At six in the morning, Lam Moc Tra was already on her usual bus. Taking Project Director Vu Hoang Hai's advice to heart, she didn't wear another stiff button-down and dress pants today. Instead, Tra chose a lightweight navy cotton T-shirt, stretchy black jeans, and an old but comfortable pair of sneakers. She twisted her hair into a neat bun on top of her head.
At exactly 7:50 a.m., Tra swiped her temporary visitor badge and stepped into the StarBrite office. Unlike the quiet typically found at other companies around this hour, the hallway outside the Production Department was already buzzing with voices.
Mai from Human Resources led Tra down to the fourteenth floor—the area known as the company's "workshop."
"Tra, come in here." Mai knocked on the door of a vast room crammed with cardboard boxes, clothing racks, mannequins, and all kinds of bizarre props. "Tuan, there's a new intern here. I'm assigning her to your team today."
From behind a pile of foam boxes, a skinny young man with thick glasses and wildly messy hair poked his head out. He was chewing on half a banh mi and holding a clipboard.
"Yes, Mai, I hear you." Tuan hurriedly swallowed his bite, then looked Tra up and down. "Hey. I'm Tuan, the Production Assistant. I heard Boss Hai say someone new was coming down to help today. What's your name again?"
"Hi, I'm Tra." Tra answered briskly.
"Okay, Tra. Take a look at all this." Tuan pointed to the corner of the room, where about twenty cardboard boxes were covered in layers of tape and a thin coat of dust. "The company is shooting a music video for singer M. this weekend. The concept is 'Youthful Memories.' These twenty boxes are filled with a jumble of school clothes, old cassette tapes, textbooks from the year 2000, bicycles, and all kinds of odds and ends the design team gathered last night."
Tuan handed Tra an A4 sheet with a detailed prop inventory.
"Your job today is to open all twenty boxes. Sort everything into three groups: Costumes, Set Props, and Hand Props. Wrap anything fragile in bubble wrap. Hang the clothes on the racks and sort them by size. Make sure you count everything carefully against this list. If even one item is missing, the whole film crew will be standing around staring at one another tomorrow."
Tra took the sheet and looked at the towering pile of boxes, swallowing softly. But she didn't complain. She immediately rolled up her sleeves.
"Got it. I'll get started right away. Do you have a box cutter I can borrow?"
Tuan tossed her a box cutter, then returned to his desk and bent over his laptop, clacking away. Every so often, he shouted at someone over the phone about renting cameras.
Tra took a deep breath and got to work. Dust from the long-neglected cardboard boxes rushed into her nose, making her sneeze repeatedly. The first box contained nothing but old textbooks and Doraemon comics. Tra carefully stacked them in a corner, counting every book. The second held women's áo dài and gym uniforms. The third contained expensive Walkman players, so she had to run off and find foam to wrap them in.
As time passed, sweat soaked the back of Tra's T-shirt. Both her hands were black with dust, and her fingernails were scraped in a few places from prying at the tape. The room was air-conditioned, but the heavy lifting left her burning hot. Even so, Tra worked in a very organized manner. She used a marker to clearly label the outside of the new boxes and stuck on colored labels so they would be easy to tell apart.
Half past twelve.
"Take a break and eat, Tra!" Tuan called over, setting an inexpensive boxed meal of broken rice with grilled pork, pork skin, and egg loaf on the table. "The company provides lunch. Go ahead and eat."
"Thank you." Tra hurried off to wash her hands and wipe her face. In the restroom mirror, she looked no different from a manual laborer.
Between bites of rice, Tuan asked, "Tired? Fresh-out-of-college students usually romanticize the glamorous entertainment world. Spend one day down in the prop room and that dream shatters fast. Boss Hai tossed your application over to me yesterday and said, 'Let's see how many days this girl lasts.'"
Tra smiled and picked up a piece of egg loaf. "I am tired, but I'm having fun. Back home, I used to help my mom carry ten sacks of rice at a time. These boxes are nothing. Besides... Boss Hai is so strict. He must be really good at what he does, right?"
"Good?" Tuan gave a derisive laugh. "You have to call him a work 'monster.' He's only twenty-seven and he's already a Project Director. He didn't have some powerful family backing him, either. He worked his way up from the bottom, running errands just like you're doing now. That's why he hates people who put on a show or slack off. Do your best and do the job properly. If he approves of you, you'll learn a ton."
Tra nodded thoughtfully, and a small wave of admiration suddenly rose in her heart for that cold-faced man.
Three in the afternoon.
The prop room door suddenly opened. Vu Hoang Hai walked in. He still dressed simply, in a black shirt with the sleeves rolled up and dress pants, an iced black coffee in his hand. The atmosphere in the room immediately dropped a few degrees, and Tuan, who had been sitting with one leg crossed over the other, straightened up at once.
"Are you here to check our progress, Boss?" Tuan asked.
"Yeah. The equipment has to be loaded onto the truck tomorrow morning." Hai's low voice carried across the room as his eyes swept over it.
The room, which had been a mess that morning, was now divided into three clearly marked areas. The clothes had been ironed perfectly—Tra had borrowed the company's steamer—and hung neatly on the racks with notes marking their sizes. The cassette tapes and books had been sorted into clear plastic bins.
Tra was crouched on the floor, struggling to use a screwdriver to reattach the pedal to an old Japanese mini bicycle. A streak of grease stained her face, and wisps of messy hair had slipped free from her elastic.
Hearing footsteps, Tra looked up. When she caught Hoang Hai's razor-sharp gaze, she hurried to her feet and hid her grimy hands behind her back.
"Hello, Boss... I'm checking whether the bicycles still work. It'd be embarrassing if an actor's chain fell off while riding one on set tomorrow."
Hoang Hai walked closer and looked at the bicycle, then at the neatly sorted supplies. He said nothing, only picked up the inventory sheet from the desk. Every item she'd checked was marked with a red check, along with clear notes on its condition: "Walkman No. 3 has a chipped corner," "Literature textbook cover torn."
A silence lasting about a minute stretched out, but to Tra it felt like an entire century. She was afraid she'd messed up some part of the process.
At last, Hoang Hai set the paper down. He looked at the grease on Tra's cheek, and the corner of his mouth lifted slightly, forming an expression that might have been a smile—or merely a faint nod.
"You work in an organized manner. But next time, borrow some cloth gloves from the warehouse. Your hands are going to rust and your skin will be ruined if you keep getting them covered in grease like that." He then turned to Tuan. "The progress is fine. Let her leave early at five this afternoon. Tomorrow, everyone reports to the company at 4:30 a.m. to head to the filming location with the crew."
With that, he turned and walked away, leaving behind a faint coffee scent mingled with the light, masculine fragrance of his cologne.
Tra stood there in a daze. His words had been bone-dry, yet somehow they made her feel strangely warm. She raised a hand to wipe the sweat from her forehead, inadvertently smearing the grease into an even wider streak.
Yes! Tra cheered silently. She'd passed her first test!