I’m Quynh.
My favorite Greek god has always been Hades. Not because he ruled the Underworld. Especially not because he’s always brooding.
Because people misunderstood him.
They only remembered the darkness around him. Hardly anyone noticed the quiet kindness underneath.
I always wondered what it felt like to spend your whole life trying to explain a version of yourself that nobody wanted to believe.
That night, I finally had an answer.
~~~•••~~~
The rain had slowed to a gentle drizzle, but sleep still refused to come.
I sat against the cool wall of the exhibition hall, my notebook open on my lap. The flashlight from my phone cast a soft glow on the pages filled with doodles and half-written narration.
In the quiet, memories drifted in.
Mom’s gentle voice echoed in my head — the way she used to tell me stories when I was little. Even after she lost her sight, she remained a writer at heart. She would run her fingers over my drawings and ask me to describe them, then weave beautiful tales around my messy gods and monsters. “Your imagination is a gift, Quynh,” she’d say softly. “Never let anyone dim it.”
But Dad never agreed.
He had always been hard on Minh. My brother’s carefree, chaotic energy — the very thing that made him brilliant — was seen as rebellion. Every crazy invention, every wild idea was another disappointment. “You’re wasting your life,” Dad would say.
Now, that same pressure had turned toward me.
Dad couldn’t control Minh anymore, so he focused everything on his daughter. The “good one.” The one who was supposed to prove the family could still succeed.
I traced a finger over an old sketch — a chaotic Hades laughing with his friends. My chest felt tight.
A soft shuffle beside me made me look up.
Loc had woken up. He rubbed his eyes and sat down next to me, voice low so he wouldn’t wake the others.
“Can’t sleep?”
I hugged my notebook closer. “The professional version keeps replaying in my head like a bad tragedy.”
He snorted. “Of course it does. You’re turning your beautiful disaster into a corporate PowerPoint. Even Hades would file a complaint.”
I let out a weak laugh. “Zeus demands excellence. Or at least a neat tie.”
Loc leaned his head back against the wall, staring at the dark ceiling.
“Look, I kinda get how you’re feeling right now. I once spent weeks trying to be what everyone wanted. Turns out faking it just makes the mask heavier. One day you wake up and realize you’re drowning in your own underworld.”
He paused, then added with his usual deadpan sarcasm:
“And trust me, the underworld already sucks. No need to make it wear a suit.”
I smiled despite myself. Even tired and sarcastic, he had a way of cutting through the noise.
“You’re a terrible Hades sometimes,” I said, gently bumping his shoulder. “Always complaining about the costumes, the poses, the ‘why am I holding a plastic lotus at 3 AM’… but you still show up.”
Loc shrugged, a small smirk tugging at his lips.
“What can I say? Someone has to make sure the King of the Dead doesn’t completely embarrass himself.”
The quiet stretched comfortably between us.
For the first time that night, the tight knot in my chest loosened just a little.
That gentle, warm feeling bloomed again — soft and unspoken — inside of my chest.
My best Hades. Grumpy, sarcastic, and somehow exactly what I needed right now.
~~~•••~~~
Morning light leaked through the tall hallway windows in thin gray strips, turning the dust in the air silver.
The campus had finally started waking up. Somewhere outside, a maintenance cart rattled past. A bell from the old clock tower rang once, slow and sleepy.
We looked like survivors of a very stupid war.
Loc sat against a locker with a cold banh mi hanging from one hand and the expression of a man who had lost an argument with reality. Tram sat beside him, knees drawn up, quietly drinking the last inch of leftover coffee. Minh was across from me, eating peanuts from a crumpled convenience-store bag and still refusing to look in my direction.
Quan, meanwhile, had somehow arranged breakfast on top of an overturned recycling bin like it was a five-star buffet.
"Emergency logistics," he announced proudly before stuffing half a sandwich into his mouth.
The first rehearsal teams began arriving. Students carrying poster tubes and laptops slowed down when they saw us sprawled across the hallway floor.
Their eyes traveled from the sleeping bags to the empty coffee cups to the suspicious pile of camping gear that definitely wasn't supposed to be inside the humanities building.
One girl whispered loudly, "Wait... did they actually spend the night here?"
