If there is one person in this world I absolutely cannot bow my head and admit defeat to, it has to be Trinh Canh Ngon.
Not because I hate him.
At least, throughout the first eighteen years of my life, I naively believed I didn't. I simply felt that if the name Ha Minh Chau ever appeared beneath the name Trinh Canh Ngon on any ranking—even if it was only one line lower—my self-respect would hurt as though someone had stomped straight on it with a pair of mud-caked boots.
The origin of this strange “illness” goes all the way back to when I was six.
That day, our kindergarten teacher organized a blanket-folding competition. In two minutes and seventeen seconds, I painstakingly transformed my tiny quilt into a neat square, with four perfectly straight edges and two sharp corners meeting in orderly alignment. By the strict standards of a six-year-old, I judged my work to be nearly flawless. I planted both hands on my hips and stood proudly beside the bed, already preparing my most modest expression to receive the coming shower of praise.
Then Trinh Canh Ngon in the bed beside mine finished his portion in one minute and fifty-eight seconds.
That still wasn't the greatest tragedy.
The tragedy was that after folding his blanket, he even “enthusiastically” walked over to my bed, bent down to inspect mine, and gently smoothed the crease in one corner with his finger.
“Minh Chau.”
I turned toward him, chin raised. “What?”
“This corner is crooked.”
I looked at the corner of the blanket. I looked at Trinh Canh Ngon. Then I looked at the corner of the blanket again.
Three seconds later, I burst into sobs.
That was the first time in my life I understood what it felt like to be professionally wounded.
From that day on, the flames of war between Trinh Canh Ngon and me officially ignited. In first grade, we fought over every single good-grade sticker. In third grade, we racked our brains competing in mental-math competitions. In fifth grade, we battled to claim the top spot on the ranking. Once we reached middle school, we joined the math academic competition team hand in hand, then continued competing to see who could finish a problem set first.
By the time we entered high school, the scale of the war had been upgraded across the board: final grades, mock exams, scholarships, competition teams, and even science innovation competitions. Once, the two of us even sat around competing to see who could memorize more digits after the decimal point of pi.
I stopped at the 207th digit. Trinh Canh Ngon calmly continued all the way to the 213th. That night, I stayed awake all night.
Only much later did I bitterly realize that my brilliant youth had been wasted in an incredibly inefficient way. Even so, on the morning the college entrance exam scores were announced, I obediently sat staring at my computer screen from six thirty.
The official results portal opened at eight. I knew that. My mother knew that. My father knew that. Even the calico cat that usually sprawled on the windowsill probably knew that. But I still sat there, motionless as a statue.
My mother passed my bedroom door for the third time and finally couldn't take it anymore. “If you keep staring at that screen all morning, are your scores going to magically go up?”
I didn't turn around. “Maybe, Mom.”
She stopped. “How?”
“Psychological pressure.”
She was silent for two seconds, then sighed. “I don't think the Department of Education's server is scared of you.”
I spun my chair around and looked at her with profound solemnity. “Mom.”
“Yeah?”
“Your daughter is standing before an extremely serious moment in her life.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“Then could you give me a little peace and quiet?”
“Of course.”
My mother turned and walked away with exemplary cooperation. I had just let out a breath of relief when her voice floated in from the hallway: “I’ll go ask Uncle Trinh whether Canh Ngon is as nervous as you are.”
I shot up from my chair as if someone had poked me in the butt. “Mom!”
Her bright laughter echoed back.
The Trinh family lived directly across from mine, with the two wooden doors less than ten feet apart. My mother and Uncle Trinh had been best friends since the days when they still wore wispy bangs. At first, our fathers were merely husbands dragged along to eat barbecue together. Somehow, over time, they became inseparable buddies. As a result, Trinh Canh Ngon and I had been naturally bound together as childhood sweethearts from the moment we were still lying on our backs in our cribs.
I once asked my mother seriously, “When you bought the house across from Uncle Trinh, didn’t you consider that our kids might grow up to hate each other?”
She looked at me in utter confusion. “You two hate each other?”
I was speechless and fell silent.
She thought for a while, then clicked her tongue. “I thought you two were really close.”
From that day on, I learned a painful truth: In parents’ eyes, as long as two children haven’t beaten each other badly enough to require a call to emergency services, they can both be filed under “extremely harmonious relationship.”
