Page 1 of A Banh Mi for Two
Chapter OneLAN
Sài Gòn is a city whose humidity clings to the skin so sickly sweet that you wear its heat like clothes.
“Pfft,” I snort. What a corny start. I delete the sentence.
Sài Gòn is a city where words and language float from stall to stall, person to person.
“Definitely corny,” I say to myself, pressing backspace.
At the heart of this metropolis lies the sprawling hub of street food, finger-licking feasts prepared in front of the audience’s eyes as they bask in the glorious aroma. If you walk through—
“Ughhhh.” Groaning, I slam the laptop shut and bury my face in my palms without realizing how sticky they are from the plate of bánh cam I’ve been picking at. Now the sesame seeds that were all over my hands are all over my face instead—great. I stare at the untouched chè thái to my left, the floating jellies and cream glistening in the internet café’s harsh lighting. It’s sweating all over my notebook.
I sip on the chè, and its sweetness calms both the heat and my writer’s block. Slowly, I open the laptop screen and peek at the document before sighing and holding down the delete key.
“What’s wrong?” Tri?t asks, too busy clicking and clacking through a video game to even look. Sweat seeps through his T-shirt. “You’ve been hitting backspace on the same page for two hours now.”
I scrunch my brows. “It hasn’t been two hours. We just got here—”
The computer clock reads 16:00. Shit.
“You’re right, for once,” I say, to which he only shrugs before going back to yelling at his computer screen. “Maybe this is why I can’t write. I’m distracted by your screaming match.”
Tri?t shoots me an incredulous glance. “Whatever, you’re just mad I’m about to be the best player in Asia. Meanwhile you barely have anything written.”
I ignore the jab, choosing to grind through the jackfruit’s crunchy texture instead. “Nothing is working. I tried writing at home but can’t because it’s home. I tried writing outside—which sounded like a good idea until I remembered it’s too hot and you never know when dirt or sewer water is going to splash you in the face.”
“So—excuses,” he says.
“No.” I roll my eyes. “I’m struggling with writer’s block. It’s a real thing.”
Or at least that was what the internet told me when I resorted to Google-diagnosing the reasons why writing doesn’t click for me anymore. All my words feel fake and blotchy, and street food feels less like an adventure and more like a chore now that I’m glued to a stall twenty-four seven, three sixty-five. Everything feels wrong now that Ba is gone.
I didn’t spill my guts to Google, but the closest search result said writer’s block, and so I had a name for this strange phenomenon. But it didn’t really help: Writing has been more difficult since I self-diagnosed via the internet.
Tri?t huffs at the screen, his clicking becoming aggressively faster. “Who paired me up with the worst people in the server?”
It’s often like this: me ranting about literally everything while my cousin pretends to listen—and sure, he does listen, but only to about one-third of what I say. “Remind me to never open up to you ever again.” Still, I watch him take down another player before finding myself egging him on. “To your left! Tri?t, I said left. Hit E!”
“He’s too tanky!”
“Hit E!” He does not, in fact, hit E. I shove his fingers off the keyboard and press the key myself, earning a screen that flashes VICTORY! before us. “Maybe I should call blogging quits and switch to esports.”
“Um, please don’t.” He takes a bite of my jellies. “But okay, let’s diagnose you. Maybe you can’t write because you just can’t. Take a walk? Clear your head?”
“You’d make an awful doctor.” The embarrassing thing is, I’ve tried almost every tip the internet has to offer to combat writer’s block, including listening to a ten-hour-long playlist of jazz music (which did not help).
He grins. “Good thing I’m not studying to be one.”
“Maybe street food isn’t my thing anymore.” I fidget with the backspace key, feeling its comfort. Sometimes I wish I could just backspace parts of my life.
“I don’t even know what I want to write about. I’ve talked so much about street food and where to find the best street food and what new street food to look out for, and I’m so, so sick of it.”
“You? Sick of food? We’re doomed.” He winces at my light shoulder smack. “How about, maybe… try writing everything out, then editing it later?”
I blow at the strands in front of my face. “But write what? People want something new. I can’t give them anything.”
He hums before restarting the match, clicking through a new character avatar. “As your unofficial official social media manager, I’m here to tell you that people following your blog love the content you’ve been giving them. You don’t have to do anything new. They keep asking when you’ll write something again. And I don’t know much about blogging or writing, but I think they miss you.”
