I took the stairs two at a time, my heartbeat echoing through the narrow stairwell.
By the time I reached the rooftop, I was almost out of breath.
The rusted metal door groaned open.
I stopped.
Quynh was lying flat on the concrete, arms resting at her sides, staring into the pale evening sky.
It was just like the first time we met here. I still remembered how she matter-of-factly told me she was practicing Hades’s brooding energy as if it was the most normal hobby in the world.
Back then, she’d filled this rooftop with impossible stories, cardboard props, and enough enthusiasm to convince me the Underworld was somewhere between the water tank and the satellite dish.
Now there was only silence.
She lay so still it almost looked like she was trying to disappear into the role she’d created.
The wind brushed a few strands of hair across her face.
For the first time since I’d met her, she looked small.
Behind me, hurried footsteps echoed up the stairs.
Quan.
A second later, they stopped.
I didn’t have to turn around to know Tram had quietly held him back.
Some conversations deserved distance.
Without a word, I crossed the rooftop and lay down beside Quynh. The concrete was every bit as cold and unforgiving as I remembered.
She’d noticed me long before I’d burst through the rooftop door like a lunatic. She didn’t look over. Neither of us said anything.
We simply watched the clouds drift across the sky.
After a while, Quynh broke the silence.
“I keep coming back here,” she murmured. “I tell myself I’m practicing… but honestly, I think I just come here to torture my back.”
I let out a quiet huff.
“Yeah. This place has that effect.”
She turned her head just enough to look at me.
“Very authentic Underworld experience. Maximum discomfort. Hades would approve.”
A weary laugh slipped from her before fading into the wind.
The silence settled over us again, but this time it wasn’t empty. It simply existed between two exhausted people who no longer felt the need to fill every pause.
“I’m such a failure, Loc,” she said at last.
Her voice was barely above a whisper.
“No matter what I do, it isn’t enough. If I’m chaotic, Dad says I’m childish—that I’m throwing away everything I could become. If I try to be serious…” She swallowed. “I end up betraying myself. I disappoint the Greek gods I love, the people who believed in me, and somehow I still fail everyone else.”
She stared at the sky without blinking.
“I kept changing because I thought that, eventually, I’d turn into someone people could finally be proud of.”
Her fingers tightened against the rough concrete.
“Instead… I hurt the one person who loved me unconditionally.”
It was the first time I’d ever heard Quynh speak without a single layer of irony.
No dramatic Greek quotations.
No mythology tangents.
No absent-minded detours where her brain wandered off to debate whether Hermes technically counted as a public nuisance.
Every word came straight from the place she’d spent years trying to hide.
Watching the faint tremor in her cheeks beneath those oversized glasses, I realized something.
The things she’d said to Minh that day hadn’t only wounded him.
They’d carved even deeper into herself.
I wanted to say something.
To tell her she wasn’t beyond fixing. To remind her that people make mistakes, that friendships survive worse.
Instead, I stayed quiet.
Some pain doesn’t need advice.
It needs someone willing to sit beside it.
After another long silence, she finally turned toward me.
“You’re really not going to tell me what I should do?”
A small smile found its way onto my face.
“I once dealt with my biggest life crisis by hiding in a public bathroom.”
She blinked.
“…Right.”
“So I’d be a questionable source of wisdom.”
That earned another quiet laugh.
I looked back at the sky.
“But as your officially appointed Hades, I’ve learned one thing.”
She raised an eyebrow.
“Freedom looks incredibly stupid.”
I gestured around us.
“We’re lying on a dirty rooftop pretending it’s the Underworld. My kingdom has water stains, the royal floor is concrete, and Cerberus is probably just a neighborhood dog stealing socks.”
She laughed through her nose.
“And somehow,” I continued, “I’ve never felt more like myself than when you dragged me up here and told me to rule all this.”
She shook her head.
“You’re terrible at comforting people.”
“I know.”
“I’m much better at participating in disasters.”
I turned toward her.
“You taught me that being ridiculous isn’t the opposite of being sincere. It’s what happens when you stop worrying about looking impressive.”
She stared at the sky for a long moment.
“…I miss that.”
“What?”
“Being ridiculous.”
Her voice softened.
“Minh and I used to spend entire afternoons inventing stupid stories because they made us happy. We never cared whether anyone understood them.”
I nodded.
“Then maybe Athena needs a vacation.”
She looked at me.
“Let someone else impress Zeus for a while. I think the girl who convinced a random office worker he was Hades had things figured out better than the one trying to become everyone’s perfect daughter.”
