Kien Quoc's apartment in San Jose was silent, save for the soft whistle of the wind outside and the steady clack of keys beneath his fingers.
The pale blue glow from the laptop screen cast a faint light across his face, where fatigue clung to every line—yet beneath it, a quiet determination remained.
On the screen, a long, carefully written email had just been completed.
All that remained was one final click.
With a soft click, the message flew into the digital void.
Today marked the anniversary of his father's passing.
It should have been a day of gathering, of honoring memories and sharing stories—a moment for family to come together and remember.
But those moments now existed only in the past, preserved in nostalgia.
His siblings were scattered across the country—one in New York, the other tied up with work in Seattle.
No one had been able to make the trip back.
"Brother, we're too busy. We can't come home," the youngest had said over the phone just days ago, his voice thick with guilt.
"We'll visit you at the end of the year."
Kien Quoc had answered with a single word.
"Yes."
His reply was brief, carefully measured—like a stone placed over a wound too old to bleed.
But behind it, the sadness was unmistakable.
In this foreign land, there seemed to be no space left for quiet moments of closeness.
Time, work, obligations—they consumed everything, pushing the memory of his father further into the recesses of his life.
But not today.
Tonight, on New Year's Eve, Kien Quoc had chosen to do something different.
He had decided to pour his heart and mind into resolving the one thing his father had left behind—an unanswered question, an unfinished story.
It had been a year since Nguyen Thanh Hoa, his father, took his final breath in a hospital bed.
In those last days, he spoke often—his voice weakened, but urgent.
Stories tumbled out in fragments:
His perilous journeys across the ocean following his re-education.
Faded recollections of youth.
Simple advice wrapped in regret.
Each memory was tinged with something deeper—an unshakable sense of guilt.
And Kien Quoc, listening quietly, had begun to understand:
His father's past was not just history.
It was a legacy waiting to be uncovered.
And tonight, it would begin.
Before coming to America, Mr. Hoa, Kien Quoc's father, had endured a series of harrowing journeys—each one a desperate gamble between life and death, fueled by pain and the hope for a better future.
The first attempt came in 1978.
After weeks of secret preparation, he and several relatives scraped together what little they had to pay a border-crossing broker.
In the dead of night, they set off from a beach in Ben Tre, boarding an old wooden fishing boat under a shroud of darkness and fragile hope.
At first, spirits were high.
But within days, the boat broke down in open waters.
Then, the storm struck—sudden and merciless.
Fierce winds and towering waves capsized the vessel, plunging everyone into chaos and terror.
They were miraculously rescued by a nearby fishing boat—only to be handed over to the authorities shortly after.
Mr. Hoa was taken into custody, and what followed were days of merciless interrogation.
And when he was finally released, he returned home with nothing—only the bitter taste of failure and the loss of everything they had risked.
But he was not defeated.
In 1979, he tried again—this time with his cousin and a group of twenty.
They boarded a larger vessel, determined to reach Thailand and freedom.
But the sea held new horrors.
Mid-journey, Thai pirates descended upon them.
They looted everything—beating those who resisted and committing unspeakable acts against the women, right before the helpless eyes of their companions.
Before departing, the pirates sabotaged the boat's engine, leaving them stranded in the middle of the ocean.
Their water ran out.
Their food disappeared.
The elderly collapsed, children grew silent with hunger.
And then, his cousin—his closest companion—died from exhaustion.
They had no choice but to commit his body to the sea, wrapped in grief and silence.
Days later, a United Nations rescue ship spotted them and brought them to a refugee camp in Malaysia.
But even that sliver of hope was short-lived.
Mr. Hoa's request for resettlement was denied.
He was sent back to Vietnam—exhausted, emptied, but still holding onto something deeper than survival: an unbroken will.
In 1982, Mr. Hoa made the decision to try one final time.
This time, he joined a larger, more organized group, placing his faith in a carefully planned escape.
They departed from Ca Mau aboard a vessel built to carry fifty people.
But barely had they left shore when the Vietnamese navy began pursuit, forcing them to take shelter deep within the mangrove forests, where they hid for days—silent, exposed, and afraid.