Her friend stared at the inflatable pillow sticking out of Minh's backpack.
"I think they staged a coup."
I pretended not to hear and opened my notebook. My handwriting from last night looked increasingly like ancient Greek curses.
Then Dad's representatives arrived.
Two men in neatly pressed button-up shirts walked into the hall, checked the room number, and sat in the front row without a word. Their posture was so rigid they looked like they had been assembled by the accounting department.
The atmosphere tightened immediately.
A few students nearby leaned together.
"There they are. The babysitters."
"Her dad really doesn't trust this project, huh?"
"Can you blame him? Greek gods and campus drama? Sounds like a fever dream."
Soft laughter spread through the row behind us.
My fingers tightened around the notebook.
I was already pushing myself up when something beside me moved.
Quan rose so abruptly that the recycling-bin breakfast table tipped over.
The remaining coffee launched into the air.
A banana rolled across the floor.
A packet of peanuts exploded under Minh's shoe.
And somehow—absolutely somehow—the inflatable pillow from Minh's backpack chose that exact moment to unfold with a violent FWOOMP and smack Quan in the back of the head like an angry cloud.
The entire hall turned to stare.
Quan stood there wobbling slightly, hair sticking up, one shoulder dusted with peanut crumbs, and the half-deflated pillow hanging around his neck like a ceremonial collar.
Then he pointed dramatically at the gossiping students.
"Excuse me!"
His voice cracked on the first syllable, recovered on the second, and became terrifyingly loud on the third.
"Quynh worked all night on this project while the rest of you were busy auditioning for the Department of Unnecessary Commentary!"
Dead silence.
Quan took a breath and somehow got louder.
"You think it's weird? Great! Art is supposed to be weird! At least she's creating something instead of forming a committee to whisper in the back row!"
A student opened his mouth.
Quan cut him off immediately.
"And before anyone says 'Greek nonsense' again, let me remind you that civilization invented democracy, philosophy, and tragic drama before you invented that haircut!"
Loc buried his face in his sandwich.
Tram made a choking sound that might have been a laugh.
Even Minh looked up.
The two judges blinked for the first time since arriving.
Quan finally ran out of oxygen. He stood there panting, still wearing the inflatable pillow like a battle trophy.
Then he noticed it.
Slowly removed it.
Sat back down.
And immediately knocked over the banana with his knee.
It rolled away into the front row and stopped beside one judge's polished shoe.
The silence lasted exactly two seconds before Loc muttered, without lifting his head,
"...Honestly, that was the strongest opening statement we've had so far."
A few students snorted.
The tension cracked.
I looked at Quan. His ears had turned bright red, but his chin was still lifted stubbornly.
Warmth spread through my chest before I could stop it.
"...Thank you, Quan," I said softly.
He gave me a tiny, triumphant nod and picked up the fallen banana like a victorious warrior reclaiming his weapon.
At the front of the hall, the judges opened their folders.
The rehearsal was about to begin.
~~~•••~~~
After our makeshift breakfast disappeared piece by piece, the rest of the team began trickling into the auditorium.
The sleepy hallway transformed into organized chaos.
Camera bags landed on the floor with dull thuds. Tripods clicked open. Costume racks rolled in. Someone tested a microphone that immediately produced a painful burst of feedback before dying again.
The room smelled faintly of coffee, printer ink, and people who definitely should have slept.
Then Dad’s two representatives quietly sat up. One adjusting his glasses while the other opening a leather notebook. Catching my glance, one of them offered a polite smile—the kind that said, ‘It’s nothing personal. Just business.’
Somehow that made my chest tightened even harder.
I stood, clutching my notebook so hard its corners had begun to bend, and watched everyone gradually gather around me.
Loc looked awake only in the most technical sense of the word. His hair still resembled the aftermath of another argument with a locker, and he leaned against a lighting stand blinking at the world with the enthusiasm of a tax accountant. Tram caught my eye first. She didn’t smile. She simply gave the smallest nod, the kind that quietly said, ‘Whatever you decide, we’re here.’
Nearby, Quan had somehow managed to become tangled in three extension cords without moving more than two meters. Minh walked over, silently untangled him, and returned to his corner without saying a word. Less than five seconds later, Quan got tangled again.
