Chapter 3 — Room 404 Sea View

The elevator log was taken from the technical warehouse, a hardcover notebook with rotten corners, handwritten by many different people over the years. Nhi flipped through each page in chronological order, looking for the day the landslide occurred. The last line before the window stops completely reads: “Floor 4 stop — 04:12 — abnormal load.”

She read it three times, took close-up photos of the handwriting, and then turned to the next pages. Drum. There were no records after that, although the hotel still operated for another three weeks before officially closing to deal with the aftermath of the landslide.

Vu said the elevator at that time only served the hotel, with no additional floors programmed into the official control system. Nhi asked why abnormal loads were recorded by room instead of by floor, which was the standard recording of every elevator maintenance log she had seen in her career.

Mr. Tu explained that employees often use room codes to record the location of goods when transporting supplies, an unofficial but common practice in the industry. But code 404 was not on the hotel's official room list, something he admitted he could not explain.

“So someone used a non-existent room code to write into the official log,” Nhi said, writing and speaking out loud to confirm the logic for herself. “That means the code exists in the person writing it, even though it doesn't exist on the hotel paperwork.”

Dat, a local reporter, arrived at the hotel mid-morning after hearing about the restoration project from a source in the city committee. He carried an old leather briefcase, inside was an old photo of the fourth floor hallway, including a person standing in front of a covered door. The photo quality was blurry but clear enough to distinguish the shape.

The person in the photo is Nhi's mother.

Nhi held the photo, her hands were shaking slightly even though she tried to maintain a calm appearance according to her professional habits. Nhi recognized the coat and bird-shaped hairpin her mother still wore, an item she had seen in a box of family memorabilia kept many years after the disappearance.

“Where did you get this photo?” she asked, her voice trying to stay even.

"My cousin, Son, is one of three workers missing when the embankment collapsed," Dat replied, sitting down in the chair opposite, his eyes serious. "My family keeps many photos that have never been published, partly because we don't know what they mean, and partly because we're afraid of reopening old stories with local authorities."

“What is my mother doing there?”

“I don't know,” Dat replied honestly. “But the photo was taken about two hours before the landslide, according to the time stamp on the original film that my family still has.”

Nhi wanted to get the original for independent appraisal, but Dat did not hand it over immediately, only showing her the scan with the date and time displayed in the lower right corner, explaining that the original was the only remaining family asset related to Son, and he needed time to discuss with relatives before deciding.

“I understand,” Nhi said, although she couldn't hide her impatience. "But if you agree, I would like to invite a photo restoration expert to examine and confirm the time it was taken and the authenticity of the photo. This is beneficial for both parties."

Dat considered for a moment then nodded, saying he would ask Son's mother's opinion before officially answering.

Vu remeasured the location in the photo by comparing identifiable architectural details — window frames, ceiling moldings, hallway proportions. The door in the photo located at the end of the seaward corridor, right where the new digitized drawing placed room 404, with no more than half a meter deviation from the calculated location.

“The location matches,” he said, placing the drawing next to the printed photo for visual comparison. “It's not a coincidence.”

Nhi asked Mr. Tu why the door was covered. He said that after the landslide, the hotel owner at that time - Ms. Hanh's father - requested that a wall be erected to prevent curious people from wandering into the dangerous area, a reason that sounds reasonable on the surface but does not explain why the number 4 was shaved in half before the wall was erected.

Mrs. Hanh, when asked directly during the progress meeting that afternoon, denied that her family knew Nhi's mother had been there. She said that day the hotel was in complete chaos, everyone was running to find relatives or colleagues, no one had time to carefully record what was happening.

“You don't remember anything about that night?” Nhi asked, trying to keep the question neutral and non-accusatory.

“I was sixteen years old at the time,” Mrs. Hanh replied, her tone somewhat defensive. "I remember the sirens, I remember my father shouting for everyone to evacuate. I don't remember the details of who was standing where."

Nhi did not accuse or force more questions when she saw that Mrs. Hanh showed signs of stress. She wrote in the construction site book, separating it into a new entry: "Mom was in front of door 404, two hours before the landslide, according to unconfirmed photos. The question is not where the door leads, but whether mom was trying to open or close it. Needed: photo examination, comparison of elevator logs, finding more witnesses."

Late that night, after everyone had left the construction site, Nhi stayed alone in the temporary office, reopening all the documents she had collected in three short days since discovering the first line 404 on the drawing. She arranged them chronologically on a whiteboard, using red string to connect relevant landmarks — a method she learned from a field investigation course in a conservation architecture training program, never thinking she would need to use for her own family.

The whiteboard gradually shows three main branches: the drawing branch, with rectangle 404 appearing and moving with each edit; The physical branch, with wooden siding, scraped numbers, and void space behind the wall does not match the original structural drawing; human branch, with her mother standing in front of the door two hours before the landslide, and an elevator log recording a room code that did not exist at the exact moment of the disaster.

She stepped back and looked at the entire board, trying to find a common ground that could connect all three branches without relying on speculation. Up to this point, everything was open to individual explanation — a software bug, an unusual construction decision, a chance photo taken before a big event. But when placed side by side, they formed a shape she couldn't ignore.

Her phone vibrated. Vu sent a message, attaching a new scanned file — the last page of the elevator maintenance log that he had just found in another document box, thought to have been lost for a long time. This page is not in the main book, it seems to have been separated and hidden separately.

The content of the page is brief, hastily written: "04:15 — no response. 04:18 — cut off the power source on the 4th floor as ordered." No signature, no stamp, just a number in the corner of the page that matches the code of the technical room on the ground floor.

Nhi read the words over and over again, feeling cold running through it Her spine was not filled with vague fear, but because she was now seeing a clear sequence of time: 04:12 the elevator stopped due to an unusual load, 04:15 there was no response from anyone, 04:18 the power on the fourth floor was cut off by order of an unnamed person.

She immediately called Vu, even though it was almost eleven o'clock at night. “Where did you find this page?”

“In the electrical records box on the technical floor, mixed with other maintenance tickets,” he replied, his voice still alert despite the late hour. “I was going to wait until tomorrow morning to report it, but I felt the content was important so I sent it right away.”

“Who has the right to order a power cut to one floor in such an emergency situation?”

“Usually the on-site operations manager, or the investor if present,” Vu replied after a short silence. “Need to check the list of personnel on duty that night.”

Nhi added a new branch to the whiteboard: who gave the order to cut off the power, and was that order given before or after knowing that someone was still on the fourth floor. She didn't write Mrs. Hanh's or her father's name on it, even though that question hung in her head for the rest of the night, waiting to be answered with evidence rather than conjecture.

Before going to bed, she sent a short email to the construction records company, attaching a photocopy of the page she had just found, requesting priority in processing the search request sent three days earlier. She also saved a separate copy to an external hard drive, separate from the project server system — a cautious habit she had recently developed since discovering data had been overwritten on digitized drawings.

She turned off the table lamp and looked out the window of her rented apartment, where the distant lights of the Hai Dang Hotel still glimmered on the dark horizon. She didn't know what else she would find out tomorrow, but for the first time since taking on this project, she felt like she was getting closer to a verifiable answer, instead of just wandering around in fragmented and uncertain memories.