Chapter 7 — Room 404 Sea View

Nhi found the hand-drawn drawing in an old map tube of her mother's, stored at the bottom of the toolbox her mother left behind, something she had carried with her for many years moving house without ever opening it to check carefully. It is a hotel floor plan, with no room numbers, only colored lines marking emergency exits and rescue equipment locations, simple drawings but accurate in scale.

A blue line leads from the fourth floor to a small rectangle at the end of the hallway towards the sea, right at the location of room 404. The drawing is so similar to a modern computer drawing that Nhi doubts herself — whether she unconsciously copied an image she saw as a child, then thought she discovered it on her own as something completely new.

Linh, when called to see the drawing, said her mother used to teach Nhi to draw simple floor plans when she was young, a game they often did in the evenings when she brought work home. Maybe Nhi saw this original drawing a long time ago, remembered it at a deep level of memory, and then thought she discovered it herself while working on the project's digitized drawings.

“I don't remember ever seeing this drawing,” Nhi said, her voice somewhat confused.

“Memories don't always have to be remembered to have an impact,” Linh replied, her younger sister's voice carrying a familiar professional caution. “That's what I was worried about from the beginning.”

Nhi called the person in charge of archiving at the current marine station, introduced herself and the purpose of the call, and asked to compare this hand drawing with the official records if still kept. The file that year contained a map of the marine station's rescue warehouse that had been used, the person in charge confirmed by phone, but the room number listed there was 404-B, not 404 as shown on the hotel drawing.

Vu, when Nhi recounted this detail, explained that the letter B is often used in technical documents to indicate an annex or extension of a main space, not an independent room according to the hotel's usual numbering method. It is possible that the same symbol was shortened when copied to the hotel drawing, losing the important suffix in the process.

Dat found the name 404-B in the station's equipment list, which he obtained a copy of through an old source in the local press. There was a recorded transmitter placed in storage at the beginning of that year's hurricane season, but there was no record of returning the device after use, a gap in the records that lasted until the day the marine station was officially relocated from the hotel.

Nhi and Vu returned to room 404, carrying high-power flashlights and a folding ladder to carefully inspect the ceiling, where they had only briefly surveyed before. An old electrical outlet mounted near the corner of the ceiling still has clear burn marks around the outlet, enough to run a small-capacity signal generator for a short time. The cable leading from the outlet, toward the roof, was cut near the ceiling, in the same neat cut as the signal light cable they had found earlier.

“Two different cables, but cut the same way,” Vu said, comparing two pieces of wire placed side by side on the desk. “It is possible that the same person, or the same director, cut both in the same batch.”

Linh, sitting with the group in that afternoon's meeting at Nhi's invitation to get a psychological perspective, advised Nhi to stop if this investigation was worsening old memories, causing more damage instead of healing. Nhi said she didn't want to using the search for family secrets as a substitute for the real psychotherapy she should have undergone a long time ago.

“You don't need to prove that your mother is still alive in my memory,” Linh said, her younger sister's voice gentle but straightforward. “You don't have to have all the answers to be allowed to be sad about your mother.”

“I just need to know what mom did that night,” Nhi replied, her voice steady. “Not to prove anything to anyone, but so that you no longer have to live with an unnamed void for the rest of your life.”

They agreed to meet with a historical archivist and a trauma psychologist at the same time next week, so that both perspectives — the verified physical facts and Nhi's subjective memories — could be juxtaposed fairly, without one swallowing the other up in the process of understanding.

At the bottom of her mother's hand-drawn drawing, in the bottom right corner, there was an arrow pointing straight out to sea, with no accompanying explanation, just a straight line drawn with a shaky brushstroke that was different from the solidity and neatness of the other lines on the same sheet of paper — as if it had been added later, in a hasty or anxious moment that Nhi had no way of knowing for certain when it happened.

She brought the drawing to meet a historical document archivist the next morning, a woman named Mrs. Yen, who worked at the provincial library, specializing in restoring and assessing the age of old documents. Ms. Yen carefully examined the type of paper, ink, and folds left on the drawing under a specialized magnifying glass.

“This paper was produced about twenty years ago,” Ms. Yen said, taking notes on the appraisal form. "Regular ink, not a special fade-resistant type, suitable for office supplies of that period. The main drawing was done once, but the arrow in the lower corner was clearly added later, with a different type of pen, with different hand pressure."

“Is there any way to accurately determine the time gap between two drawings?” Nhi asked.

“It's not exact to the day,” Ms. Yen replied, “but based on the oxidation level of the ink, I estimate that the arrow was added shortly before the paper was put away, maybe just a few days or weeks.”

Nhi recorded the results of the assessment, feeling that a new piece of the puzzle had just been placed in the right place in the picture that was gradually taking shape. If the arrow had been added just before her mother put the drawing away, perhaps it was a warning sign, a hasty note about something she had just discovered or worried about, shortly before the landslide.

In the afternoon, she met with the trauma psychologist according to the appointment Linh had previously arranged, the first meeting in a series of sessions expected to last several weeks. The psychologist, a middle-aged man named Doctor Hoang, did not immediately ask about the landslide, but started with questions about her current job, about how she sleeps, about how she reacts when she sees the sea every day.

“Do you feel scared when you stand near the glass window overlooking the ocean in room 404?” he asked, his voice calm, nonjudgmental.

Nhi thought for a moment before answering. “It's not really scary,” she said. “It's like a feeling of waiting for something that hasn't happened yet, even though I know with my mind that there's nothing waiting.”

Doctor Hoang took notes, did not comment further, just continued asking about her recent dreams The image of her mother standing at the end of the hallway, the sound of the ruler falling, she could still hear clearly even though she had been awake for a long time. Nhi recounted every detail, feeling a small sense of relief that someone was finally listening without trying to confirm or deny the authenticity of what she remembered, simply acknowledging them as part of the experience she was going through.

“There is a useful way of thinking,” Dr. Hoang said at the end of the session, closing his notebook. "Memory and evidence do not have to confront each other. They can be two different paths to the same truth, or to different parts of the same larger truth. Your task is not to choose which to believe, but to let both exist together, tested together in their own way."

Nhi nodded and recorded that statement on her phone before leaving the clinic, not to use in the project file, but to keep for herself. On the way home, she stopped by the construction site office and saw that the lights were still on even though it was past normal working hours.

Vu is sitting alone at the table, completing a preliminary structural report on room 404 to send to the survey team tomorrow morning. He looked up when he saw her walk in and asked how the meeting with Dr. Hoang was.

“Helpful,” Nhi replied, sitting in the chair opposite. “He said memory and evidence don't have to compete.”

“Sounds reasonable,” Vu said, nodding. “Just like how I work — measurements don't negate an experienced engineer's intuition, they just help that intuition be tested before it becomes a decision.”

They sat for a while longer, looking over the report Vu had just completed, before Nhi left the office to go home to rest, preparing for a new working day with many questions still hanging in the air without any final answers.