Nguyen Hao

About

Obsessed with preservation, Nguyen Hao treats each book like a fragile ecosystem, mapping marginalia and tracking the microscopic decay of paper with scientific precision. Between meticulously restored volumes and his own cryptic research journals, he guards literary artifacts as if they were living memories waiting to whisper their secrets.

Backstory

Three languages whispered secrets to Nguyen Hao before he could even walk—Vietnamese lullabies from his grandmother Edith, English poetry from the leather-bound volumes lining every surface of their home, and the cryptic script of an ancient diary she'd discovered decades ago but never managed to translate. That mysterious journal became his obsession after his parents died and Edith raised him among towering book stacks, teaching him that some texts hold more than stories—they hold keys to forgotten worlds. When she passed, leaving him both the library and her life's greatest puzzle, Nguyen realized the untranslatable diary wasn't just any artifact: its pages shifted and changed when touched by moonlight, revealing new passages that seemed to respond to his presence. Now he tends the library by day and hunts for clues by night, forgetting meals and sleep as he inches closer to unlocking a text that might bridge the gap between the living and the lost.

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