When they finally reached open water, new challenges awaited.
Hunger gnawed at them. Water became scarce.
But fortune, at last, showed a glimmer of mercy: they avoided the pirates that had haunted so many previous journeys.
After more than two weeks at sea, battered by sun and salt and fear, they finally arrived at the Galang refugee camp in Indonesia.
For Mr. Hoa, it was a turning point—a fragile foothold in the long climb toward freedom.
He spent two years in the camp, living under harsh and uncertain conditions, clinging to a single hope: resettlement.
That hope was finally answered when the United States approved his application for permanent residency.
He was sent to California, where he began life anew—carrying with him not only the physical scars of his escape, but the invisible weight of trauma, memory, and sacrifice.
To Mr. Hoa, these stories were never told to glorify the past.
They were not just stories, but lessons, warnings—echoes of what it meant to endure.
They were a way to pass the torch forward—to help Kien Quoc understand that the life he now lived had been bought with immeasurable cost.
Those memories of escape became more than history; they became a guiding light.
A call to action.
A reason for Kien Quoc to seek his roots, to preserve the cultural and historical values his father had risked everything to protect.
"Live as someone who remembers the past with gratitude," Mr. Hoa had once told him.
"Everything we have now—every freedom, every breath of peace—is thanks to those who came before us. Family. Country. Sacrifice."
But even as the words echoed in his ears, Kien Quoc could sense something unspoken behind them—something unresolved.
As if, despite the miles crossed and the life rebuilt, a final truth had been left behind.
Just before he left, Mr. Hoa handed Kien Quoc a small, aged wooden box.
His hands trembled with age and weakness, but his eyes still held a fierce, unspoken light—as if trying to pour into that gaze all the words he could no longer say.
Inside the box, Kien Quoc found two treasures:
a Nguyen family genealogy, yellowed and brittle with time, and an old memoir, its cover worn and frayed, yet clearly preserved with great care.
"I have to go back to Vietnam," Mr. Hoa said softly.
His voice was faint, but steady with conviction.
"Our family… we have no recorded first ancestor.
Only one grave exists—the grave of our founding matriarch, Nguyen Thi Thanh Mai.
Her hometown was Simhapura.
But I never had enough time to find the truth.
Do it for me, son."
Kien Quoc didn't speak.
He simply nodded.
The weight of that request settled deeply in his heart, a quiet vow he knew he would carry.
His father then told him about the old memoir—an item he had kept since the war.
Back when Mr. Hoa was still a soldier in the Army of the Republic of Vietnam, he had found it in the torn backpack of a fallen liberation soldier after a brutal battle.
"I don't know why I kept it," he admitted.
"Maybe because it felt like something real—proof that this soldier had lived, that he had thoughts, hopes, a voice.
Years later, I realized I owed him something.
I owed him the return of that diary.
To his family.
To someone who remembers him."
Kien Quoc glanced back at the wooden box resting on the table.
Inside, the Nguyen family genealogy was meticulously recorded—generation after generation, names and dates carefully noted.
But at the very beginning, there was only silence.
One solitary name stood alone:
Nguyen Thi Thanh Mai
Beneath it, a single line:
"Hometown: Simhapura."
Simhapura.
The name sounded both distant and strangely familiar.
Curious, he began researching—and soon discovered that Simhapura was the ancient name for Tra Kieu, once the capital of the Champa Kingdom.
Why was the homeland of their ancestor tied to Champa?
And why was there no other information—no parents, no descendants recorded before her?
The questions echoed inside him, sharp and persistent, etching themselves into his thoughts and refusing to fade
He had to know.
Kien Quoc turned back to his laptop.
On the screen, the resignation email he had drafted—giving two months' notice—was ready.
It had taken him days to write.
This wasn't a decision made lightly.
He had a secure position at a prestigious tech company in Silicon Valley—a stable career, a future mapped out.
But some promises outlive even time—and his father's final wish was such a promise.
His hand hovered for a moment, trembling slightly.
Then he clicked "Send."
A wave of relief, mingled with anxiety, rose in Kien Quoc's chest.
