Tung forgot Lam at 10:12 a.m.
Minh An knew the exact time because he was placing the cream-colored button on the desk then, beside the ticket stub marked with the words White Point. He had stayed up all night writing down everything that had happened at the north station. Every sound, every stretch of silence, even the way Lam had looked at him before she disappeared.
Tung stood in front of the coffee maker, his back to him.
“Black or with milk?”
“Black.”
“Knew it.”
Tung set the cup down, then suddenly looked at the button on the desk.
“What’s that?”
“A button.”
“I know it’s a button.” Tung pulled out a chair and sat down. “I mean, where did it come from?”
Minh An looked up.
“You gave it to me yesterday.”
“No.”
“In the restoration room.”
“No, I didn’t.”
Tung’s voice was so calm it was frightening. He picked up his coffee but didn’t drink it. His eyes remained fixed on the button.
Minh An opened the desk drawer and took out the old photograph. In it, he stood on the platform at eighteen. The space beside his shoulder was blurred, as if soaked through with water.
“Look closely.”
Tung looked.
“It’s a picture of you.”
“Who’s beside me?”
“No one.”
Minh An felt a thin chill run down his spine.
He turned the computer screen toward Tung and opened the scan he had saved the day before. The image file still had its old name. The creation date was still yesterday. But the girl in the photo had vanished completely.
Only a white, wing-shaped streak remained.
Tung was silent for a long time.
“What are you trying to prove?”
“There was a girl.”
“Where?”
“In the photo.”
“What was her name?”
Minh An didn’t answer right away. The name sat in his throat, heavy as a stone he had held there too long.
“Lam.”
Tung frowned.
“Which Lam?”
“Lam.”
“Minh An, I don’t know her.”
He said it for the second time, but there was no fear in his voice now. Only the honesty of someone watching his friend slip away from anything normal.
Minh An opened his phone and went to his contacts. There was no Lam. The messages from the empty number had disappeared too. The call history showed only Tung’s calls from the night before.
He opened the photo folder.
There was a picture of two cups of coffee on a table. At the edge of the frame, a woman’s hand rested beside the cup on the left. Her nails were short, and there was a streak of blue ink on her fingertip.
“When did you take this?” Tung asked.
“I don’t remember.”
“Then don’t use it as evidence.”
“This hand once wrote her name.”
Tung looked at him, then suddenly laughed. The laugh was very brief.
“Are you in love with someone who doesn’t exist?”
Minh An was about to deny it. But as soon as he heard the question, he remembered Lam pressing her hand against the glass, remembered the faint warmth passing through an invisible boundary.
He didn’t know when he had fallen in love with her.
Maybe it had happened before he remembered her name. Or maybe love was simply the way loss found a face to inhabit.
“No,” Minh An said. “I’m remembering her.”
Tung stopped laughing.
Outside the window, the sign over the store across the street still had a clean white gap. The store’s name had disappeared, but pedestrians still stopped in front of it as if they knew what they were looking for.
Tung stood up.
“Come with me.”
“Where?”
“The station.”
Minh An looked at him.
“I thought you didn’t remember.”
“I don’t remember the girl.” Tung put on his coat. “But I remember you lied so you could go there alone.”
They walked through the wet street. Tung didn’t ask anything else. He simply walked faster than usual, occasionally reaching into his coat pocket as if checking on something.
When they reached the stairs leading down to the north station, Tung stopped.
“Have we been here before?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Last night.”
Tung looked at the dust-covered stairs.
“I was home last night.”
“You called me six times.”
“Because you disappeared.”
Minh An didn’t say that he remembered something else: Tung had once stood on the other side of the white line, crying so hard he couldn’t breathe, while Lam called his name from beside the tracks.
That memory didn’t belong to yesterday.
It belonged to a day that had never happened.
Below the platform, the electronic board still displayed the last train at 4:17. The white paint had faded, but at the exact center of the tiled floor was a wet handprint.
Tung crouched down.
“Is this yours?”
“No.”
“Hers?”
Minh An looked at his friend.
Tung froze. His brows drew tightly together, as if he had just heard himself say something he didn’t understand.
“Who is she?”
“Lam.”
A light on the platform suddenly went out.
Tung raised a hand to his temple.
“I have a headache.”
“Are you remembering something?”
“No.”
“Try.”
“I am trying.”
Tung closed his eyes. His breathing grew ragged. Then his fingers clenched around Minh An’s sleeve.
“There was a girl.”
Minh An stood motionless.
“Where?”
“In the water.”
Tung spoke very slowly, as if each word were being hauled up from the bottom of a well.
“There was a tunnel. You were on the other side of the door. She told me not to let you cross.”
Minh An didn’t dare breathe.
“I held you back.”
“What happened next?”
Tung opened his eyes. Panic appeared in them—the panic of someone who had just seen a room that should never have existed.
“You crossed anyway.”
A train echoed from the end of the tunnel.
“And then?”
“Then…”
Tung looked down at his own hand as if he didn’t recognize it.
“You came back. But the person who came back wasn’t you.”
Minh An heard water dripping behind him.
He turned.
A thin outline was appearing on the concrete wall. It wasn’t a door. It was only a rectangular glass frame, reflecting a brighter, cleaner station inside.
Lam stood on the other side.
She wasn’t looking at Minh An.
She was looking at Tung.
Tung backed away, his face gone pale.
“She…”
Lam pressed one finger to her lips.
Minh An stepped closer to the glass.
“Lam.”
She closed her eyes. Behind her, a clock hanging on the wall began to run backward.
Tung looked over Minh An’s shoulder.
“Who is she?”
Lam opened her eyes. Her lips moved, but this time no sound came through.
Minh An read the words.
Don’t let him remember.
The glass went dark.
In the reflected blackness, Minh An could no longer see Lam. He could only see Tung standing beside him, one hand gripping his shoulder, exactly as in the old memory.
Tung looked at his hand, then let go.
“Minh An,” he said, his voice hoarse, “I don’t think she’s afraid of you.”
“Then what is she afraid of?”
Tung looked at the glass, which had turned back into a wall.
“She’s afraid I’ll remember what I did.”
A drop of water fell onto the station floor.
Where it touched the ground, a line of blue-ink handwriting appeared:
THE ARCHIVE ROOM IS WAITING.