When I got accepted into college, I had nothing — just a letter of admission and a dream of escaping poverty. My family was so poor that whenever we had a meal with meat, the whole neighborhood knew.

My mother passed away when I was ten. My biological father had disappeared long before I could remember his face. The only person who took me in was a man who wasn’t even related to me — my foster father, Mr. Minh.

He had been my mother’s best friend. A taxi driver living in a cramped room by the river, he barely earned enough for himself.

Yet when my mother died, he was the only one who stepped forward to raise me. Through my school years, he worked endlessly — sometimes even going into debt — just to keep me in class.

I’ll never forget the time I couldn’t afford my extra class fees. That night, he handed me a small roll of crumpled bills, the faint smell of disinfectant still on them.

“I just donated blood,” he said softly. “They gave me some money. Take it, son.”

Tears streamed down my face. Who donates blood over and over just to raise a child that isn’t theirs? My father did — all through my high school years. No one ever knew.

Years later, I was accepted into a prestigious university in the city. When the letter arrived, he hugged me tightly, tears glistening in his eyes.

“I’m proud of you, son,” he said. “Go. Study hard. Get out of this life.”

In college, I worked every job I could find — waiter, tutor, anything. Yet every month, he still sent me a few hundred thousand dong, even when I knew it was all he had. When I told him to stop, he scolded me:

“It’s my money. You’ll take it.”

After graduation, I got my first job at a foreign company. My first paycheck was 15 million dong, and I sent him 5 million. He refused.