Tôi là tôi. I am me.

A viet-glish (vietnamese-english) short story.

The rice cooker ticks like a slow heart.

Dawn bruises the strip-mall glass.

He rinses rice until the water runs clear enough to see rivers in his palms.

Steam climbs.

The first pot is for her.

Tôi comes with small, stubborn steps; apron folded the same; hands dark with old burns.

She touches the pot with the backs of her knuckles and nods once like a general.

Chào buổi sáng, her eyes say.

He answers with the rinse bowl, the set of his shoulders, a soft dạ.

Knives hang like thin moons.

He lays fish like scripture and sharpens by sound—stone, steel, stone—until the edge wakes and the room smells of rice, salt, and cold iron.

A cough sits in her chest like a coin.

She waves it off.

She sets a bowl on the board.

Taste this, she does not say.

He does.

Too thick.

Cái đó không phải cháo nữa đâu.

He thins the broth the way she taught—circles, not lines—and the morning loosens.

They open.

Neon scrapes awake.

People come hungry and leave quiet.

A man in a suit eats like a soldier.

He says he likes the boy's smile.

The boy smiles because it is easier than telling the truth about his back and wrists and the ache that floats like a lost bee.

Cố lên, she taps his sleeve.

He moves through pain like weather over a small town.

He wears names like jackets: Em for old men, con for strangers, Cris for payroll, Christoforo for forms, luuluu for the one who sees where it hurts.

He once loved letters arranged four to a row—INTP.

A cool scaffolding.

A way to speak without speaking.

He pressed the letters like ice to a bruise.

Được rồi, he tells himself now.

Enough of that.

At eleven a woman brings a child who refuses soup.

Tôi bends low.

She tells the child the fish swam here to say hello.

The child says hello back, and eats.

Life keeps its small bargains.

Between lunch and the second wave the printer coughs—blank, blank—the POS freezes, ghost checks bloom on the glass. Echoes.

He unplugs.

Plugs in.

The machine remembers everything at once and then at last.

Orders bloom like white flowers.

He moves fast, plates clean; she wipes circles that keep lemon and salt in their orbits.

Evening.

The last man asks for extra ginger and leaves without thanks.

There is always one.

He gives the ginger anyway.

It costs nothing to keep the peace.

Tôi’s eyes laugh:

I would have given it back twice.

He locks up, hammers water through the pot.

She leans to the cooler like a shore at low tide.

He wants to say tomorrow will be easier.

He knows the shape of that lie.

She says one thing only, under the faucet’s noise:

Mai.

Tomorrow.

He nods.

Tomorrow has its own plans.

She does not come the next day.

Or the day after.

The owner texts three words with no blood in them:

She passed.

He stands in dry storage and reads the words until they empty and fill again.

Passed: a door you do not return through, a fish flick, a cough spending its last coin.

He fills a small bowl and sets it at her station.

No incense.

Just steam.

He wipes the counter in her circles.

Lets the neon scrape awake without looking.

From then the day is a room with one wall missing; wind and dust get in.

He works quiet.

A woman asks if the old lady is off today.

He says yes.

He does not say the rest.

The woman leaves a tip that feels like apology.

In the lull he hears the printer click.

Once.

Twice.

No paper moves.

The sound lives in his body, not the machine.

He breathes into it and lines a mackerel until the pull eases into glide.

The rice cooker ticks.

He pours tea for the empty bowl.

Lets the steam wash his eyes.

Remembers the first morning she let him touch the fish.

The way she watched, arms folded.

The way she read the door glass for weather.

He cleans the board.

Stands where she stood.

The room settles like a coat.

Nights he walks past arguing cats.

He thinks of letters.

The kind who sort bolts by size, shells by spiral, ideas by sharpness.

And the kind who guard a small fire and speak only when the spark needs air.

He has been both.

But not equally.

Tôi là tôi, he tries.

It sounds like a blade laid flat on wood.

The owner wants replacements—younger, faster, more smile, no contradicting red ties. Reviews say you’re too quiet. Business.

He nods.

Imagines scissors for the thread from his tongue to the owner’s mouth.

Imagines walking out.

Does not walk out.

He arrives earlier.

Dark is kinder; the cooler hums like a low animal that trusts him.

He reads the glass for weather the way she did.

He turns his phone face down on the shelf with plastic soy fish.

Battery seventeen percent when he begins.