Seven fifty-nine.
I entered my registration number for the seventeenth time, my index finger hovering over the Enter key. The second hand jumped to twelve. I pressed down hard.
A small circle immediately appeared on the screen, spinning furiously. One second. Two seconds. Three...
The screen went completely white.
I held my breath. The next moment, a glaring red line of text slammed into my eyes: System overloaded. Please try again later.
I stared at it. It shamelessly stared back.
I took a deep breath and shouted, “Dad!”
My father hurried in from the living room. “What’s wrong? Are the scores out?”
“I think we need to upgrade our internet plan immediately.”
Dad glanced at the screen, then at his daughter, who was practically on fire. “Calm down.”
“I can’t calm down! Months of studying, thousands of practice papers, so many nights staying up past one in the morning... And now my fate is hanging from this spinning circle? How am I supposed to calm down?”
Dad pressed his lips tightly together. I knew he was trying so hard not to laugh that his whole face had twisted. “Try refreshing with F5.”
I pressed F5. Error. A second time. Error. A third time. Still error.
On the sixth try, the results page finally deigned to appear. My name came first: HA MINH CHAU.
Next came the scores for each subject. My math score was nearly perfect. Physics and chemistry both surpassed my best mock-exam scores. The rest fell neatly within my predictions. I started adding up the total. Once. Twice. On the third time, I carefully opened the calculator app on my phone and added it again.
Dad, sitting beside me, finally couldn't hold back. “Don’t you trust your mental arithmetic?”
“I do.”
“Then why add it three times?”
I turned to him, answering with profound gravity. “I don’t trust life.”
Dad burst out laughing.
I looked at the total displayed proudly on the screen. It was incredibly high. Higher than I had ever dared dream of in even my wildest fantasies.
Strangely, I had imagined this moment countless times before. I thought I would leap out of my chair, howl, run around the house, or at the very least rush across the street and bang on the opposite door to interrogate that annoying guy about his score. I remembered the mornings when my alarm went off while it was still pitch-black outside, the practice papers packed with ink, the foolish nights I sat there until dawn over a single question I had gotten wrong... It turned out that all that sweat and all those tears really would receive a complete answer one day.
My chest burned, and the bridge of my nose began to sting.
Mom rushed in. “How much? What did you get?”
I read the score aloud. Mom froze. Dad froze. I sat there frozen too.
Three seconds later, Mom let out a piercing scream. It was so loud that the calico cat on the windowsill startled and shot down to the floor. She rushed over and threw her arms around me, squeezing tight. “Oh my God! I knew it! My daughter is amazing!”
“Mom... you’re suffocating me... You really knew?” I wheezed in her arms.
“Of course I did!”
“Then who was the one telling me last night not to get my hopes up too high in case I fell and got hurt?”
“That was an adult psychological strategy!”
Before I could roll my eyes and fire back, the doorbell rang repeatedly. I didn’t need to guess who it was. Mom dashed out to open the door.
“Did you get the scores, sister?” Uncle Trinh’s excited voice rang out.
“We did! How about your house?”
“We got them, we got them!”
The two mothers immediately switched into information-exchange mode at the speed of light. I slowly walked to the doorway.
Trinh Canh Ngon was leaning against the doorframe of his house. He wore a plain white T-shirt and gray athletic pants, his hair naturally tousled, one hand casually holding a cup of water. His composure was so irritating that it made me want to throw a slipper straight at his face.
I crossed my arms and lifted my chin. “Did you check yours?”
“I did.”
“How much?”
“Not telling.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Trinh Canh Ngon.”
He leisurely took a sip of water. “Ha Minh Chau.”
“Don’t imitate my voice.”
“Who’s imitating you?”
I held out my hand. “Let me see your score.”
The corner of Canh Ngon’s mouth curved into a sly smile. “You want to know that badly?”
“I just want to confirm whether, after twelve years of formal education, you’ve been eliminated by the system.”
“Don’t worry.” He replied calmly. “I’m still alive, at least.”
I took another step forward. “How much?”
“Not telling.”
“Afraid you lost, huh?”
Trinh Canh Ngon looked at me, his eyes full of mockery. “You’ve been using that provocation since third grade.”