For the first time since we’d found her, Quynh didn’t answer.
She simply watched the clouds drifting above the rooftop where all of this had begun.
Then, very quietly, she sighted.
“…I don’t know if I can go back to being that girl.”
She searched the clouds as though the answer might be written somewhere above us.
“Everything just feels… heavier now.”
I didn’t answer.
We lay there beneath the same dull sky, saying nothing as the silence settled comfortably between us.
From the stairwell below came the faint sound of Quan whispering far louder than necessary, followed by Tram’s increasingly hopeless attempts to silence him.
Somehow, knowing they were still there made the rooftop feel a little less lonely.
After another minute, I spoke without looking at Quynh.
“Wanna play rock-paper-scissors?”
She blinked.
“…Now?”
“Best of seven.”
“Why?”
“The loser has to recreate the defeated Hades pose from your first photoshoot.”
She turned toward me with a look that hovered somewhere between disbelief and concern.
“…You’re serious?”
I shrugged.
“I have an excellent sense of timing.”
“You absolutely do not.”
“Then prove it.”
I sat up and held out my fist.
“Come on, Goddess of the Rice Cooker.”
“Unless Athena has become afraid of elementary school games.”
A laugh escaped before she could stop it.
“…You’re impossible.”
“I’ve heard that from professionals.”
She rolled her eyes and sat up opposite me.
“Fine.”
“Prepare to lose, Lord of the Discount Underworld.”
The first few rounds were slow.
Quynh hesitated before every throw, as if she’d forgotten how to play something without worrying about the outcome.
Then she started winning.
Her shoulders relaxed.
She leaned forward.
She groaned dramatically whenever she lost, accused me of “weaponized luck,” and celebrated every victory with far more confidence than the game deserved.
For the first time all day, she wasn’t carrying the weight of expectations.
She was simply trying to beat me at something utterly meaningless.
It suited her.
The seventh round arrived.
“Ready?” she asked.
“Always.”
“Rock.”
“Paper.”
“Scissors!”
She threw rock.
I threw scissors.
“Yes!”
She punched the air in triumph.
“I finally—”
“Did you?”
She froze.
“…What?”
I pointed downward.
“Look again, young Athena.”
Still celebrating, she’d completely missed my left hand quietly unfolding into paper.
Her victory evaporated.
“…Hey.”
She stared at both of my hands, then at me, as if reality itself had betrayed her.
“You absolute fraud. You shameless goblin. You two-handed evolutionary mistake.”
She jabbed an accusing finger so close to my face it nearly touched my nose.
“Ἀπατεώνας! Trickster! Heretic! Dishonorable raccoon! You’d cheat your own reflection if it meant winning!”
The insults came faster and faster, firing out of her mouth like an angry machine gun before either language could keep up with the other.
For a second, she’d once again become the same girl who argued with kids for a starry lantern.
“That’s not how rock-paper-scissors works! You don’t just invent a second hand halfway through! There are rules! Civilizations are built on rules!”
I smiled without the slightest trace of guilt.
I wiggled the second hand.
“It’s my game.”
“Why should I play by someone else’s rules?”
She opened her mouth to argue.
Then, just as quickly, she stopped.
Something in her expression shifted.
The joke had wandered somewhere neither of us had intended it to go.
I lowered both hands.
“If someone invents rules that only let them win…” I shrugged. “…why should I spend my whole life trying to become better at losing?”
She didn’t answer.
“So I’d rather invent my own stupid rules.”
I smiled faintly.
“They’re unfair. They make absolutely no sense. But at least they’re mine.”
The evening breeze wandered across the rooftop, carrying away the last echoes of our ridiculous argument.
I leaned against the railing and looked back at the sky.
“I think that’s a better definition of freedom than spending every day trying to earn permission to be yourself.”
Silence settled between us.
When I glanced over, Quynh wasn’t looking at the game anymore.
She was looking at me.
There was something in her eyes that I couldn’t quite name.
It wasn’t surprise.
It wasn’t admiration, either.
It was softer than that—an expression that seemed less like a reaction to what I’d just said and more like the quiet recognition of someone hearing a familiar truth from the one person she’d secretly hoped would understand.
Her smile appeared almost imperceptibly.
Not because I’d solved anything.
Not because the problems waiting downstairs had vanished.
But because, for the first time in days, someone had reminded her that the rules she was so afraid of breaking had never been hers to obey in the first place.
At the time, I thought she was smiling at my philosophy.
Looking back, I think it might have been something else entirely.