I couldn’t even find the energy to be surprised.
Taking a slow breath, I looked around at everyone.
“Thanks for coming so early. We’ll do one full rehearsal before the presentation.”
The conversations around us gradually faded. I opened my notebook, its pages wrinkled from last night’s chase across campus and stained with coffee rings that cut through dozens of sketches and handwritten ideas.
Zeus should dramatically steal someone’s umbrella.
Have Hades accidentally photobomb this shot.
The pigeon becomes an oracle.
For a brief moment, I smiled.
Then my eyes drifted toward the front row.
The judges were already watching me.
Patiently.
Silently.
Evaluating every second before I had even spoken.
My fingers slowly closed the notebook.
“…We’re changing the concept.”
The words came out much louder than I intended.
“We’ll use the professional version. Hades becomes an observer instead of a participant. Minimal compositions. Formal narration.” I hesitated for only a moment before forcing out the last sentence. “…No excessive comedy.”
Nobody interrupted me.
The silence that followed wasn’t one of surprise. It was the kind of quiet that came when everyone understood exactly why a decision had been made.
Loc lowered his eyes to the script in his hands. Without saying anything, he crossed out an entire page of handwritten notes. Tram slowly lowered the camera she’d been adjusting and looked at me with a gentle smile that was full of understanding—but not agreement. Somehow, that hurt more than disappointment ever could.
Quan looked back and forth between me and the notebook before his shoulders slowly sank.
“…Oh.”
It was barely a whisper.
Across the room, Minh still hadn’t moved.
After a long silence, he walked over to the prop table and picked up the laurel crown we’d spent an hour decorating the night before. Without saying a word, he carefully removed the ridiculous little plastic pigeon Quan had insisted belonged on the side.
He placed the pigeon on the table.
Then he handed the crown back to me.
Clean.
Professional.
Exactly as Dad would have wanted.
Something inside me tightened.
“It’s safer,” I heard myself say.
Nobody argued.
Nobody needed to.
We quietly took our places, and the rehearsal began.
“Hades, hold the pose.”
Loc obeyed immediately. His posture was flawless, his expression distant, his movements restrained. He looked exactly like the lonely ruler I’d imagined months ago.
Only now…
he wasn’t acting anymore.
Scene after scene unfolded with mechanical precision. Tram adjusted the lighting until every composition looked cleaner, more balanced, and somehow less alive. Quan delivered every line exactly as written, never improvising once, never smiling once.
Even the pauses between scenes felt rehearsed, as though the room itself had learned not to breathe too loudly.
The judges watched from the front row throughout the entire rehearsal. Every so often one of them scribbled something into his notebook. Neither smiled. Neither frowned. Their silence became its own kind of verdict.
I continued directing.
“Again.”
“Good.”
“One more.”
Each instruction sounded calm and confident, yet every word felt strangely unfamiliar coming out of my own mouth.
Little by little, the project became everything Dad had wanted it to be.
Elegant.
Disciplined.
Respectable.
And with every improvement, it felt a little less like mine.
Mom would’ve laughed at the version where Hades got chased across campus by a maintenance cart. She would’ve insisted we keep the ridiculous pigeon on the crown. She would’ve reminded me that stories weren’t supposed to behave.
I tightened my grip around the symbolic crown.
Was I protecting my future…
…or apologizing for who I was?
When the final scene came to an end, silence settled over the auditorium once more. I forced myself to smile and looked at my exhausted friends.
“…Good work, everyone.”
The words sounded exactly right.
Professional.
Polite.
Convincing.
They just didn’t sound like me.
When the rehearsal finally ended, the last line of narration faded into silence. For a few seconds, the hall remained completely still. Everyone seemed to be waiting for someone else to speak first.
One of the judges finally closed his notebook and nodded slowly. “Very polished,” he said. “Much more presentable than the previous versions I heard about.”
The other judge adjusted his glasses before adding, “A clear improvement. The concept feels much more mature.”
It was as if someone had broken an invisible spell.
Conversations resumed around the room. Several teammates began clapping, and before long the compliments started coming from every direction.