“If it works, that’s all that matters.”
“It doesn’t work anymore.”
I nodded sympathetically. “Oh, so your score must be pretty low, right?”
He fell silent at once. I knew I had scratched the exact itch of this competitive idiot.
Sure enough, a few seconds later, Canh Ngon pulled his phone from his pocket, opened the screen, and turned it toward me. “Take a look.”
I lowered my head to look, then sank into silence.
His score was sky-high. We hadn’t applied through exactly the same track, so putting our score reports side by side for comparison wasn’t particularly meaningful. But looking at his dreamlike string of numbers, my self-respect still rose up with an extremely principled sense of irritation.
I handed his phone back and tossed out lightly, “Not bad.”
Canh Ngon took it back. “Just ‘not bad’?”
“Yep.”
He nodded thoughtfully and counterattacked. “Then your score must be pretty average, huh?”
I immediately shoved my phone screen in front of his face. “There. Get a good look!”
Canh Ngon’s eyes rested on the screen for about two seconds. Then he regained his composure and uttered exactly two words: “Not bad.”
I choked on my own bitterness. Sure enough, karma came fast.
The two of us stood in the hallway, each holding a phone. We had clearly just achieved outstanding results that would make any outsider praise us until their noses swelled with pride, yet the first thing we both did was find every possible way to annoy the other.
Uncle Trinh looked at us and sighed heavily. “These two really refuse to grow up.”
My mother immediately waved her objection away. “They’ve grown up! Look, they even know how to stand there and congratulate each other properly now.”
Canh Ngon and I straightened our backs as if responding to a conditioned reflex.
I forced out my trademark smile. “Congratulations.”
He smiled just as formally. “You too.”
The two mothers looked at each other, their eyes brimming with emotion. But before my mother could even say a word of praise, Canh Ngon leaned close and lowered his voice so only the two of us could hear. “You didn’t get a perfect score in math?”
The smile on my lips froze. I ground my teeth and whispered back, “You lost points in physics and still came over here to ask?”
“I intentionally left them off.”
“Who would believe that?”
“Believe it or not, up to you.”
I was just about to quietly kick the toe of his shoe when my mother’s phone suddenly rang. She glanced at the screen and answered. After only a few exchanges, her expression abruptly changed.
“Yes... yes, that’s right... Her name is Ha Minh Chau...”
Dad and I stared at each other in confusion. Mom quickly turned on the speaker. A middle-aged man’s warm, solemn voice came through from the other end. “Hello, family. I’m calling from the Department of Education and Training. First of all, congratulations to Ms. Ha Minh Chau. According to the current results compiled across the province, she is the candidate with the highest total admissions score in the natural sciences group in our city.”
I stood there, utterly stunned.
Top scorer. Those two words were something I had thought about, something I had secretly imagined hearing during late nights. But when they actually reached my ears, my mind went completely blank.
Mom gripped my hand tightly, tears welling in her eyes. Dad smiled so broadly that the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes deepened. Uncle Trinh kept voicing congratulations.
Amid the atmosphere exploding with chaotic sounds, I somehow turned instinctively toward the person standing across from me.
Trinh Canh Ngon was looking at me too.
This time, he didn’t tease me. He didn’t mention the point I’d lost in math. He didn’t try to drive me crazy. He simply raised the cup of water in his hand slightly—a gesture much like an elegant toast.
“Congratulations, Ha Minh Chau.”
I paused for a beat, then couldn’t hold back my smile. “Thank you.”
That sacred, moving moment lasted less than ten seconds. Uncle Trinh suddenly slapped his thigh. “Oh, right! Canh Ngon also received the results for that Young Architects program this morning, didn’t he?”
I whipped around. “What?”
Canh Ngon remained expressionless. I turned to Uncle Trinh. “What results?”
“That portfolio he’s been fussing over for months! The National Young Architecture Talent Program.”
I stared at Trinh Canh Ngon. “You’ve known the results since this morning?”
“Yeah.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
“You didn’t ask.”
I was completely speechless. I’d asked about his college entrance exam score—who would’ve known he was hiding a bombshell like this too?
Uncle Trinh proudly announced, “He ranked first in the selection! The community-space design he submitted received extremely high praise from the panel of professors.”
