An stood before a large mirror in the quiet room where she had lived for nearly two years since returning to Vietnam. The mirror was no longer new; the edges of the glass had grown foggy. Yet it still reflected a face — no longer that of the mixed-blood girl once lost in the Western blizzards, and not quite the pure Vietnamese woman who had once embraced the darkness of the past like a pillow.

That face — was it the new An, or the old An returned?

The question hung there, suspended like a wind chime in her mind. And the one who had stirred it again was none other than — Nguyên.

He came back, this time not to persuade, but to demand.

“Only when you return to your original position,” he said,
“can everything be realigned.”

“And what is the original position?” An asked.

“The identity of a Vietnamese man. Accepting your former role. No more mixing, no more Western traits, no more poison from foreign women.”

He no longer needed to hide.

He wanted to erase all Western refinement in An.
To make her revert to being a “pure” Vietnamese — undiluted, unmutated.

An without feminism.
An without gender distinction like Western women.
An with no right to choose her own love — only what had been predetermined.

Because to him, Western women were a threat.
They lived for themselves.
They chose themselves over men.
They weren’t willing to be the good wife, the nurturing mother.
They didn’t bear children to fulfill some sacred duty, didn’t sacrifice just to be praised.
They rejected traditional roles — and for that, they symbolized a world he couldn’t control.

Whereas Vietnamese women — in his eyes — “knew their place.”

They knew how to sacrifice.
How to love.
How to erase themselves for their husband and children.
Even how to become the third wheel in their own life — just to keep the family whole.

An had once been undefinable.
And because of that, she was the most dangerous.

He couldn’t stand it.

So he made her a proposition:

“You want to change Linh? You want to bring your sister back from France? Fine. But return to being a man. A true Vietnamese man. Stop talking about gender. Leave no trace of the West in your blood.”

An laughed.

He didn’t understand.
Still didn’t.

She didn’t need to be a man to be strong.
Didn’t need to be a woman to know how to love.
Didn’t need to “go back” — because the original position itself was a trap.

And if she returned to being the man she once was,
There would have been no Linh — the one who injected her with the drug.
No France.
No cold nights hiding in the dreams of a Western woman.
No collisions that made her realize who she was.

But… there would also be no An today.

Nguyên didn’t know this:

It was Western women — the very ones he feared, hated, sought to control — who had, indirectly, saved An.

They hadn’t helped her through direct action.
But their independence, their fierce sense of self, and their belief in “loving yourself first”… had left a deep imprint on An’s soul.

And even though she initially resisted,
Even though she once despised them,
She still learned from them how to stand tall — even while carrying the eternal insecurity of a mixed-blood soul.

She turned to Linh — her teacher, her replacement, her betrayer, and the only one who once held her hand after everything collapsed.

“Do you think I should go back to how I was?” An asked.

Linh pressed her lips together.

“Do you think I should become a man again?”
“Do you think I should play matchmaker for a straight couple, or a gay couple, just to be ‘certified’ as a good person?”

Linh didn’t answer.

Because she knew:
An no longer needed anyone’s approval to define herself.

As for Nguyên… he kept pushing.
Not just with words,
But with media pressure, public opinion, political games.

He did everything to build the image of a “fallen An”:

·       A man who wouldn’t own his identity

·       A mixed-blood betraying his lineage

·       A third wheel in his own life

But there was one thing Nguyên had forgotten:

It was precisely because An dared not to return to the starting line that she could change Linh.
It was because she embodied intersection, not regression, that she could move her sister in the West.
And it was because she was many things at once — that those who once looked down on her began to waver.

An stepped out of the room.

Linh followed behind, silent — but no longer hesitant.

Perhaps she had finally understood:

A guide isn’t the one who stands at the front.

A guide is the one who dares to step forward first.

An turned her head slightly, whispering — as if speaking to the world:

“I don’t need to return to the original position.
Because if I go back… who will keep walking forward?”