“It looks so much cleaner now, Quynh.”
“Your compositions are really strong.”
“I think your dad’s going to love this version.”
“Great improvement.”
Even some of the students who had laughed at us earlier gave quiet nods of approval.
Tram walked over first. There was warmth in her smile, but I could also see the hesitation behind it.
“You did well.”
Loc, still looking like he hadn’t fully recovered from sleeping on a locker room floor, gave me an approving nod.
“Solid work.”
Quan immediately joined the applause with enough enthusiasm for three people, smiling as though he wanted to convince himself everything had turned out all right.
I tried to smile back.
I really did.
After everything we’d been through over the past two days—Dad’s constant pressure, the chase across campus, sleeping on the floor—I should have felt relieved.
Instead, something felt strangely unfinished.
My eyes drifted across the room almost on instinct.
Minh hadn’t clapped.
He still stood near the back wall with his arms folded, exactly where he’d been since the rehearsal began. While everyone else had been watching me, he’d spent the entire presentation watching the stage itself, his expression unreadable.
As the applause gradually died away, the silence around him somehow became louder than all the praise filling the room.
“It was polished.”
His voice wasn’t loud, but every conversation stopped almost immediately.
“It was safe. Plain. Soulless. Boring. Like a banh mi with no stuffings.”
He looked at me for a long moment before quietly shaking his head.
“…And it wasn’t your project anymore.”
The warmth from the compliments disappeared as if someone had opened a window in winter.
I felt my grip tighten around the symbolic crown.
“Why can’t you just support me for once?” The words escaped before I had the chance to soften them. “You know exactly what Dad’s like. If I insist on the original version, he’ll force me to change majors. He’ll cut everything off. I’m not doing this because I’m scared of criticism, Minh. I’m doing it because I’m trying to protect my future.”
For the first time all morning, something shifted in his expression.
It wasn’t anger.
It was disappointment.
He let out a quiet laugh, the kind people make when reality turns out exactly the way they feared.
“Protect your future?” he repeated. “Quynh, you’re protecting his version of your future.”
He stepped toward the stage, his voice remaining calm even as every word landed harder than the last.
“I’ve already lived through this. Dad spent years telling me to stop chasing stupid ideas, stop making a mess, stop embarrassing the family. Every time I gave up a piece of myself, he called it growing up. Every time I obeyed, he said I was finally becoming responsible.”
His eyes met mine.
“And now he’s doing exactly the same thing to you.”
The room had gone completely silent.
No one dared interrupt.
“You used to fight back,” Minh continued. “You were the one who insisted that stories should surprise people, that art should make people laugh before it made them think. You made everyone around you believe that. Us included.”
He glanced around the stage we’d built together over weeks of late nights.
“Now you’ve erased all of it before anyone else even had the chance.”
The words hit somewhere I couldn’t defend.
“You don’t understand,” I said, my voice shaking despite every effort to steady it. “You can walk away because you’ve already disappointed him. I haven’t. I still have one chance to make this work. I don’t want to become the next failure in this family.”
The moment the sentence left my mouth, I wished I could pull it back.
Minh didn’t answer immediately.
He simply stood there looking at me, and for the first time in years, I saw genuine hurt break through his composure. It wasn’t dramatic. He didn’t raise his voice or argue back. Somehow that made it worse.
After what felt like an eternity, he smiled faintly.
It was the saddest smile I’d ever seen from him.
“So that’s what you think.”
He lowered his eyes for a moment before letting out a quiet, bitter laugh.
“…Then maybe I’ve already lost you.”
He turned without another word.
His footsteps echoed across the auditorium as he walked toward the exit, and no one tried to stop him. The heavy door slammed shut behind him, the sound rolling through the silent hall until even the echoes disappeared.
I remained standing in the center of the stage with the symbolic crown still in my hands.
Only now did I realize how heavy it had become.
~~~•••~~~
The walk back to the apartment was quieter than the walk to campus.
Not because we were tired.
Because none of us knew what could possibly be said.
The morning traffic had started to wake the city. Motorbikes drifted past in steady streams. Street vendors were setting up along the sidewalks, calling out to early customers. Somewhere nearby, someone was watering a row of potted plants, the hose hissing softly against the pavement.