An image of the desk piled high in Canh Ngon’s room suddenly appeared in my mind. Throughout senior year, beside his textbooks and thick practice papers, his desk was always cluttered with drawing paper, cardboard, utility knives, rulers, and countless miniature models. He didn’t just make houses; he painstakingly built tiny plazas, parks, walkways, and miniature residential areas too... They were so tiny that once I even suspected he was passionately constructing an empire for ants.
Once, when I went over to borrow a book, I casually picked up one of the models and turned it around. “What’s this?”
“My application project.”
“It looks like a bus station.”
At the time, Trinh Canh Ngon had looked up at me for exactly three seconds before silently lowering his head and continuing to draw. Back then, I had secretly thought he was terribly unreceptive to criticism. Looking back now... it turned out that I was the one with the serious professional problem.
I crossed my arms and pouted. “You really kept that under wraps.”
Canh Ngon answered calmly, “What was there to brag about?”
“Coming in first in a nationwide selection isn’t worth bragging about?”
He glanced at me and replied leisurely, “You just ranked first in the city.”
I was instantly silenced. That... did make sense, didn’t it? Unfortunately, whenever that logic came from Trinh Canh Ngon’s mouth, it only made me feel even more annoyed.
The news spread faster than a disease.
At ten, my homeroom teacher called to congratulate me. At ten fifteen, my math teacher called to praise me. At ten thirty, the class group chat exploded with messages. At eleven, the residents’ Zalo group for the apartment complex was just as lively.
Ms. Liu from the eighth floor posted in the group: “Congratulations to Minh Chau and Canh Ngon! Our apartment complex has two brilliant talents this year!”
Mr. Tran from the third floor followed up: “I knew those two were exceptionally smart from the moment I saw them as kids!”
I stared at Mr. Tran’s message for a long time. Mr. Tran was the same man who had cheerfully asked me, “What grade are you in again?” every time he saw me in the elevator for three straight years. I truly had no idea at what point in history he had detected my “exceptional intelligence.”
The messages in the group kept appearing nonstop. Suddenly, someone dropped a sensitive question: “So which of the two is smarter in the end?”
I immediately sat up straight. Here it was! The question powerful enough to shatter the apartment complex’s fragile peace!
Someone replied, “They’re in different tracks with different criteria. How can you compare them directly?”
Another woman chimed in, “Minh Chau is the city’s top scorer in the natural sciences track.”
Someone else argued, “But Canh Ngon is the national champion of the young architecture talent program!”
In the end, the head of the management committee delivered the verdict: “All right, they’re evenly matched!”
I looked at the words “evenly matched” on the screen and, for some reason, found them extremely pleasing. My finger unconsciously tapped the bright red heart icon.
Two seconds later, a private message came flying in. Sender: Trinh Canh Ngon.
He sent a screenshot. Directly beneath the words “evenly matched” was my dazzling red heart, along with a message: “Satisfied now?”
I replied immediately: “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Canh Ngon: “Really?”
Me: “Really.”
Canh Ngon: “Then why did you send a heart?”
I looked at the screen, then at my finger. I desperately wanted to travel back thirty seconds and chop off this trigger-happy finger.
I hammered at the keyboard. “Slipped.”
Canh Ngon: “Yeah.”
Me: “It really was a slip!”
Canh Ngon: “I believe you.”
Me: “Don’t use that sarcastic tone!”
Canh Ngon: “Is believing you wrong too?”
I angrily shut off my phone screen and decided not to stoop to his level.
Two minutes later, the screen lit up again.
“Ha Minh Chau.”
I ignored him. A while later, another new message arrived: “You did well today.”
My hand stopped. I stared at the short message for several seconds, and a small warmth suddenly rose in my chest. But before the emotion could fully take shape, the next message poured a bucket of cold water over it: “At least you didn’t embarrass my longtime rival.”
I closed my eyes and sighed. Sure enough, one should never expect too much from Trinh Canh Ngon’s humanity!
I typed: “Trinh Canh Ngon.”
Canh Ngon: “Yeah?”
“Come downstairs tonight.”
“For what?”
“Badminton.”
“Not playing.”
I calmly sent back a single word: “Scared?”
Three seconds. Five seconds. Ten seconds passed...
Finally, he replied: “What time?”