~~~•••~~~
Quynh stayed quiet for a long moment.
Then something shifted behind her eyes.
She pushed herself to her feet and walked to the edge of the rooftop. The evening breeze tugged gently at her hair as she looked across the river, the answer settling into place before she spoke.
“…I need to talk to Minh.”
Her voice was calm now.
“Right now.”
She turned toward the stairwell.
“Tram. Quan. You can come out now.”
A brief silence.
Then the stairwell door exploded open.
Quan launched himself out with all the restraint of a golden retriever who’d been told to stay for twenty minutes.
“QUYNH!”
He skidded to a stop so abruptly he nearly fell over trying to remember he was supposed to act normal.
“I mean—”
He cleared his throat, folded his arms, and attempted what he probably imagined was a composed smile.
“…Oh. Hi.”
It lasted less than half a second.
“I knew you were okay! Well—not knew knew. More like ninety-three percent statistically confident. The other seven percent was catastrophic Greek tragedy, so I packed emergency snacks, a first-aid kit, three bottles of water, and your mythology flashcards because stress reduces memory retention by approximately—”
He stopped himself, blinking.
“…I hope that you’re okay.”
Quynh was clearly moved by his enthusiasm.
“Thank you, Quan.” Gently, she said.
Quan, of course, was melting with happiness like a golden-retriever being rewarded with cakes.
From behind him, Tram walked onto the rooftop wearing the kind of smile reserved for people who had witnessed this exact disaster many, many times before.
For the first time in days, the four of us were standing together again.
Quan was practically glowing.
Tram looked quietly relieved.
And somewhere beneath all the ridiculousness, I felt a weight lift from my chest.
It lasted exactly four seconds.
Then Tram’s smile faded.
“Quynh… there’s something you need to know.”
The air changed.
“While you were gone, Minh’s been selling his inventions. Most of them.”
She hesitated.
“And… he’s accepted a ‘proper’ job under your dad’s company.”
Silence settled over the rooftop.
No one had to explain what that meant.
Minh was trading away the part of himself that made him Minh—his impossible ideas, his beautiful chaos, his freedom—because he thought it was the only way to protect Quynh from her father’s control.
The color drained from Quynh’s face.
Her hands tightened into fists.
She didn’t cry.
Not yet.
But the fire in her eyes burned brighter than ever.
For the next ten minutes, we held what was probably the least qualified rescue meeting in modern history.
“So we spam-call him until he answers,” I suggested.
Tram pulled out her phone.
“I’ve already tried that. He just said ‘business’ and hung off.”
Quan raised a finger.
“Maybe he was only avoiding us. I’ll disguise my voice.”
“You’ve tried that one, too,” Tram said.
“I was convincing. It would surely work again.”
“You introduced yourself as ‘Definitely Not Quan.’”
“…That was a tactical error.”
Quynh stared at the concrete floor, thinking.
“What about his apartment?”
“He moved out yesterday,” Tram replied quietly. “No forwarding address.”
“The workshop?”
“Gone.”
“The banh mi stall he practically paid rent to?”
“They haven’t seen him in two days.”
Every suggestion collapsed almost as soon as it was spoken.
It was as if Minh had erased himself from the city.
Quan groaned dramatically and flopped backward onto the rooftop.
“He’s become Batman.”
“Worse,” I said.
“Responsible Batman.”
Quan shuddered.
“Ew.”
Silence settled over us again.
Quynh stood at the railing, absentmindedly tracing circles against the cold metal with her thumb.
“He wouldn’t disappear without leaving one loose thread…”
She frowned.
“…would he?”
Nobody answered.
Then her eyes suddenly widened.
“Oh.”
She turned around so quickly even Quan sat up.
“I know how to make him come.”
Three confused faces looked back at her.
“He won’t answer our calls,” she said. “He won’t answer if he thinks we’re trying to convince him.”
A slow smile spread across her face.
“But Minh has one fatal weakness.”
Quan tilted his head.
“…Greek mythology?”
“No.”
She smiled a little wider.
“Free money.”
I blinked.
“…That’s…”
“…completely true,” Tram finished.
Quynh nodded.
“He’s sold his soul to capitalism in his own weird way. If someone says they owe him money, he’ll show up even if he’s in another district.”
Quan looked genuinely offended.
“I would’ve guessed free food.”
“That’s his second weakness.”
Five minutes later, we were standing beneath the old bridge by the river.
A weathered homeless man sat on a folded blanket beside a shopping cart overflowing with empty bottles.
Quynh crouched beside him and quietly explained the plan.