The world had already moved on.
I hadn’t.
Loc walked a few steps ahead, his hands buried in his pockets. Every so often he glanced back at me, opened his mouth as if he wanted to say something, then quietly thought better of it.
Quan had lost every trace of the loud confidence he’d carried that morning. He stared at the sidewalk the entire way, occasionally kicking at loose pebbles with the guilty determination of someone trying to apologize without knowing how.
Tram stayed beside me.
She never asked if I was okay.
The answer was written all over my face.
When we reached the narrow alley leading to Loc’s apartment building, everyone slowed to a stop almost at the same time.
Quan finally gathered enough courage to speak.
“Quynh…”
His voice was barely above a whisper.
“…you’ve tried your best. You always have.”
I looked up and forced the smallest smile I could manage.
“Thank you.”
Have I?
I don’t even know anymore.
Tram looked at me for a long second before turning to the others.
“Come on,” she said quietly.
Her voice wasn’t commanding.
Just gentle.
“Let’s give her a little time.”
Quan hesitated.
“So… should we—”
Loc lightly nudged his shoulder.
Without another word, the three of them disappeared into the apartment building.
I stood there for another minute, listening to the gate click shut behind them.
Only then did I turn away.
My feet carried me almost automatically toward the river.
The path hadn’t changed in years.
The same cracked pavement.
The same rusted railing.
The same crooked bench leaning slightly toward the water, as if it had grown tired of standing upright.
Minh and I used to come here after school whenever Dad was in one of his moods.
Back then, the river had felt like the edge of the world.
I sat down.
The wood creaked beneath my weight.
A cool breeze drifted across the water, carrying the faint smell of wet grass and the first coffee brewing from the cafés across the street.
For the first time all morning, there was nothing demanding my attention.
No judges.
No rehearsal.
No expectations.
Just silence.
I slowly opened my notebook.
The pages were worn from years of being carried everywhere.
Coffee stains from last night overlapped pencil marks from months ago. Tiny doodles filled almost every empty corner.
A tiny Hermes weaving through traffic on a motorbike.
Poseidon arguing with a fisherman over parking.
Hades sitting at a roadside noodle stand with the exhausted expression Loc somehow wore naturally.
I couldn’t help smiling.
It lasted less than a second.
A drop of water landed on the page.
Then another.
Only when the ink began to blur did I realize the stinging in my eyes.
My fingers traced one of the older sketches near the back of the notebook.
The paper had yellowed slightly with age.
I remembered exactly when we’d drawn it.
“Look, Quynh!”
Minh held up a page covered in wild, uneven lines.
“This is what freedom looks like.”
We were sitting in the backyard, surrounded by colored pencils we’d borrowed from Mom’s classroom supplies.
I frowned at my own drawing.
“It doesn’t even stay inside the boxes.”
“Exactly.”
He grinned.
“It’s YOUR drawing. Why should it stay inside the boxes?”
Before I could protest, he’d already grabbed another pencil and started adding to my page without asking.
Zeus got stuck behind a traffic jam of buffaloes.
Hermes delivered food instead of messages.
Persephone climbed a mango tree because “the Underworld doesn’t have good fruit.”
The story became more ridiculous with every minute.
Mom sat nearby, smiling as she listened.
Though her eyesight had already begun to fade, she never asked us to explain the drawings.
She only asked us to tell the stories.
By the time we finished, she’d added her own ending.
“The gods,” she said softly, “must envy people.”
We both looked at her.
“They’re immortal,” Minh said.
“They are.”
Mom smiled.
“But only people can dream about becoming someone else.”
Minh was quiet for a moment.
Then he looked at me with that familiar spark in his eyes.
“So promise me something.”
“What?”
“If anyone ever tells you your imagination is childish…”
He tapped the notebook between us.
“…draw even weirder.”
The memory faded as quietly as it had come.
I closed the notebook and held it against my chest.
The river flowed past without caring who won arguments or pleased judges.
For a long time, I simply sat there listening to the water.
Then, almost too quietly to hear myself, I whispered,
“…Minh.”
My voice caught.
“What have I done?”
