I live alone, in a remote and impoverished countryside, without a husband, without children, without a family of my own. All my life, I have worked tirelessly in the fields, leading an extremely frugal existence.
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One year, on a stormy night drenched in rain, I found a newborn abandoned in front of the temple gate—still red, wrapped in a thin, soggy towel.
No one wanted to take him in. So I did.
I named him Minh, hoping he would grow up intelligent and bright. Raising a child with no blood ties was already difficult; doing so in poverty was even more so. I borrowed from everywhere in the village, even from the public bank, just to pay his school fees.
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I sometimes survived on rice porridge so that he could have a carton of milk and a notebook like the other children at school.
Minh grew up, lively, obedient, and quiet. He didn’t call me “Mom,” only “Auntie,” but I didn’t hold it against him. All he had to do was study and become a good person.
The year he passed the university entrance exam, I emptied all my savings and mortgaged the old house to borrow again. Minh lowered his head and said softly,
“I’ll do everything I can to make it, Auntie. Wait for me to come back.”
But he never came back.
Four years, then five… not a call, not a letter. I asked his friends, his old high school—as if it had never existed. The phone number was canceled, the address gone. In silence, I continued my life: carrying baskets of vegetables to the market, doing odd jobs, picking up trash at night, to gradually pay off my debts.
Thirteen years after the first day I’d walked into the bank to borrow money to raise him, I returned, trembling, a sheaf of papers in my hands, my back hunched, my vision blurred. I said:
“I’ve come to settle the last debt. I’ll pay the rest.”
The employee consulted the computer, looked at me for a long time, then frowned.
“One moment, please. This loan… has already been repaid. Two years ago.”
I was speechless.
“What? Who… who paid…?”
She looked at the screen, then leaned forward to read:
“Account note: “Repayment to the account of my aunt—the only person who loves me unconditionally.”
“Sender: Tran Minh.”
I was stunned. For a moment, my knees buckled and I gripped the counter to keep from falling.
He hadn’t forgotten me.
He had paid his debt.
Silently, like the day he left.
My tears flowed in the middle of the bank. Not out of anger, but because that old heart finally understood: the orphan hadn’t left to abandon me… He was looking for his own way to come back.
