The sky over Saigon that day hung heavy, as if cradling a secret it could no longer bear to contain. Gray clouds gathered in streaks like torn silk, shredded by the invisible hand of fate. An sat by the window, silently staring out, though in truth, her mind was a battlefield echoing with ceaseless noise.

Nguyên.

That name was no longer just a person.
It had become a whole belief system, a carefully calculated strategy as cold and methodical as the hands of those who script history in the shadows.

He had gone too far.
For money.
For fame.
For the illusion of reviving a fallen dynasty.
For the honeyed poison whispered from across the border — from relatives in China who poured syrup-laced words into his ears:

“If you can sway An to our side, the entire West will tremble on its own.”

And he believed them.

By injecting An with a sophisticated memory-erasing drug imported from China — a drug that didn’t just delete memories, but warped cultural perception — Nguyên envisioned a future where:

• An’s twin sister in the West would no longer dare bring her back to France, for fear An might "contaminate" the white community with Eastern thought.
• The West, frightened by the threat of “hybridization,” would react in reverse — preserving their purity by donating money to create a buffer from Asia, as if buying off the cultural boundary.
• And Vietnam — through Nguyên — would hold the keys to the vault.

The ambition was clear.

Nguyên didn’t just want to erase An’s past.
He wanted to turn her into a sacrificial pawn drenched in Eastern essence, so that when the West feared assimilation, it would flood the East with wealth as a defense mechanism.

He once whispered:

“When you accept being Eastern — in both body and mind — the West will no longer dare embrace you. And when that happens, they’ll pay to build fences against their own fears.”

An knew everything.
She wasn’t as naive as Nguyên assumed.

She had silently read the forged documents he sent to international collaboration offices.
She had examined the financial movement maps of multinational corporations and detected something off:

Western money was flowing into Asia — but not out of love for Asia.

It was flowing to avoid the fear of being infected by An.

A hybrid being, feared as a mirror reflecting the world after globalization.

In truth, it was because An had once leaned toward the West that the West had begun funding Asia — as a way of countering her reflection.

They feared that if they embraced An, they would have to accept that their own kind could be altered.

So they funneled money into Asian aid programs, Asian cultural investments, Asian-centered media — to suppress An’s influence.

Because if someone like An — with three bloodlines — leaned Westward, the lines of distinction would collapse.

And they weren’t ready for that.

But now, it was different.

An had embraced her Asian side.

Not out of defeat.
Not out of surrender.
But because she wanted to unify her identity.

She was tired of running between East and West.
Tired of being a “special case” under academic scrutiny.

And from the moment she accepted being Asian — the dominant part of her blood — the world began to shift.

The West no longer feared assimilation — they switched to contempt.

They thought:

“If someone like An ends up choosing her origin, why should we bother investing in her? She’s already chosen her root. There’s nothing to fear anymore.”

And the money started reversing.

Slowly, but clearly.

One by one, NGOs pulled their funding.
Corporations began cutting budgets for cultural exchange programs.

It was the endgame of a rigged match.

Nguyên panicked.

He never anticipated that An returning to her roots would disarm the West.

They didn’t panic — they simply… cut ties.

And with that, his dream of “harvesting gold from the West” collapsed.

He blamed An.

“You made a mistake. You should’ve stayed in the middle. You should’ve kept just enough West in you to keep them uneasy.”

An looked at him, her gaze calm as a still lake.

“The issue isn’t who I choose.
It’s that the world never truly accepted someone like me.”

She sat down and wrote in her notebook:

“I don’t lean toward anyone.
I am myself.
But if the world needs me to lean, I’ll lean toward the side that bled the most.”

That day, An’s twin sister in France sent a handwritten letter:

“Dear sister,
People here are in a panic. They see you turning East.
They say you betrayed them. But maybe… they never truly loved you.
Thank you for keeping both sides from becoming too powerful or too weak.
And maybe… from now on, I’ll try living like you —
Half staying, half departing.”

An smiled.

There are some streams of money that don’t need to keep flowing.

Just standing still is enough to cause an earthquake.