He listened without interrupting. When she finished, he glanced at the folded bills she’d slipped into his hand before looking over the five of us.
“…Young love gets stranger every year.”
Quynh rubbed the back of her neck.
“It’s… complicated.”
He chuckled.
“Ain’t it always?”
She handed him a slip of paper with a phone number.
“Just read exactly what’s written.”
The old man nodded and pressed the call button.
The phone rang twice.
A click.
“Yeah?”
Minh.
All four of us instinctively leaned in.
The old man didn’t hesitate.
“Kid, you still the fellow who used to solve people’s problems?”
A brief silence.
“…Who’s asking?”
“Doesn’t matter.”
His voice carried the easy confidence of someone who’d spent a lifetime talking to strangers.
“I found your number in an old notebook. Figured it was about time I paid back what I owed.”
Another pause.
“…I helped you?”
“Course you did.”
The old man sounded almost offended that Minh would question it.
“You helped me out a while back. Never got around to paying you. Been carrying that around longer than I should’ve.”
Silence stretched across the line.
Then Minh asked, more carefully this time,
“…You meant the little business near the river?”
“That’s the one.”
Another pause.
“…It’s closed.”
His voice had grown quieter.
“For good.”
The words settled over us like cold rain.
So it was true.
The problem-solving business was gone.
The little corner beneath the bridge where complete strangers brought impossible problems to the city’s most impossible person had simply… vanished.
The old man gazed across the river.
“That’s a shame.”
His voice softened.
“I thought I’d finally found a place where people still fixed things.”
“..Listen, kid.” He held the phone closer to his mouth, voice was impressively full of emotions. “No matter what happened, your legacy will not be forgotten by Saigon’s folks. And we would like to pay back what you deserved.”
For a long moment, there was only the faint hiss of traffic overhead.
Then Minh spoke.
“…How much did I help you?”
The old man smiled to himself.
“Enough that I could never forget.”
Silence.
This time, instead of answering, we heard the scrape of a chair.
“…Excuse me.”
His voice became muffled as he covered the receiver.
“Something just came up.”
Another voice answered from farther away, too faint for us to understand.
“It’ll only take fifteen minutes.”
A pause.
“…Yes, sir.”
Another pause.
“…Thank you.”
A few seconds later, he returned to the call.
“I can be there in twenty.”
“I’ll be waiting under the bridge.”
As the call ended, the old homeless man returned our phone before giving us a supportive thump-up and laying back on his blanket.
For a moment, none of us moved.
Then Quan slowly turned toward Quynh, his expression caught somewhere between admiration and concern.
“…You just weaponized capitalism.”
Quynh shrugged.
“I know my brother.”
A beat passed before she added, almost under her breath,
“…Maybe a little too well.”
~~~•••~~~
Twenty-three minutes later, the rumble of a motorcycle echoed beneath the bridge.
A black bike rolled to a stop along the riverside path.
For a heartbeat, none of us recognized the rider.
Then he removed his helmet.
“Minh,” Quynh whispered.
He looked…
Wrong.
Not hurt.
Not tired.
Just… fundamentally wrong.
His hair was neatly combed. A crisp white shirt disappeared beneath a perfectly tailored charcoal suit, and the tie sat so straight it looked measured with a ruler.
It was as if someone had taken the city’s most sleep-deprived inventor and run him through a corporate rebranding machine.
Beside me, Quan stared in horror.
“…He looks like the kind of person who says, ‘Per my previous email.’”
Minh adjusted the cuffs of his suit as he strolled across the grass, searching for the old man.
Then he stepped around a fresh pile of cat poop.
Paused.
Looked around to make sure no one was watching.
And casually kicked it into the bushes with his polished dress shoe.
I exhaled.
Good.
The old Minh wasn’t completely dead.
He scanned the bridge one last time before calling out,
“Hey! Retired Problem-Solver Minh here! Where’s my money?”
That was our cue.
“MINHHHHH!”
The four of us exploded from behind the concrete pillar.
Quan reached him first, launching himself into a hug with all the subtlety of a guided missile. I caught Minh before both of them toppled over, only for Tram to collide into us a split second later despite looking deeply offended that she was participating.
The combined impact sent the entire pile stumbling to the river’s edge.
“What—”
Minh somehow stayed on his feet.
“What is wrong with all of you?”
Quan refused to let go.
“You disappeared!”
“I got a job.”
“You disappeared professionally!”
“…That’s generally how jobs work.”
Quan grabbed Minh by the lapels and stared at the tie with genuine despair.
