“The Letter in the Old Box”

One chilly autumn afternoon, Minh—a man in his thirties—stumbled upon a dusty wooden box hidden deep in the attic. Curiosity gnawed at him as he opened it, revealing a stack of faded letters and a timeworn diary.

But what made his hands tremble wasn’t the age of the papers—it was the handwriting. Every letter inside was from his father… yet none of them had ever been sent.

Each page bled with confessions Minh had never imagined: sleepless nights of his father working three jobs just to pay for his mother’s medicine, the crushing guilt of missing birthdays, the silent torment of raising his hand against his son in a moment of anger. The man Minh thought was cold and indifferent had been silently drowning in sacrifice and regret.

Then Minh’s eyes fell on one envelope, sealed with care. On the front, in shaky ink, were the words:

“To my son—if you are reading this, it means I never had the chance to tell you the truth face to face…”

Minh’s pulse quickened. His father was still alive, frail and bedridden. Should he break the seal and uncover a secret that might change everything he believed about his childhood? Or should he leave it untouched, preserving the mystery—and the distance—between them?

That night, sitting beside his father’s hospital bed, the unopened letter burned in his hand like a living flame. Minh knew that once he read those words, nothing between them would ever be the same again.