokes often reached him and found the room occupied.
The teacher opened the sealed envelope last. Her expression changed after the first paragraph.
"This is an extracurricular health notice," she said. "Some students involved in contact sports may be asked to attend an off-campus screening. The school will contact families directly if necessary."
A red band crossed the bottom of the page beneath a slogan printed larger than the medical details:
`SAFE STUDENTS. SAFE CITY.`
The slogan belonged to no school department Thuận recognized. A youth-events logo sat beside it, all curved hands and reassuring color.
Most of the class lost interest at contact sports.
Tân Phong did not.
Neither did Tân Thành.
Thuận watched the teacher fold the lower half of the page behind the upper half. A dark circular stamp disappeared beneath her fingers.
At lunch, Tân Phong found the same notice in three school channels.
The wording was identical except for the school names.
"Contact sports," Tân Thành read. "So football? Basketball?"
"Not exactly." Tân Phong enlarged the footer. "Look at the code."
`TM-THANH MACH/YOUTH COMPLIANCE.`
Thuận took the phone.
Tân Phong slid to the public image first. "The red band is from the Trưng Vương safety event. Same spacing. Same slogan."
Tân Thành stopped drinking. "Khoa?"
"His volunteers used it. The event company kept it after the full clip exposed him."
Khoa had not disappeared when the full recording broke the clean version of that afternoon. He had lost the right to look neutral. Apparently someone had found another use for a boy who understood how a room looked after the cameras chose their side.
Hạo Nhiên had warned them that institutions rarely called a cage by its future name. They called it health, eligibility, safety, temporary review.
Khánh Vy approached their table with two cartons of milk.
Thuận locked the screen.
"Secret meeting?"
"Tân Thành forgot a form," he said.
Tân Thành looked offended. "I forgot three."
Khánh Vy gave him one carton anyway.
The ordinary lie passed.
It left a smaller discomfort behind.
Khánh Vy sat beside Thuận while Tân Thành drank both milk cartons by mistake and denied it with one empty carton still in his hand. She asked about the university form again. Thuận said he had not chosen a field. She looked surprised enough to make him defensive.
"You plan fire exits before entering cafés."
"That does not qualify me for a degree."
"It qualifies you to stop pretending you have no preference."
He looked toward Tân Phong, who was photographing the notice footer instead of eating.
"I prefer useful work."
"Useful to who?"
The question followed him through afternoon classes. When the mathematics teacher returned a test with a high mark, Thuận felt no satisfaction. When a younger student asked him to explain a difficult problem, the answer came easily. That felt better and frightened him more. Helping had become the only future he could describe without seeing the closed coffin at the end of it.
After the final bell, Khánh Vy caught him placing the dead pen in a recycling box.
"Keep it," she said.
"It no longer works."
"You keep broken cups."
Thuận looked at her too quickly.
She meant nothing hidden. Months earlier, she had seen the chipped white cup in a photograph on his phone.
"Some things have a use after damage," he said.
"And some things are allowed to finish."
She walked toward the gate before he found an answer. The new pen remained in his pocket beside the folded health notice.
That evening, the trio trained on the old Vovinam floor near Xuân Hòa. Hạo Nhiên made them hold root while rain tapped against the shutters. No strikes. No explanations. Only weight, breath and the discomfort of waiting for a teacher who knew something.
When Thuận's thighs began to shake, Hạo Nhiên placed the sealed school notice on the floor between them.
The dark stamp was fully visible now.
Liên Minh Võ Lâm.
He placed the public version beside it. Red campaign below, black seal beneath.
"The red notice reached the school channels first," he said. "Someone prepared the feeling before the order arrived."
"They have stopped asking schools to ignore us," Hạo Nhiên said.
"What are they asking now?" Thuận said.
Hạo Nhiên turned the page.
Three names had been printed beneath compulsory assessment.
Thanh Thuận.
Tân Phong.
Tân Thành.
"To hold still," Hạo Nhiên said, "while the hidden world decides what kind of danger you are."