Minh An didn't sleep that night.
He placed four things on the table: the photo with three chairs, the blue umbrella, the data file named Lam, and the white photograph that had just appeared.
Four objects.
None of them proved that they had ever met.
He only had scenes that had already begun in the middle: a hand that had once held his, a promise that had been spoken, a pain that was already too old. There was no first room. No first greeting. No moment when one person saw the other and knew they had to remember.
At last, he opened his notebook and wrote everything down in the order it had appeared.
The photo with three chairs. The blue umbrella. The name Lam. The words on the white photograph.
He circled the last name.
Lam.
Tung stood by the window, watching him arrange them in a line.
“What are you doing?”
“Checking which one appeared first.”
“What for?”
“To find out where the memory began.”
Tung didn't answer right away. Outside the glass, rain tapped steadily against the corrugated roof. Then he looked down at the white photograph.
In the corner of the photo, the words were still there:
TOMORROW, COME TO THE PLACE WHERE YOU DIED.
“Don't go there,” Tung said.
Minh An looked up.
“Then you know where it is?”
Tung didn't answer right away.
He looked at the words on the white photograph, then at the blue umbrella. The water beneath the umbrella's tip trembled faintly, shattering the sign reflected in it into fragments of light.
“I don't know,” he said.
“You just said not to go there.”
“Because I know this feeling.”
“What feeling?”
Tung raised a hand to his temple. His fingers trembled slightly.
“Like I've stood in front of a door with the sound of a train behind it. But I don't remember where the door is. I don't remember whether I've gone through it.”
Minh An looked down at the floor.
“So you only recognize the traces.”
“Yeah.”
“Isn't the station beneath the restoration room?”
Tung shook his head.
“I don't know. I only know there's something underneath.”
The phone in Tung's pocket suddenly vibrated. No incoming number appeared on the screen. There was only a time:
04:17.
They both looked toward the restoration room door.
On the other side of the door, metal grated against stone.
Neither of them opened the door.
The grinding came again.
This time, from beneath the floor.
A thin line of water crept out from under the door, skimmed across the tile, and stopped at Minh An's feet. Reflected in the water was an old sign:
LINE 17 — FOR THOSE WHO HAVE NO FIRST DAY.
Tung stepped back.
“Maybe… it's a station.”
“Where?”
Tung looked at the trembling tiles.
“Right beneath us. Or in a place that wants to be remembered as right beneath us.”
A white streak split the room in two. The wall ahead blurred like a photograph that hadn't finished developing. Behind the blur was a staircase descending, every step covered in black water.
The tiles trembled.
A white streak split the room in two. The wall ahead blurred like a photograph that hadn't finished developing. Behind the blur was a staircase descending, every step covered in black water.
Minh An put the white photograph in his pocket.
Tung grabbed his shoulder.
“Don't open the umbrella.”
“What other door is there?”
“You don't understand.”
“Then help me understand.”
Tung looked at him. There was a fear in his eyes that didn't belong to tonight.
“The last time it opened, you heard her.”
“Is Lam there?”
“You don't know.”
“She knows my name.”
“That name might not be hers.”
Minh An looked at the umbrella.
“Then what is it?”
“Maybe it's an anchor.”
“An anchor for whom?”
Tung didn't answer.
From the bottom of the stairs came the sound of a train whistle.
Minh An opened the umbrella.
The darkness beneath its canopy immediately retreated. The staircase stretched longer, plunging straight down into a platform that didn't exist on any blueprint of the building.
The tracks ahead were full of water.
There was no train.
But the sound of metal grating against stone still echoed from the tunnel.
On the platform, the old sign came into clearer view:
LINE 17 — FOR THOSE WHO HAVE NO FIRST DAY.
Minh An stepped down onto the final stair.
The umbrella in his hand trembled faintly. A drop of water fell from the edge of the canopy onto the platform, but the water didn't spread. It rose upright, becoming a thin pane of glass between the tracks.
On the other side of the glass, a long corridor appeared.
Lam stood there.
She wasn't wet. Behind her there was no station, only a row of closed doors stretching beyond where the eye could see.
“Don't call my name,” she said.
Minh An didn't.
He only asked, “Where are you?”
“At the place where you died.”
“I died here?”
Lam looked at him for a moment.
“That's what this world remembers.”
“And you?”
“I remember you standing in front of a door.”
“Did we ever meet before the seventeenth?”
Lam shook her head.
“I don't know.”
“Don't know, or don't remember?”
“I don't know.”
Her answer chilled Minh An more than a denial would have.
