Everything at the company went on as usual that day. Lam Hy entered Henley Tower at seven in the morning, just as she had every other day for the past seven years. She worked at Minh Chau Publishing, a fairly unremarkable publishing company, but stable enough that she had never had to worry about her job.
Every day, she had a desk buried under documents and manuscripts, brief meetings that were never short on tension, and late nights heading home with a heavy briefcase. But today, when the lights along the basement corridor suddenly went out, everything felt different.
She had been working since the afternoon, as usual. When the clock struck one in the morning, the floor security guard texted to ask if she needed help. She thanked him and declined. She was used to this feeling—alone in a silent space, the cart rattling over cold concrete. After clearing away the old documents, Lam Hy pushed the cart toward the elevator. But when she passed the row of lights that were out at the end of the corridor, she suddenly stopped.
There, in the murky darkness, stood Tran Da Kham—the chairman of Ky Nguyen Group, a man she rarely saw outside important meetings. White dress shirt, sleeves rolled to the elbows, standing silently with his back against the concrete wall. There was nothing unusual about his appearance, yet something about him made Lam Hy uncomfortable.
Dim light spilled across his wrist, where there was a dark red streak. Lam Hy couldn’t explain the feeling, but part of her sensed that something was wrong. She couldn’t identify what it was. She only knew that the red mark wasn’t an ordinary injury.
She stood still for a moment, her eyes fixed on the red blood on his wrist, but exhaustion and stress kept her from asking herself whether she was overthinking things. It was probably just the hazy light, or her mind dulled by too many hours of work.
She didn’t step back. She kept pushing the cart toward the elevator. Tran Da Kham remained where he was, saying nothing. He didn’t move at all. Only his eyes followed her, as though he were waiting for something.
The first thing she noticed was the smell.
Faint metallic, mixed with the particular dampness of the basement—concrete, motor oil, and something that didn’t belong to either of those smells. It was only a passing trace. But that was how people’s noses worked: they identified something first and reported it to the brain afterward. By the time her brain processed it, she had already turned around.
He stood at the end of the corridor. Where the lights were out.
3:17 a.m. Henley Tower.
Lam Hy had stayed since the previous afternoon. Clearing her desk—or rather, picking things up and setting them back down, picking them up, setting them down, unable to put them in a box. Seven years she had worked here. The dictionary with its worn spine, the unfinished manuscript, the pen cup that, in reality, had never held pens. At one in the morning, the floor security guard had texted to ask if she needed help—he wanted to go home, she knew that—so she texted back that she didn’t, thanked him, and then spent nearly two more hours cramming everything into three cardboard boxes.
Three boxes. Seven years.
She had deliberately refused to think about that number.
The cart’s wheels clattered over the concrete floor. Rows of sickly yellow fluorescent lights cast patchy illumination over the motionless parked cars, and she pushed straight toward the elevator at the end of the corridor, head lowered, not looking to either side. She didn’t look into the dark corner on the left—the lights had been out since she came down here. Not because she was afraid of the dark. It was just three in the morning, she was alone, and looking into a dark place was a habit for people who wanted to scare themselves.
Then she smelled it.
She stopped.
Turned around.
He stood about ten meters away, his left hand braced against the wall. White dress shirt, sleeves rolled to the elbows. In the darkness, she couldn’t see his face—only his tall frame, broad shoulders, and the black smear on his wrist catching the distant spill of light.
Neither of them said anything.
For a long while.
Then he pushed himself away from the wall and walked toward the elevator. Toward her. His steps were slow and even—not slow in a relaxed way, but slow in the way each step consumed something he didn’t have much of left.
She didn’t step back. That was what she told herself. She stood still.
He passed her with just enough space between them not to touch, and as he went by, she smelled it more clearly—the smell of cold sweat and the faint metallic smell. This time, it wasn’t fleeting.
Blood.
The elevator chimed. The doors slid open.
He stepped inside and stood in the corner, leaning his back against the wall. His head hung slightly. He didn’t look back.
Lam Hy stood outside with three cardboard boxes and a cart.
Don’t get in. It was that simple. Wait for the next elevator. It would only take a minute; no one would die.
She pushed the cart inside.
The doors closed. Cold white LED lights overhead. Two square meters, two people, and the metallic smell had nowhere to escape at this hour. She pressed B2—her finger was a little stiff, not trembling exactly, just not as supple as usual. He didn’t press anything. She glanced over.
“Which floor?”
He didn’t answer right away. She had already considered the possibility that he would stay silent when he finally spoke.
“B1.”
