Nguyen Hoang, or Son, painted to prove he existed.
That was the only reason. Not for art. Not for passion. Simply: if he didn't paint, he would disappear.
His greatest fear, a fear he never admitted to anyone, was invisibility. The fear of being forgotten. The fear that one day, he would vanish as if he had never existed.
He would be like the homeless people sleeping under bridges. Like the street kids. Living and dying, with no one to remember.
Son refused to accept that.
So he painted. Painted on walls everyone could see. To leave a trace. Every stroke of his was a scream into the void:
I was here.
His "marking" wasn't a sound, like the others. It was a color.
It all started when he bought a set of old spray paints from a junk-cart vendor on Ly Thuong Kiet street. The cans had no labels, only strange symbols he didn't understand. But their paint was completely different from any he had ever used. They had a strange depth, a bizarre vitality. Especially the red can—that red was unlike any red he knew.
He had used it to paint a large piece in an abandoned textile factory on the outskirts, the site of a horrific fire ten years ago that had claimed the lives of twenty-three workers. When the red paint sprayed out, it didn't just cling to the old brick wall. It soaked in. The wall looked like it was bleeding.
And in that red, Son saw faint figures, faces screaming in silence, memories of the fire locked within each brick like immortal prisoners. He had fled in terror, but those paints, with their horrific power, had become a part of him. They were the brushes he used to paint the nightmares he couldn't control.
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03:00AM. An old apartment complex on Ky Con street, District 1. Buildings from the 70s. Grimy walls. Rusted balconies. Under the first floor, a few old men were playing cards, green Saigon Beer bottles stacked like a tower on the plastic table.
Son stood before the adjacent wall. His backpack full of cans. A mask covering half his face.
He intended to paint a phoenix. A symbol of rebirth. This block was scheduled for demolition. He wanted to leave something beautiful before it was gone.
He shook the red can. The familiar rattle of the ball bearing inside. He raised his hand, aimed.
And...
His hand moved. But not by his will.
His finger clenched. The paint sprayed. Jet black. Creating a vertical line.
"What the hell..." Son muttered. He tried to control his hand, but couldn't.
Another line. Horizontal.
Another line. Curved.
A zero.
"Stop it!" Son yelled. The old card players looked over. He quickly shrank back into the shadows.
But his hand kept moving. The can kept spraying.
A four.
04.
The cold, soulless number sat brazenly in the middle of his piece.
Son dropped the can. Stumbled back. Heart hammering.
"I didn't paint that." He told himself. "I didn't... I didn't paint it."
But it was there. His paint. His hand.
Son hissed in anger and shook a new can violently, trying to paint over the ghostly number. But the new paint just slid off, unable to cover it. The number 04 remained visible, as if carved into the wall itself, even seeming to glow faintly.
At the same time, a strange urge rose in his chest, an invisible pull dragging him toward the city center. Toward a place he'd never known, but which simultaneously felt like he'd known it forever.
________________________
An and Khue stepped out of the antique shop, the silence in their minds now more terrifying than the phantom sounds had been.
"I'm An," he said, his voice dry. He pulled a business card from a worn leather wallet. "Tran Vinh An. Architect. If... anything else happens, call me."
"Le Minh Khue," she replied, taking the card, her fingers still trembling slightly. "Student. I will."
They looked at each other for another second, the awkwardness of strangers mixed with shared terror. Then they turned, walking in opposite directions down the darkening street, but the feeling of being bound remained. Heavy and undeniable.
The world around them had changed.
An stepped onto the curb, trying to trust the parallel lines of the crosswalk—safe, reliable straight lines. But then, the asphalt beneath his feet rippled like water struck by a pebble. The opposite sidewalk suddenly buckled, imposssibly, as if pressed down by an invisible weight, before snapping back straight. A bus passed by, and for a split second, its image was stretched, elongated like a motion blur, its engine whining into an unnatural high pitch. He stumbled back, hitting a lamppost. He looked up, saw a crack running up the post like frozen lightning. It made a sharp tinkling sound, like glass shattering, though the post was made of steel. A pedestrian brushed past him, completely oblivious.
