The next morning, the sky was foggy, a gray curtain covering the city like a shroud slowly falling. Khoi put on a baseball cap, a black coat, and hurried out of the villa with an envelope in his pocket and a trembling line of words in his hand:

"Old book stall – Alley 127, Le Van Sy – looking for Huong."

Although he had lived in Saigon for most of his life, he had never paid attention to this small alley. It snaked through a row of old houses, moss-covered walls, like a dry vein under the skin of the city.

At the end of the alley, there was a simple book stall. No sign, just stacks of yellowed paper books, placed under a slanted porch. An elderly woman sat behind the stall, wearing a faded sweater, her eyes small but sharp. She was reading a nameless book, the pages almost rotten.

"Are you... Huong?" Khoi asked, his voice a little hoarse.

She raised her head, looking at him for a long time.

"You are Khoi, right?" she said, as light as a breeze. "Linh said you would come one day."

He was stunned.

"She... left a letter for you?"

Mrs. Huong did not answer. She opened the small wooden drawer under the counter and took out a dark wooden box with three faint words engraved on the lid: "For Khoi."

Inside was an old envelope, sealed with red wax.

Linh's handwriting.

"If you read this letter, it means I could not protect everything as I promised."

"I'm sorry for leaving without an explanation. But I cannot let them continue to use you as a tool of lies."

"You once asked me why I often looked up to the third floor. It was because I knew that place contained a past that you did not remember."

"I have a buried memory. That night, I did not kill anyone. But I witnessed it. And I... prevented it."

"That's why Mr. Nghia was afraid. That's why he created everything to separate you from the truth. He wasn't just afraid of losing you — he was afraid of losing the secret that had buried this whole family alive."

At the end of the letter was a small piece of paper, scribbled as if in a hurry:

"Don't trust anyone with the last name Nguyen in the family."

"But trust your own memories. Go find An."

"She's still alive."

Khoi dropped the letter, his hands shaking as if he had a fever. His heart was pounding, blood rushing to his ears like a pounding drum.

An? Still alive?

Everything around him was shaking. Rain started to fall. The bookshelf was getting wet as if the sky couldn't bear the pressure of the truth.

At the end of the chapter, in another scene, inside a quiet white room of a medical centre in Da Lat, an 8-year-old girl with short hair was doodling a house with three floors. On the page was a picture of a man standing in the dark.

The little girl looked up, her brown eyes as deep as water:

"Uncle Khoi is coming soon, Linh's mother. I dreamed of him."

A nurse stood outside the door looking in. Little did she know that the place she was working at was not just a hospital — but a place that contained the last piece of sin.