It was so emotional that she fainted; my mother-in-law (my grandmother) scolded her for fainting; she fainted while attending a funeral; she fainted while passing by an accident where someone died; even once during a meal, when Ms. Lien, the neighbor, turned the dish of blood pudding upside down, it made her drop her bag on the floor. My uncle said that these are people who believe in spiritual entities, easily “invaded” by things that are “not human”. I don’t want to argue about this, so I’ll refrain from explaining too much. Those who believe will believe, and those who don’t can just consider it an entertaining story to satisfy their curiosity.
My mom has had several near-death experiences, once even being pushed into the pond in front of our house, and my dad had a hard time pulling her out by her hair. My mom also said she often dreams of being pulled into a deserted area, surrounded by horse-headed bull-faced creatures that force her to sit on a chair set in the middle, but each time she struggles and wakes up. Especially every time she “is not herself”, my mom tends to run straight to the graveyard.
Strangely, near my house, there are two graveyards: one is a “real” graveyard built at the west end of the village, about a 10-minute walk away; the other is a small piece of farmland where they grow sweet potatoes and cassava, but there are several cement graves scattered haphazardly, and my mom always goes only to the “real” graveyard.
She moves quickly, and suddenly she’s gone; I have to run to the gate, squinting, and if I see a dark shadow slowly heading toward the graveyard, I know right away it’s my mom. Usually, it’s my grandmother or my dad—if he happens to be on leave (my dad is a soldier)—who will run after her and pull her back, and of course, my mom will not remember why she went there. During that time, I was just over ten years old, silently witnessing everything and never intervening in these matters. There was only one exception.
————
That year I was in 10th grade. I was heavily addicted to gaming, so much so that I could skip class at any time to head to Ms. Nhung’s internet cafe about 500 meters from the school gate, maybe to play a few rounds of Au, or temporarily log into my Kiếm Thế account and then go… to Zing Me to harvest my farm. I had no friends in class; it wasn’t that I was isolated or ostracized, but I was the only one in an A9 class full of English and Literature team members who was more into gaming than studying. I still took exams, still won awards, and still skipped school to play games regularly. Many times I was caught by the red star association but only received a few warnings in front of the class—something that both I and my classmates didn’t care much about.
My school had a bike shed, but because I often arrived late, I switched to parking my bike at the internet cafe, so after the first period, I would leave it there and go to school, then come back to get it after class.
One December afternoon, I paid for my time on the computer and stepped out, and boom, my bike was gone. After fumbling for a while to make sure my bike had indeed vanished, I casually walked home.
I stood with my back against the door of my house, the sky beginning to grow dim, my voice neither happy nor sad:
– My bike is gone, heh heh.
My mom was holding my little brother, her face changing color, but she just sighed and looked away. I put my bag down and changed my clothes. Then, I saw her calling someone and asking out loud:
– What subject did you have today? What time did you lose your bike?
– Well… I just finished extra Literature class with the homeroom teacher, so probably around… 7 PM?
“Okay, Nga, she said around 7 PM, can you see if you can figure out who took it?”
Just hearing that was enough for me to know that this fourth bike loss would cause a storm. Nga is my cousin, the daughter of my uncle, and simply put, she is a Medium. Perhaps my mom thought that somehow she could predict what happened to my bike if the time and place I provided were correct.
The problem lies in the word “if”. The problem is I lost it in the afternoon.
And the problem is, I didn’t go to school.
I rinsed my face with water, the winter fog thickening but my back was already sweating. I wasn’t afraid of losing my bike, I wasn’t afraid of my mom finding out I was lying, but people often say that spiritual matters should not be taken lightly.
– Come in here, I tell you!
It’s coming.
“Did you go to school today?”
After years of witnessing my cousin going into a trance, my mom being “possessed”, or the story of my third brother who hadn’t been born yet but could make my grandmother vomit because she scolded my mom, I knew that tonight’s dinner would be an opportunity I wouldn’t get to eat.