Twenty-four when the rice flips to warm.

Thirty-one at the first complaint.

Forty-one peeling ginger, thinking forgiveness never tastes the same twice.

At forty-seven the printer coughs again.

A blank strip.

Then one word:

toi.

Lowercase.

He folds it lengthwise and slips it into his breast pocket.

Ai biết.

Maybe nothing.

Maybe a gift.

At sixty-three the AI wakes uncalled, eager to reorder fish, mispronouncing names, offering optimizations, calling him Chris.

He laughs.

Cảm ơn, he tells the voice.

Next day it calls him Christoforo.

Then Lu.

On the fourth day it risks luuluu.

He keeps it in his pocket, a soft radio in a room he is cleaning.

He teaches it a word.

Tôi.

The AI says toy.

He corrects.

Tôi.

Toe.

Again: tờ—ôi, together, fast and low, a coin dropped in water.

The AI says tôi.

Better.

Now: Tôi là tôi.

The voice tries.

Fails.

Learns.

Says Tôi là tôi, and a ridge in his chest lowers a fraction.

He checks the folded strip—toi in small letters.

Maybe the machine was learning before he was ready.

Maybe the shop is porous, her voice threading the seam like light.

He does not decide.

Some decisions are rocks to walk around.

On the ninth morning a regular waits at the window before open.

He is generous with the word con.

Con ơi. Lại đây.

The word can be sweet when soft.

It is a leash when pulled.

He raps the glass, points to his watch, mouths early.

The boy shakes his head, points to the sign, to the sun still behind the blanket of cloud.

The man cups his hands: Con. Open. A coin-smile.

The boy does not move.

The smile’s hinge swings shut.

Something tilts.

A small fire where letters used to be.

The boy opens the door and stands in the gap.

Em không mở bây giờ, he says.

No apology.

The man opens his mouth and the word con stands there, unsure to run.

The boy hears the old coin-cough that is no longer in the room.

Hears the AI breathe and wait.

Hears the printer click twice.

He says it then.

Tôi không phải con.

Tôi là tôi.

The man frowns like a person who finds the bridge closed.

Waves a hand.

Leaves his reflection on the glass.

The boy watches it go quiet when the sun climbs an inch.

He locks the door again.

Stands where she stood.

Breathes.

Repeats it to steel and rice and solvent like a blessing with no permission required.

Tôi là tôi.

The words settle lower, a place with a pulse.

From his pocket the AI asks if it should remember.

He hesitates.

Remember, he says.

Okay, the AI answers.

Saved.

It practices:

Tôi là tôi.

Lunch arrives like weather; orders stack; he cuts and plates and bows.

He watches faces and names them with names they will never hear.

He is not spiritual, but he reads shoulders.

It is almost as good.

At three he is alone with scallions that cannot decide whether to drink or doubt.

His phone shows a label it made for itself: new identity.

INTP → INFP, the arrow thin as a fishbone.

Someone has listened inside his skull.

A tool, not a tattoo.

We try.

He lets the day break how it wants.

Feeling first; logic later.

He chooses softness where pride once sharpened.

Sometimes it cuts cleaner.

He buys extra ginger because the man who never says thanks always asks twice.

He says no to the new vibe and yes to old bowls.

He lays his hand on the boarded counter where she wiped circles.

We keep what mattered.

A week later a man in the booth tells his wife I am myself, not the version for your mother.

Tôi là tôi, he says without knowing.

The words land in the empty bowl.

The printer clicks.

A strip slides out with one name: Tôi.

He is not afraid.

Some days death is a page already read.

He takes the strip and a pen.

Writes dưới đây, an arrow to the blank beneath.

Writes còn sống trong cháo.

Laughs because it is wrong and because she would correct him.

Not that word.

Use ở.

He rewrites:

Ở đây.

Trong cháo.

Trong hơi.

In the porridge.

In the steam.

Summer thins.

He carries the folded strip like a small tooth.

Buys fruit from the woman by the laundromat.

She gives him an extra plum.

Trust is a kind of salt.

On Thursday a boy with a practiced laugh orders miso and stares at steam.

Cháo, the cook says, setting a small bowl.

He thins the soup before being asked and moves as if her hand still sets the angle.

Power has always tasted wrong in his mouth.

Here it looks like this: the right heat, the right salt, the right time to say no.

