Secrets

Blood was seeping terribly from Mr Khâm's abdomen. Tùng lifted him up, hailed a rickshaw, carried him onto it and sat holding him. The puller asked where to, and Tùng told him to run to the army barracks nearby.
When the rickshaw reached the gate, the sentry stopped it and questioned them. Mr Khâm whispered something into his ear, and the soldier hurried the rickshaw on to the infirmary for emergency treatment. Soon afterwards a helicopter landed and took Mr Khâm away. Tùng saluted the officers and went home, returning to his everyday life as a teacher.

After school, when the pupils had all gone, Tùng gathered his books and walked out of the gate. He still walked to school because his home was not far, and he wanted a little exercise too. A car stopped in front of him, and Mr Khâm opened the door and stepped out smiling, inviting Tùng for a drink. He seemed to have recovered and looked strong and well.
At a quiet café looking out toward the mountains, the two chatted pleasantly for a while, and then Mr Khâm asked:

• Where were you going that day when you found me injured?
• I was going to visit a pupil who was ill. I cycled past and saw you lying at the corner of the alley, with blood pouring from your abdomen.
• Why didn't you take me to the nearby provincial hospital, instead of the army barracks?
  Tùng smiled and said:
• If what I say is wrong in any way, please don't tell anyone. When I was little I often went with my father into the mountains near your farm to catch birds and pick bamboo shoots. You hadn't moved in yet then, and the house was old and run down. One noon, while my father was asleep, I slipped away to play and found a cave right behind the house. It turned out the house was built to cover the cave's mouth. I backed out and didn't dare go in, but I kept imagining the cave stories of knights of old.
  Once, passing by at night while looking for my father, who was late coming back from the forest, I saw several people in military uniform go into the house. By then I was old enough to understand that a military secret of the nation was hidden there. Later you came to live there, saying you had bought the land for a farm, but you had no wife or children and did little farming. You renovated the place and built a bigger house than before. I understood that I had guessed right.
  But my view is that a citizen must keep his country's secrets even if no one reminds him. If you happen to learn one, you live with it in your heart and take it to the grave. I reasoned that you must be someone from the army, so taking you to the barracks would be safer for you than a hospital. While carrying you I also thought very hard: why were you wounded there, who had harmed you that you hid in the alley without daring to crawl out and call for help? If the assassin had found you, I would not have been strong enough to protect you. I kept praying to the higher powers. Luckily everything turned out well.
  Mr Khâm nodded and said:
• I commend you for having excellent civic ethics, for knowing how to keep your country's secrets. I am extremely grateful to you for saving me that day. It was also because you reasoned correctly and decided to take me to the barracks in time that the outcome wasn't far worse. But I must put a question to you: since you now know a military secret, you must choose one of two things. One, you join military intelligence so that you can be tightly controlled. Two, you disappear from this life so that the secret has no chance of coming out, because if one day you happen to blurt it out, everything is ruined.
  Tùng froze... ☠️

Few people can keep a secret for someone else. When they happen to learn somebody's secret, they are delighted and carry it around telling everyone for fun. Almost every person's secret is that person's weak point. Once it is spread, that person's life drops into an abyss.
Understanding this, if we happen to learn someone's secret, we must have the steadfast strength to hide it for that person for the rest of our lives. That strength is one of the most precious moral qualities.
Killing is not only holding a knife or firing a gun; telling another person's secret is the same as killing them. So keeping a secret for others is also helping them, is also ethics, is also making merit.

It is a human vice to tell stories about others for fun. The fun lasts only a moment, but the harm to the victim is enormous. The good quality in a person is being able to control their speech and not let a casual remark spread another's private affairs.

A national secret is a million times more serious. Sometimes our country may lose a war just because someone unwittingly let slip a military secret ten years earlier. The harm does not come at once, sometimes it takes years, but the consequences are immense, and the whole nation has to bear them. So if anyone happens to learn a secret of their country, they must have the strength and ethics to hold it tightly in their heart, and not speak even if they are tormented and tortured.
If we do not reveal a national secret, no state agency will even know to reward us; but if we reveal it, that wrong is enough to send us to hell. It is better not to know anything at all, but once we do know, we should regard it as a sacred responsibility to the homeland and strive to keep it.

In short, keeping secrets for everyone is a very great ethical act, because it keeps everyone at peace.