If they had ever loved each other, there had to be a day when it began. A room. A greeting. Some small thing left behind. But among all the fragments of images of Lam, there was nothing that began anything.
Only scenes that had already begun in the middle.
A hand that had taken his. A promise that had been spoken. A pain that was already too old.
There was no first time.
Lam placed her hand against the glass.
“Do you remember me?”
“Yes.”
“What do you remember?”
Minh An looked at her hand.
“The umbrella. Your voice. The feeling that you were standing somewhere I couldn't reach.”
Lam shook her head gently.
“You don't remember me.”
“Then what do I remember?”
She looked toward the tunnel.
“You remember a life.”
Veins like cracks in an old photograph spread across the glass between them.
“Where did we meet in that life?” Minh An asked.
“We didn't.”
“We didn't?”
“We only remember what happened after we met. No one remembers the moment it began.”
“But what if it never happened?”
Lam looked at him.
“Then the feeling inside it can still be real.”
A whistle sounded.
The corridor behind Lam shuddered. All the doors opened a crack at once. Inside each room was a different version of the same scene: Minh An and Lam standing beneath the blue umbrella, sitting across from each other, turning their backs on each other, or simply two shadows separated by a wall.
None of the scenes had a date.
None of the scenes had a first time.
Tung clung to Minh An's shoulder.
“Let's go.”
“Not yet.”
“This isn't a meeting.”
“Then what is it?”
“Something trying to make you believe it happened.”
Lam looked at Tung.
“He's right.”
Minh An turned to her.
“You think so too?”
“I don't know who I am without these memories.”
“But they could be fake.”
“No.” Lam shook her head. “They might never have happened. That doesn't mean the feeling inside them is fake.”
Beneath the glass, black water began to creep upward.
Lam looked at it.
“You have to leave.”
“What about you?”
“I was never here in the way you think.”
Minh An almost called her name, but stopped.
Lam noticed.
“At least this time, you remembered.”
“What is the rule?”
“The more you call my name, the more your world loses something.”
One of the doors behind her vanished.
Lam stared at the patch of white wall.
“See?”
Minh An didn't call her again.
“What do you want me to do?”
“Don't look for me like I'm someone you've lost.”
“Then how should I look for you?”
Lam stepped close to the glass.
“Look for me like I'm someone you've never met.”
The distance between them no longer felt like the distance between the living and the dead. It felt like the distance between two people standing before a meeting that hadn't begun.
Minh An raised his hand.
Lam raised hers too.
Their palms touched on opposite sides of the glass.
A current of cold ran through him.
For an instant, Minh An saw an image that didn't belong to him: he and Lam sitting in a sunlit kitchen, fighting over a ceramic cup; Lam laughing because he'd burned the toast; Tung standing outside the door with a bouquet of flowers, complaining that no one had invited him in.
The scene was so warm it hurt.
Minh An pulled his hand back.
“What was that?”
Lam looked at him, her eyes reddening.
“Something that should have been.”
“Has it happened?”
“Not yet.”
“Could it happen?”
Lam didn't answer.
From the end of the corridor came the sound of rising water.
A figure appeared behind her.
It had Minh An's shape.
Its clothes were soaked through. Its lips were blue. Its face looked like his, but its eyes were empty, like a room that had been cleared out.
Tung pulled Minh An backward.
The copy placed a hand on Lam's shoulder.
She didn't turn around.
“Don't let it cross over,” Lam said.
“How?”
“Don't prove that you're the survivor.”
The copy looked at Minh An.
“You shouldn't be looking for her.”
Minh An didn't retreat any farther.
“Who are you?”
“The one who came back in your place.”
“Then why do you know me?”
The copy smiled.
“Because I remember the first time.”
The glass split apart.
Lam slammed her hand against the other side.
“Go!”
Minh An didn't call her name.
He only asked, “What was the first time?”
The copy pressed its face close to the crack.
“It was what you traded away so you could remember the days afterward.”
The glass shattered.
Water surged across the tracks. Tung grabbed Minh An and pulled him up the steps. The copy stepped through the opening, but before its foot touched the platform, the blue umbrella opened on its own.
A gust of wind blew backward from beneath the canopy.
The copy was driven back.
Lam vanished with the corridor.
When the station brightened again, only the umbrella remained at Minh An's feet.
On the inside of the canopy, words appeared:
THE FIRST DAY WASN'T FORGOTTEN.
IT NEVER HAPPENED.
Tung finished reading and gasped for breath.
At the end of the platform, an unmanned train began to pull in.
Reflected in the glass door of the first car were not Minh An and Tung.
Instead, four people stood before an iron door.
One of them was turning to look back.
Van.