Introduction:
Strategic Narrative Reconstruction—Harry Nguyen has lived his life by the words without knowing it. To the world, he is a brilliant botanical researcher on the verge of a global breakthrough with a revolutionary DNA-helix seed. To the underworld of Saigon, he is a former master forger for the Jade Dragon gang, a man who paid for his “freedom” with two toes and a lifetime of scars.
The siege begins with the scent of jasmine and the click of a recorder. When his girlfriend Brooke dies under the red light of an altar, Harry believes he has finally outrun his past. But then comes Elise Truong, a forensic psychologist who offers to pay for the right to dissect his trauma. What starts as a clinical interview quickly devolves into a high-stakes “collaborative fiction,” as Harry and Elise become bound by shared lies, a mysterious blackmailer, and a violent ambush in the rain.
In a city where loyalty is a variable and the rain feels like a personal betrayal, Harry’s mental fortress is under fire. As he navigates a landscape of “Long Siege” tactics—from the “poisonous teeth” of corrupt police to the vengeful ghosts of his childhood—he must confront the truth about the woman who raised him and the girl he supposedly felt in love.
Is the revolutionary seed Harry carries a symbol of rebirth, or is his hope merely a pathology? As the final storm hits Saigon, Harry Nguyen must decide if he is the editor of his future or just a boy standing at the beginning of the end.
Prologue:
20 June
Medical emergency, what’s your situation? Sir? Sir?
I swallowed the lump in my throat. “It… It’s my girlfriend. She’s not responding.”
Is she breathing? Please check her pulse. It’s right behind the ears.
“Yes, yes, but she’s choking. I.. I don’t know, I think she’s OD. Come fast, please.”
State your address and please keep her lying on her back.
“Two—No, excuse me,” Breathe, Harry, breathe. I gulped for air, greedily. “346 LHP District 5. Not District 10, Google Maps confused about it. Ward 14!”
Yes, sir.
“Second floor, go left after the stairs, apartment Two-O-Three.”
Talk to her, CPR if she stops breathing.
“Hurry!” I threw my phone on the bed and it bounced from the mattress to the wall, my first mistake. But I didn’t even care because lying in the center of this chaos was Brooke. She lay pale under the red light of the altar. Her body was limp, one arm draped over her stomach, one clawed at her throat, a desperate attempt to gag out death. I knelt, my hand was shaking so bad I could barely hold it to her lips. Nothing. No breath. Just the ghost of her laugh from the beach, a sound that used to bring color to my monochrome. Now it was just... gone. And the certainty of it was a dark maw, sucking the life right out of this room, out of me. The incense hung heavy, a false prayer in the air. Don’t feel. Look. Just look away and think. It was the only chant that kept myself from screaming.
It hit me all at once when I looked. Her room was a mess, every identity she tried on and threw off. The silk blouse for the job interview she hated, the ripped jeans for the concert. The beads and buttons were all her unfinished projects, her ambitions scattered like confetti of broken dreams. The books were her temporary escapes that also ultimately failed, and now it was all just quiet. The chaos had finally stilled for the mind that made it, was gone. Brooke, Bich Tuyen, her beautiful name once a pleasure to think about, had turned into another memory of my misery.
This wasn’t the first time I’d seen death. But you could never get accustomed to it. Her hair fanned out like a dark halo, strands of it catching on a stray string of pearlescent beads. Her eyes were closed, the lashes dark against her cheeks. And there, amidst her crooked fingers, the red beading cord, our only couple item. The red cord twisted like Aunty Three’s guardian tattoo, a reminder of the chains I’d broken, or thought I had. I yanked my own samsara bracelet and let them scatter around the room, to join Brooke’s, my second mistake. But then I realized I shouldn’t let them rot in the evidence room. They belonged to us, our memories, our passion, our proof. This mistake, I could fix.
The siren finally reached my ears, and soon, it would be followed by another siren with a different rhythm, the police wail. I stood limp, and the pink sky of the stormy night hummed behind barred windows. The rain began to patter on the old porch, indistinguishable with the hurry thuds of medical attendants. The incense faded, replaced by the raw scent of rising petrichor, and I stepped over the mess to open the thumping door.
Index:
I’m working on having this novella published alongside with Mark of a Herald. To be updated, you can support me further by buying them later. That would make my dream to be a full-time writer manifest into reality.
Such a tragic and horrific beginning. 😢💔
The Prologue went right into the action and it made for a great start!