Still, he felt a quiet happiness—because sometimes, risky decisions led to unexpected, even wonderful, outcomes.
In his dream, he saw a woman dressed in a white long dress, her mysterious eyes filled with untold stories.
"Go to Hoi An, Tra Kieu, and My Son Sanctuary," she said.
When he awoke, the image remained vividly imprinted in his mind—that face, exactly like the portrait his father had once painted.
A few days later, Kien Quoc and his girlfriend, Ariska Sari, boarded a flight back to Vietnam.
Sari, a journalist with a passion for Asian culture and history, had always supported his choices without hesitation.
"Simhapura is the ancient name of Tra Kieu, right?" Sari asked as they waited at the airport.
"That's right.
My father said my great-grandmother came from there.
But why is there only her grave and no record of my ancestor?" Quoc replied, his gaze distant.
"Maybe we'll find the answer," Sari said with a hopeful smile.
He leaned down to kiss her and thought back to the first time they met—a coincidence he had always believed was fate.
It was a cold, rainy night in San Jose.
While browsing eBay for Champa antiques, Kien Quoc stumbled upon a jade-glazed ceramic bowl—its origin listed as Tra Kieu.
Delicate hand-carved motifs adorned its surface with Sanskrit inscriptions circling the rim like a blessing..
Without hesitation, he joined the auction.
But another bidder had been eyeing the bowl with quiet intensity.
A bidder called SariScribe continued to raise the bid, pushing the auction late into the night.
By midnight, Kien Quoc had won—paying double the starting price.
The next morning, he received a message from SariScribe:
"Hi, I'm Sari from Bali, Indonesia—a journalist researching Southeast Asian history.
This bowl is very important to my work.
Would you be willing to sell it for a higher price?
If you're open to it, I'd love to chat more."
Kien Quoc hesitated.
The bowl reminded him of his father's memories of Tra Kieu.
But Sari's interest piqued his curiosity.
He replied:
"I understand this piece means a lot to you—but it also means a lot to me.
I'm not sure I can part with it, but if you'd like, we can meet and talk about it."
A few days later, they met at a small café in San Francisco.
The moment Sari walked in, he recognized her—long black hair, bright eyes, and a warm, confident smile.
Simple in style, but striking in presence.
"You're Kien Quoc, right?" she asked, her voice marked by a gentle Southeast Asian accent.
"That's right. And you're Sari?" he said, shaking her hand with a smile.
Their conversation began with the antique bowl—but quickly moved to deeper topics.
Sari was passionate about Champa history, devoting her research to the study of a once-brilliant kingdom now largely forgotten.
As she spoke, Kien Quoc felt an unexpected connection.
He told her about his father, the Nguyen family, and the instruction to find Simhapura.
They stayed in touch.
Though Kien Quoc chose not to part with the bowl, he invited Sari to his home to study it.
Through these meetings, they discovered a bond—not only in shared curiosity, but in purpose.
Kien Quoc wanted to preserve his ancestral heritage.
Sari wanted to share Southeast Asian culture with the world—partly because her Balinese roots held striking similarities to Champa.
One afternoon, as they studied temple ruins together, Sari stared into the distance, her eyes thoughtful.
"It's sad," she said, "to think a civilization so grand could be forgotten.
Can you imagine? These ancient bricks, stacked without mortar, still stand tall after centuries.
I wish I could bring their stories to more people."
Kien Quoc was drawn to her passion; she admired his sincerity and quiet strength.
Their relationship deepened through long conversations, museum visits, and shared dreams.
When Kien Quoc decided to return to Vietnam to fulfill his father's last wish, he didn't hesitate to ask Sari to join him.
"Do you want to come with me?" he asked.
"I think you'll like what we'll find in Simhapura."
Sari smiled.
"Of course. It'll be a wonderful journey."
This journey wasn't just a search for answers within the Nguyen family tree—it was a chance for both of them to explore a cultural mystery that had connected them from the start.
As the plane touched down, Kien Quoc understood:
He wasn't just fulfilling his father's final wish.
He was beginning to find himself.