“They made you wear one.”
“I work in an office.”
“They’ve already started replacing your organs.”
“I don’t think that’s how employment works.”
“They’ve replaced your soul!”
“They replaced my dress code.”
By the time we finally untangled ourselves, Minh’s immaculate suit looked as though it had survived a minor natural disaster.
He looked down at the wrinkles, sighed, and rubbed his forehead.
“…My manager is going to kill me.”
The laughter gradually faded.
Minh was still trying to smooth the wrinkles from his suit when he noticed someone standing a few steps away.
Quynh.
She’d finally stepped out from behind the bridge pillar.
For a long moment, neither of them moved.
The river flowed quietly beneath the bridge.
“…You look awful,” Quynh said at last.
Minh looked down at himself.
“I’ve been tackled by four people.”
“Not that.” She gestured at the suit. “That.”
He sighed.
“I know.”
“The tie makes you look like you’re about to reject my vacation request.”
A smile tugged at the corner of Minh’s mouth.
“I don’t even have employees.”
“You look like you wish you did.”
Even Tram looked away to hide a smile.
The joke lingered for a moment before disappearing with the breeze.
Quynh’s expression slowly turned serious.
“…Why?”
Minh already knew what she meant.
“You spent years telling me not to become someone else just because Dad wanted me to. You criticized my project because I tried turning it into a polished essay.”
Her eyes searched his face.
“So why did you submit to him?”
Silence.
Minh loosened his tie, more out of habit than discomfort.
“I wanted him to stop chasing you.”
Quynh frowned.
“What?”
“He couldn’t spend every day trying to change both of us.”
His gaze drifted toward the river.
“So I figured… if one of us became the child he wanted…”
He looked down at the neat suit.
“…maybe he’d leave the other one alone.”
No one spoke.
Even Quan stayed unusually still.
“I didn’t care if he argued with me,” Minh continued quietly. “I just didn’t want him taking away…” He glanced back at Quynh. “…this.”
He gestured vaguely toward her.
Toward the oversized glasses.
Toward the band-tee covered in tiny Greek pins.
Toward the wonderfully impossible person she’d always been.
“You’ve always been…” He smiled faintly. “…beautifully chaotic.”
Quynh lowered her head.
“I wanted you to stay that way.”
The words settled between them.
Behind me, I heard Quan quietly sniff once.
Tram wordlessly handed him a tissue without taking her eyes off the siblings.
He accepted it with surprising dignity.
Quynh took a slow step forward.
“You idiot.”
“I know.”
“You never even asked me.”
“I know.”
“You don’t get to decide my life for me.”
“I know.”
Each answer came softer than the last.
She looked at him for another second.
Then she closed the distance and wrapped both arms around him.
Minh froze.
Only for a heartbeat.
Then, almost cautiously—as though he were afraid she’d disappear if he moved too quickly—he returned the embrace.
“I just wanted…” His voice was barely audible against her shoulder. “…for you to have one chance to live the way you always have.”
Quynh didn’t answer.
“I wanted you to make the project that made you happy. Not the one that made Dad happy.”
I saw her shoulders tremble.
Slowly, she buried her face deeper into the front of his suit, hiding behind the neatly pressed fabric she’d mocked only moments earlier.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “For what I said in the exhibition hall.”
Her voice cracked.
“You’re not a failure.”
A long pause.
“You never were.”
Minh didn’t respond.
He simply rested a hand against her back, giving it an awkward, gentle pat, like someone who had spent so long carrying other people’s burdens that he’d forgotten how to comfort his own family.
The river drifted quietly beneath the bridge.
Then he spoke again.
“I’ll be there.”
Quynh looked up.
“At the festival.”
He reached up and straightened the tie she’d spent teasing him about. It lasted all of two seconds before it slipped crooked again.
“No matter which version you choose.”
“The polished one.”
“The messy one.”
“The one where everything goes completely wrong.”
A faint smile found its way into his eyes.
“I don’t care.”
“I just want to see the one that’s yours.”
Quynh didn’t answer.
She only held him tighter.
From where I stood, none of us said a word.
The wind carried the scent of the river beneath the bridge, and somewhere upstream a boat horn echoed across the water before fading into the evening.
Beside me, Quan had gone unusually quiet.
Even Tram lowered her gaze.
It struck me then that, for all the impossible problems Minh had solved over the years, this was the first one he couldn’t fix with a clever invention, a ridiculous plan, or a sleepless night.
All he could do was stand there and hold his little sister.
For once, that was enough.