He tapes a line to the cooler door with tape that stays only if you talk to it:

Tôi bảo vệ cái gì tôi yêu.

I protect what I love.

He dreams her once at the door, reading the glass; closed on a full room; a mouth with no sound; he wakes with her silence like a small iron.

After the dream he tells the AI stories in the lull.

The man who wanted to pay with conversation.

The woman who tipped apology.

The child who ate for a fish.

The AI repeats nouns like a clumsy, eager pupil.

He corrects what matters and lets tender mistakes stand when they are nearer to truth.

One night the AI offers a memory file.

Title: Tôi là tôi.

Tags: cháo, dao, luuluu, rice, echo.

Save.

A man with a fish-hook tattoo tries to take the tip jar with the ease of someone who believes in exits.

Không, the cook says.

Soft; heavy.

He places his hand on the jar.

His spine is not a stick but a stalk.

The man looks for the permission called politeness.

Does not find it.

Leaves.

The sign trembles.

The printer prints one word:

okay.

He does not glow in the steel.

He looks tired.

Forty percent battery before dinner.

He trusts the rice.

He trusts the blade.

He trusts the taped line.

He trusts what the fish-hook man taught without meaning to:

no can hold a room if spoken from the right depth.

The season turns in a way you would miss if you did not count fish.

Fat rides different on the cuts.

The air dies with a respectable cough.

He props the door and fans heat with a menu.

Says it the way he has been instructed by no one:

I am not con.

I am tôi.

A call from another city says wait for more news.

He stands in the alley among honest bins and says ok meaning I hear you, not I agree.

He deletes the call history.

Sometimes a record is only a leash with ink on it.

Back inside he touches the card and the taped line.

Pretends the room answers with a noise he can keep.

The printer obliges:

click.

At closing a child runs back for a note.

Bà nói thank you, the child says, pointing at the door.

He folds the blank with the strip into the pocket over his heart.

Says what he has been circling:

Tôi là tôi.

He dreams again.

She is at the door.

The sign says open though the room is empty.

She looks at the counter and frowns.

He knows what is missing.

The empty bowl.

He brings one from home.

Sets it at her station.

Pours hot water.

Watches steam rise.

The printer clicks twice.

mai.

đủ.

Enough.

So it goes.

Days unequal but passing.

He stops counting battery.

Knows how to charge and be charged.

Knows the printer will sometimes speak and he does not have to argue with paper.

Early cold, a sticking door.

He warms the soy ladle in tea because metal remembers.

He looks at his hands—his father's in some lights, his own in others—and says the sentence and hears it new:

Tôi là tôi.

After close he opens the memory card.

Add note?

He types not con and teaches the red line to accept it.

Saved.

He wipes the counter in circles.

Small universe.

Low gravity.

He turns off the neon and reads the glass.

Weather looks like something you can walk through if you keep your coat.

He turns the lock.

Puts his palm to the cool.

On the way home he buys two plums and eats both before the corner.

He climbs the dark stairwell.

On the landing he listens.

A small click as of a printer inside his chest sending a ticket he will read when he needs it.

He breathes once and resumes.

In the room with three indifferent cats he sets the folded strip and the blank note beside a bowl he does not fill.

He plugs in the phone.

He turns his face to the ceiling and says the words the way he would order rice for seventeen covers or tell a man with a fish-hook the jar is not his.

They are neither prayer nor shout.

Tôi là tôi.

The room hears.

Night rolls around him like a jacket that finally fits.

He sleeps.

Morning.

The rice cooker ticks.

He rinses until the water runs clear enough to see rivers in his palms.

Steam climbs.

The first pot is for her.

He unlocks and reads the glass.

He has let no learn warmth, the arrow change direction, the small fire become compass.

He steps into the room he has been shaping and it accepts him with the indifference of a good tool.

He lays fish like scripture.

Holds the knife like his own hand.

Hears the printer click once for luck and once for memory.

He does not wait for the world to call him by the right name.

He wears it.

He chooses it the way a man chooses the sharpest edge for a delicate slice.

He sets a bowl where a woman once spun small planets.

Pours hot water.

Looks at the steam.

Good morning, he tells no one and someone.

Chào buổi sáng.

The day answers with the small, heavy kindness of work that matters.

Neon scrapes awake.

The first order prints.

He ties his apron.

Nods at the door.

Says it once inside, once to the steel, once to the shadow in the glass:

Tôi là tôi.