“No”
She sat down on the bed, her face showing no real surprise. She crossed her left leg, sighed for a moment, then crossed her right leg, gently turned, and lay down. I stood there, leaning against the desk by the bed, feeling a cold breeze run down my spine.
Creak… creak. That familiar sound echoed again, causing beads of sweat on my forehead to drop onto the floor. She opened her eyes wide, grinding her teeth, as if her teeth were two metal pieces grinding against each other continuously, my one-year-old brother woke up, crying loudly, making the whole house even scarier. While my mind was bombarded by thousands of different thoughts, she sat upright on the bed, still grinding her teeth, and I suddenly realized that in this moment, there was only one thing I could do, well, no, it was something I had to do. If not, she would run back to the graveyard.
I jumped on the bed and hugged her tightly, my ten fingers digging into her shoulders, holding her down while repeatedly shouting: “I’m sorry, I lost my bike at Ms. Nhung’s internet cafe, I didn’t go to school today. I didn’t register for any extra classes, all those times I came home late were spent playing games at the internet cafe waiting for class to end. Mom! Mom!”.
I was panting, sweat dripping down onto her hair. I shouted as if I was about to cry, my voice breaking, mostly out of fear, fear that perhaps in just a few seconds, the person sitting there grinding her teeth in front of me would no longer be my mom, fear that if she ran to the graveyard again, I wouldn’t have the courage to follow. There were times I saw my dad slap my mom several times, and her face remained stiff until my grandmother (who was still alive at that time) had to run out and grab a few branches to hit her on the shoulders, back, and on the floor where my mom sat, before she regained her senses. And I certainly didn’t have the guts to do that.
Fortunately, I saw her facial muscles relax, her muscular legs began to soften, she squatted down, the creaking sound diminished until it stopped, my brother only managed to sniffle a few times before looking around in confusion.
“Ringing… ringing…” The sound of an old Nokia phone rang like a lifeline in the suffocating atmosphere. I saw her sigh, and when the ring reached the third round, she turned around: “Let me go”.
“Hello, is this the teacher?”
It felt like all the air compressed in my chest was pushed out, and I let out a sigh of relief, feeling cold sweat trickle down my neck, down my back, and I slowly stepped down from the bed.
It’s gone.
I felt a bit relieved and looked up at her; her icy complexion was gone, her lips trembled, sitting huddled in the early winter chill, her right hand holding the phone, her left hand cold, resting between her thighs. The creaking sound and the grumbling like an old cassette player were gone, her voice was weak like a whisper:
“I’m sad because I didn’t expect him to lie to me…”
Hearing that, my tears began to flow. No longer tears of fear.
————-
It’s not that I lost my fourth bike and still casually “reported” to my mom as if it were a natural occurrence. It’s not that I could sit here writing these lines knowing many people would laugh at every word and call it nonsense. Yet that doesn’t matter; what matters is that after that moment, I decided to say goodbye to gaming and Ms. Nhung’s old, shabby internet cafe.
My mom fell asleep. I turned on the desk lamp, gently angled it to the right to avoid blinding her, and quietly listened to her steady breathing for a while before I felt at ease enough to put down my pen.
“I’m sorry, teacher.”
Yes, I wrote a letter to my homeroom teacher, filling both sides of the paper just to apologize and promise not to “go downhill” like this again. Why did I choose to write a letter? To live up to the title of a “Literature team student” I carried then? No, it was simply that I was too embarrassed to say the words of apology directly. Even now, I still have to admit that it was the first and only time I felt humiliated and ashamed (and scared) to be a gaming addict.
I could tell you many other stories, about my love for a “virtual husband” 80 km away and the haunting breakup line “I’m bored with you”, about the days sitting with my feet on the table, fingers gliding over my 4K Del like the wind, about the guy Marin I’ve recently admired, or simply tell the story of how later, I got back into gaming and became a mobile game operations specialist, or what happened to my mom after that night… But as you can see, words are limited, I’ve filtered a lot and have already reached the 2061st word, so perhaps we should stop here.
Among many confessions about life, about gaming, about the idols of other talented writers, let’s consider this a refreshing change, something novel, or funny.
Oh, I’m a girl.