Chapter 4 — Room 404 Sea View

Mr. Tu brought the small cutting machine after Nhi asked for permission in writing, in accordance with the process requested by Ms. Hanh - all impacts on the structure must have technical proposals, safety plans, and confirmation signatures from both the chief engineer and the investor. The proposal was approved at 9:00 a.m., later than expected because Ms. Hanh requested to add a liability exemption clause if any damage occurred.

Vu supported the wooden wall with two temporary steel struts, ensuring the wall would not collapse suddenly when the outer layer of wood was removed. Dat stood outside and recorded the entire dismantling process with his own camera. According to the agreement, he would only use this material with the consent of the survey team and not post it prematurely.

Mr. Tu cut each line according to Vu's instructions. His hands were steadier than Nhi thought despite his old age. The layer of wood peeled off piece by piece, gradually revealing a narrow steel door, the surface covered with a thin layer of rust but still structurally intact. There are no external locks. The hinges turned inward, meaning the room had been opened from the hallway, not from the inside.

“What does the inward hinge mean?” Dat asked, lowering the camera a bit to see more clearly.

“The door is designed for people from the hallway to push in, not for people inside to push out,” Vu explained, his hand tracing the hinge line. “Suitable for a storage room, or a room where people need quick access from the outside in an emergency situation.”

The steel door has no traditional handle, only a rusty metal lever. Nhi wears gloves and tries to push the lever. It moved slowly, making the creaking sound of metal that had not been lubricated for a long time, then finally opened.

The air inside rushed out, carrying the smell of salt and old lime, a typical smell of long-term enclosed spaces near the sea. The room was less than ten square meters wide, with no windows in the conventional sense, but on the end wall was a small glass pane that looked out to the sea through a ventilation slot. The daylight filtering through created a faint streak of light on the dusty floor.

Nhi walked in first, the flashlight on her phone illuminating every corner of the room according to the scene inspection order she had learned - from ceiling to floor, from door to inside, recording continuously so as not to miss any detail.

On the floor there was a line of yellow paint leading from the door to the corner of the room, faded but still recognizable in shape — a straight line, about ten centimeters wide, like the type of paint used in industrial or technical areas. An empty rescue box lay under a thick layer of dust at the end of the paint line, the lid peeled off at one corner. Nhi recognized the station's symbol printed on the lid - a stylized lighthouse, the same symbol she had seen on her mother's old uniform in the few family photos she had kept.

Vu examined the wall with a structural detector, moving slowly along all four sides of the room, recording data on a tablet. The room is not part of the main load-bearing structure of the building; It was added after the hotel was built, using an independent steel frame system anchored to the exterior wall, an additional construction technique that is not uncommon but always requires separate documents that this project never had.

“Not the living room,” he said, tapping on the steel wall to hear the distinctive hollow echo of the light structure. “It could be a warehouse, attached later by a frame system not connected to the main foundation.”

Mr. Tu stood at the door, Don't go completely inside. He looked at the rescue box and then turned away, a reaction Nhi noticed but didn't ask right away. She let him have time, continuing her measuring work before returning.

“Have you ever been here?” she asked, her voice gentle.

Mr. Tu nodded slowly, his eyes still avoiding looking directly at her. “Brought a stretcher in once,” he said, his voice hoarse. “After that, I was told to keep it quiet and not tell anyone.”

“Who asked?”

He did not answer that question. He just stood still, his hands clasped together, as if he was struggling between keeping an old promise and facing what was being revealed before his eyes.

Dat, still holding the camera, found a rotten piece of rope lying curled up in the corner of the room near the rescue box. The rope was frayed but the knot was still intact. On the rope there is a sea rescue knot, a special type of knot used to pull people in emergency situations on the water, not a normal knot that everyone knows how to tie.

Nhi looked at the knot of the rope, feeling something familiar rise in her memory - not clear, just a feeling of the movement of her hand, a lesson she had received as a child. She knew her mother had taught her how to tie that knot, some afternoon at the beach but she couldn't remember the exact year.

Mrs. Hanh arrived late, stood outside the door looking in, her face turned pale when she saw that the entire room had been completely opened. She asked to stop everything immediately because of the risk of wall collapse, citing a clause in the contract about construction site safety.

Vu pointed out that the room had been standing strong for eighteen years without any signs of structural weakness according to the data he had just measured, and that stopping the survey now would only leave records incomplete, not addressing the real safety issue. “It needs a full safety survey, we can't continue to hide it,” he said, his voice firm but not harsh.

Nhi placed the rescue box on a temporary table set up right in the hallway, carefully opening the lid with specialized gloves. The inside was empty, but when I turned the box over to check the bottom, a piece of paper was stuck to the metal underneath thanks to moisture accumulated over the years. On the piece of paper were the two digits 04 and an arrow pointing to the sea. The ink was blurred but still readable.

Room 404 does not have a window view of the ocean the way a typical hotel room does. It looks through a narrow gap, a view for people who need to monitor the sea surface while waiting for a rescue signal, not for sightseeing.

Mrs. Hanh, standing outside the door, looked at the piece of paper in Nhi's hand for a long time before speaking, her voice was less harsh than before. “I need to review everything you found,” she said. “Not to prevent it, but because I never knew clearly what lay behind that wooden wall.”

Nhi looked at her, trying to judge whether this was a sincere admission or a tactical step back under pressure from Vu. She decided to give her a chance, inviting her to come in and see for herself, keeping a safe distance according to the agreed procedure.

Mrs. Hanh walked in slowly, her eyes glanced over the yellow paint line, the lifeguard box, then stopped at the glass slit overlooking the sea. She stood there for a long time, saying nothing, her arms folded across her chest as if hugging herself.

“My father once mentioned an 'extra room' on the fourth floor,” she said finally, her voice quiet. "I always thought it was the laundry room. You never made it clear, and I never asked carefully, because every time you mentioned the fourth floor, your face changed color."

“Do you have any of your father's documents from that period?” Nhi asked, trying to keep her tone neutral, not questioning.

"There are some boxes of documents I have never opened, stored in the family's private warehouse," Ms. Hanh replied, her eyes avoiding looking directly at Nhi. "I will look for it again, but it takes time. Some documents related to the family lawyer, I'm not sure I have the right to make public."

Vu recorded this promise in the survey minutes, reading each sentence aloud for Ms. Hanh to confirm before signing, a professional habit to avoid any misunderstandings or denials later. Mrs. Hanh signed, her hand shaking slightly as she put the pen down on the page.

After Mrs. Hanh left, Dat turned off the camera and sat down on the doorstep, his face clearly showing the fatigue that had accumulated throughout the morning. “I didn't expect things to go this far,” he said. “I came here intending to write an article about the restoration project, not thinking I would be standing in the very room my cousin might have lived in.”

Nhi sat down next to him, both of them looking out the small window, where a strip of afternoon light was filtering through, shining on the faded yellow paint on the floor.

“I didn't expect it either,” she said. “But now that I'm here, the only thing that matters is finding the truth, wherever it leads.”

Mr. Tu, who had been standing quietly outside the door throughout the conversation, finally spoke, his voice trembling slightly. "I kept quiet for eighteen years because I thought I was protecting someone. Looking at you today, I'm not sure I was right."

No one answered him immediately. The small room, with its yellow paint, empty first aid box and slit glass overlooking the ocean, stood among them all like a silent witness that had waited for nearly two decades to speak out the only way it could — through the remaining evidence.