Only he saw. Only he heard.
The world wasn't just warping; it was breaking.
For Khue, time began to malfunction severely. She heard snippets of conversation from passersby repeat two, three times, like a scratched record. She saw a leaf fall to the ground, then jump back onto its branch as if time were running in reverse. Reality was a faulty videotape. Skipping and replaying random segments.
The invisible countdown was accelerating, and it was tearing apart the thin veil of the world, revealing something underneath—something far darker and more ancient than the reality they knew.
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Son followed the intense urge in his chest, his feet carrying him automatically through familiar alleys, past crowded intersections. The image of the number 04 flickered before his eyes like a dead pixel on an old screen. He reached the street with "Recycled Memories" just as An and Khue had left.
He didn't see them, but he sensed an "echo" left in the air, a strange, familiar resonance, as if he had known those people in a past life. He looked at the half-closed antique shop, then his gaze was pulled in another direction.
At the end of the street, hidden behind a row of shops, was a small café. It had no sign, only a warm, amber light spilling from its old wooden doorframe. The café looked strangely still, as if it belonged to another time, another space.
The urge inside Son became a thousand times stronger.
There. That's it.
At the same time, a few blocks away, An felt like he was suffocating. The cracks were getting bigger. He needed shelter, an anchor point. And then, an image surfaced in his mind, the image he had seen in the coffee stain: a still café, where the dripping sound couldn't reach. He unconsciously turned onto a street, walking like a sleepwalker, seeking that image with a primal instinct.
Khue, too, was panicking. The melody was gone, but now she heard hundreds of chaotic sounds overlapping—wordless whispers, snippets of music from different eras. Crying. Laughter. All blending into a maddening symphony. She needed silence. She needed a safe "waiting room." And her mind showed her just such a place, one she had never been to but which felt strangely familiar.
Three separate paths, led by three different signals, finally converged on a single point.
The yellow-orange streetlights flickered over the empty street. Three figures emerged from three different directions, their footsteps strangely synchronized as if moved by the same heartbeat, and then stopped short at the same time. They weren't looking at the café anymore. They were looking at each other.
The man with the architect's card in his pocket. The girl with eyes so deep she seemed to be listening to the past. And the street kid with faint traces of paint on his fingers. They were three dissonant notes from three different songs, now forced into the same harsh, painful chord.
There was no confusion, no fear. The only thing they saw in each other's eyes now was a naked, cold recognition—the recognition that their nightmare was no longer their own. That they were bound together by something bigger, older, and far more dangerous than they could imagine.
Son looked at An and Khue. "You two..."
An looked at Son. "You feel it too?"
Khue looked at them both, then at the café door. "It called us."
No more words were needed. All three understood. They weren't the only ones. And whatever was waiting inside that café, they had no choice but to enter.
An stepped forward, placing his hand on the cold brass doorknob. He took a deep breath, trying to steady his pounding heart, and slowly pushed the door open.
No bell, no greeting. Only a profound, welcoming stillness. A silence completely different from normal quiet—it had weight, and shape, and consciousness.
Inside, the space was dim in the amber light. A few old wooden tables, a long bar made of dark oak, and a middle-aged man quietly polishing a glass behind the counter. The man didn't look up. Didn't say hello. Just continued his work as if no one had entered.
Time here seemed to move very slowly, or perhaps not at all.
They stepped inside together. Three pairs of feet moving automatically, as if pulled by a magnet.
The heavy wooden door swung shut behind them with a low, definitive thud. Instantly, all the chaotic sounds of the city—the horns, the shouts, the thumping music—were completely cut off. As if a meter-thick, invisible wall separated this place from the outside world.
They had arrived.
The Still Point.
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Outside the café window, where none of the three noticed, a red flame tree leaf fell onto the damp pavement. It did not land. It hovered in mid-air, trembling gently like an insect trapped in golden amber, then slowly dissolved into shimmering motes of light.
No one saw it.
Only the shadows slowly creeping from the alleys—shadows that shouldn't exist under the streetlights—were watching. Waiting. Patiently counting down.