His voice was low. Not hoarse, but heavy—heavy in the way a voice sounded when spoken through something, not exactly tired, not exactly anything else.
She pressed B1 for him, then stared straight at the floor panel. Her hand remained on the cart handle. In the elevator wall’s cloudy reflection, his figure appeared behind her—his left shoulder slightly lower than his right, his left hand pressed to his side, the posture of someone exerting himself to stand straight.
Under the white LED lights, his wrist was clearly visible.
It wasn’t one streak. There were several, layered over one another, running from the middle of his palm to his elbow. Too straight to be an accident. Too long to be unintentional.
Look away.
Look back.
Look away. Look at the ceiling. Look at the floor.
The elevator descended. Its steady hum filled the space between them, but not enough.
“You’re wondering whether you should ask.”
She startled, too late to pretend she hadn’t.
“I’m not—” She stopped. The sentence was meaningless. “I’m trying not to look.”
“Not successfully.”
There was no sarcasm in it. Just an observation, like reading the weather.
Lam Hy turned—not completely, only enough to look at him over her shoulder. He was still leaning against the wall, his head tipped a little farther back, eyes half-closed, like someone taking inventory of what he still had left in him and finding that the supply wasn’t enough.
“You need—”
She stopped there. She didn’t know what came next. Telling him he needed to go to the hospital would be both obvious and presumptuous. Telling him he needed her to call someone was impossible when she didn’t even know his name, and every other possible sentence sounded stranger than saying nothing.
He opened his eyes.
He looked straight at her—for the first time all night, really looked. His eyes were dark, but not dark in the mysterious way the manuscripts she edited liked to use for male leads. He was simply tired. But beneath that exhaustion, something was still awake, still watching, and she wasn’t sure how it was looking at her.
“Seven years.”
She didn’t understand. “What?”
“Three boxes.” His eyes dropped to the cart, then returned to her. “Seven years comes down to three boxes.”
The question was so strange that for the first few seconds she had no idea what to do with it. A stranger. The basement. Three in the morning. Blood on his hand. He was asking how she felt about cardboard boxes.
“You read my name tag.” It wasn’t an answer to his question, she knew that. She said it because she had just realized it—she was still wearing her Minh Chau Publishing name tag on her lapel, with her name and title.
“Lam Hy.” He read her name in an even voice. “Head of Editorial.”
“Formerly.” She didn’t know why she needed to correct that. “As of yesterday.”
He said nothing more. He looked up at the floor panel, his eyes half-closing again.
Ding. B2.
The doors opened. Lam Hy pushed the cart out—the wheels caught in the gap. She pulled, but they wouldn’t budge. She pulled harder, and the top box tilted—
“Hold still.”
He stepped out behind her and crouched to free the wheel. His left hand pressed against the elevator floor to steady himself, and she saw it—a drop landing on the cold metal floor. Dark, small, silent, as though the person who let it fall no longer had enough attention left to notice.
He didn’t look down.
The wheel came free. He straightened and wiped his palm against his pant leg. Then he looked at her.
“Next time, don’t ask about things when you don’t want to know the answer.”
She opened her mouth.
The doors closed.
Lam Hy drove out of the basement at 3:31 a.m.
Her left hand was on the steering wheel, her right resting on her thigh. She stared ahead through the windshield, still damp with condensation. Le Loi Street was deserted at this hour. A few trucks passed, their headlights smearing yellow across the asphalt.
Next time, don’t ask about things when you don’t want to know the answer.
She hadn’t asked anything. The statement made no sense.
At a red light, she stopped and opened her phone out of habit—checking her email before bed, a habit she hadn’t been able to break in seven years.
One new email. 11:57 p.m.
Regarding the takeover of Minh Chau Publishing House—core personnel.
Sender: Office of the CEO, Ky Nguyen Group.
Please report to the office on the 9th floor at 8:00 a.m. to meet directly with...
The light turned green.
The car behind her honked. She didn’t move.
Her eyes stopped on the final line—the name of the person she would meet tomorrow morning, the man who had bought seven years of her life with a contract, the man whose face she had never seen:
Tran Da Kham—CEO of Ky Nguyen Group.
The car behind her honked again, longer this time. More impatient.
She hit the gas.
She stared straight down the road, trying not to think about anything except the next traffic light. It didn’t work, because she had just remembered something—small, a mere detail, but it had lodged itself in her mind and refused to leave.
Through that entire elevator scene, she hadn’t mentioned the company’s name once. She had only said seven years, only said as of yesterday. Her name tag listed only her name and title.
He had known she worked at Minh Chau Publishing before she told him.
She tightened her grip on the steering wheel.
When had he known?