An dreamed of a forest burning to ash.
In the dream, she walked among shattered tree trunks, with cinders and ashen leaves falling from the sky like black snow. Amid the ruins, she saw a blonde woman sitting beside a grave, hugging her knees. The woman's pale blue eyes were clouded like winter water—no longer reflecting light, only exhaling fatigue. In her hands was a photograph—old, torn, barely holding together the image of an Asian man whose gaze was as hard as steel.

“He destroyed me to resurrect himself,” the woman said, voice hoarse like smoke.

“Who was he?” An asked.

“Nguyên’s father,” she replied. “The first man to carry the illusion of revenge in the name of justice. But those like him… often lose themselves before they reclaim anything.”

An woke at three in the morning, her back damp with cold sweat. Her heart beat in a frenzied rhythm—not from fear, but because she understood. For the first time, she truly understood:
Nguyên was her enemy—but he was also a victim.

She arranged to meet him.

Not at a café. Not in public. But at a cemetery.

The cemetery was hidden beyond a slope, a resting place for the unclaimed—names no one remembered, faces no one mourned.

Nguyên arrived dressed in black. His gaze was the same—as hot iron, as coal, as if ready to burn anyone who met it. But this time, there was no hatred. Only emptiness.

“Do you still believe in redemption?” An asked.

Nguyên said nothing.

“You once injected me with a drug so I’d forget who I was. You used me like a pawn. But now… I no longer hate you.”

Nguyên’s eyes trembled—for the first time in years.

“I don’t need your forgiveness,” he said, voice low and rough. “I chose that path. I believed that if I erased the past of someone like you—a mixed-blood—I could create something new. A ‘pure’ being. But I was wrong.”

An looked at the two symbolic graves before them. One bore the word Memory. The other, Revenge.

“I dug two graves,” she said. “One for me. One for you. Because as our Eastern ancestors once said: before you begin a journey of vengeance, dig two graves.”

Nguyên let out a laugh—silent, dry, like cracked lips breaking apart.

“Who do you think I am?”

“Someone who once believed he could reclaim honor for his bloodline,” An replied. “But in the end, you found a truth: no one truly wins when trying to erase an entire kind.”

She stepped closer. Close enough to hear the uneven rhythm of his heart beneath his dark coat.

“You know,” she continued, “even Linh—the one you trusted most, the one who stood by you—eventually chose to become fully Western. And when she did, you finally realized: Westerners can never truly become Eastern. And Easterners can never fully be Western.”

Nguyên clenched his fists. His eyes turned red—not from anger, but from acceptance.

“Then who am I?” he asked, eyes fixed on the two graves.

“Someone lost in the shadows of his ancestors,” An answered. “Like the French woman in my dream—she once loved an Asian man, but your ancestors left her adrift. Alone, she turned her back on herself. And now, you are following her path.”

Nguyên was silent for a long time. Then, like part of an ancient ritual, he knelt before the two graves.

“You forgive me?” he asked.

“No,” An shook her head. “I forgive myself—for ever giving you the power to hurt me. And I forgive you… so I can move on.”

They stood beside each other—not enemies, not victors or losers. Just two silhouettes in a graveyard, silent like the remnants of a centuries-long ideological war.

“I no longer believe in hatred,” Nguyên said. “Because now I know: if I want to be Western, I’ll never have black hair, black eyes, yellow skin… unless I destroy them all. And if I did that, I wouldn’t be human anymore.”

An touched one of the tombstones.

“And I… I once wanted to erase the European blood in me. But I realized: denying part of myself is denying the whole.”

On the way home, An watched motorbikes whizz past like arrows. She smiled—a smile that belonged neither to East nor West. Not a smile of victory. Not one of defeat.

But a smile of someone who had stepped off the battlefield—not as a survivor, but as one who had laid down her weapon.

Forgiveness was not the end—but the beginning of truth.