I smiled triumphantly. Some moves had been used from third grade all the way to age eighteen and still never went out of style.
Seven that evening, on the badminton court beneath the apartment complex.
I stood on one side of the court with my racket in hand, while Trinh Canh Ngon stood opposite me. My father and Uncle Trinh had come downstairs for a walk and accidentally become two unwilling spectators.
I won the first game. I planted my racket on the ground and lifted my chin. “One-zero!”
Canh Ngon calmly took a sip from his water bottle. “You’ve only won one game.”
He won the second. “One-all.”
The third game was a point-by-point struggle right to the end. On the deciding shot, I leaped up and smashed the shuttlecock hard. It flew over the net and landed right beside the boundary line. Canh Ngon hurried backward and tried to return it, but he was too late.
I cheered and raised my racket high. “I won!”
Canh Ngon looked down at the shuttlecock on the court and declared shamelessly, “Out.”
I immediately ran over. “It was clearly in!”
“Out.”
“In!”
“Out.”
I pointed at the boundary line. “Is there something wrong with your eyes?”
Canh Ngon bent down and examined the spot carefully for about two seconds before looking up at me. “Out by about a centimeter.”
I was so angry I laughed. “You’re seriously counting a centimeter?”
“A centimeter isn’t a distance?”
I turned to the two fathers enjoying the breeze nearby. “Referee! Settle this for me!”
The two unwilling spectators paused their conversation and looked over.
My father scratched his head. “What’s wrong?”
“Was that last shot in or out, Dad?”
He thought for a moment, then answered honestly, “I wasn’t paying attention.”
I turned to Uncle Trinh with a pleading look. “Uncle Trinh?”
He cleared his throat. “Ah... I couldn’t see clearly either.”
I was rendered speechless. These two spectators were truly so “helpful”!
Trinh Canh Ngon planted his racket on the ground. “Let’s replay that shot.”
I nodded immediately. “Sure!”
He looked at me. “What if you lose?”
I thought for a moment, then announced, “The loser is absolutely forbidden from ever mentioning the ‘kindergarten blanket-folding’ incident again!”
Canh Ngon stared blankly. “You’re still hung up on that?”
“It’s been twelve years!”
“I know.”
“Some grudges can’t be erased by time!”
He burst out laughing, his eyes shining brightly. “Fine. Replay!”
In the end, I won. It was an extremely narrow victory, but a win was still a win!
I proudly raised my racket. “Two-one!”
Canh Ngon took a drink from his water bottle and said casually, “Just luck.”
“Losers always like blaming luck.”
He didn’t argue. He simply put away his racket and said, “Again tomorrow.”
I froze. “Tomorrow?”
“Yeah.”
“You still haven’t accepted your loss?”
“No.”
Somehow, seeing his suppressed, resentful expression filled me with an indescribable joy. “Fine! Who’s scared of who?”
The two fathers walked leisurely ahead, while Canh Ngon and I followed behind at a leisurely pace. In front of the elevator, Uncle Trinh turned around and asked, “Are you two done playing?”
“Done.”
“Who won?”
I immediately cut in. “I did!”
Canh Ngon leisurely added, “Two-one.”
I glared at him. “Isn’t two-one a win?”
“Barely.”
“A narrow win is still a win!”
“Yeah,” he said with a nod. “Again tomorrow.”
The elevator doors slowly opened. I stepped inside, suddenly unable to stop myself from laughing out loud.
Trinh Canh Ngon glanced over. “What are you laughing at?”
“Nothing.”
“There’s obviously something.”
“I was just thinking that you really can’t stand losing.”
He leaned casually against the elevator wall and tossed out lightly, “Takes one to know one.”
I raised my eyebrows and shot back, “Right back at you.”
The elevator doors slowly closed, hiding the smiles on both our faces.
At the time, I truly and naively believed that the end of the college entrance exam meant the conclusion of the long competition between Trinh Canh Ngon and me, which had lasted twelve years. From then on, we would choose our own paths, meet new people, and enter completely unfamiliar worlds.
There would be no more shared rankings. No more turning to interrogate each other after every exam about how to solve the hardest question. No more reason to compete over every little thing day after day...
That was what I thought. Very seriously.
Only much later did I bitterly discover that when Heaven hears certain wishes, all it can do is smile awkwardly.