As for Arthur, he was quite happy with his lesson for a whole lot of different reasons—one being able to entertain himself with something new and fun (which is challenging himself to learn a new language) and the second one being to get to know Duy Anh better.

This was a side he had never seen of him before. And he liked that.

Duy Anh had always been patient and kind with him, that was for sure, but he had never seen him in such an admirable way. Duy Anh was an attentive teacher who took the time to listen to him and teach him in great details. In a way, it made the younger man look a lot more responsible and adult-like. His maturity really shined through his words and saint-like patience towards Arthur’s silly questions and mistakes.

During the lesson, Duy Anh also used a lot of examples and ordinary situations in order to teach Arthur more easily and so, Arthur learned that Duy Anh was born in Nam Dinh (1), had two older sisters and liked sweet foods. Meanwhile, Duy Anh learned that Arthur had traveled a lot, also had an older sister and liked something about shrimp and chicken a lot (well, it was hard for Arthur to describe what shrimp crackers and Korean fried chicken was).

When they were done, they moved to the main room to have a snack and some tea together and practice Arthur’s new skills, until it was dinner time. By then, the two had already grown much closer to each other—to Binh’s not-so-hidden exasperation.

The night quickly fell and the neighboring streets got noisier and livelier, which was quite unusual from what Arthur could have observed those last few days. An important event or festival might be coming up, he thought then. Since he didn’t know what was the current day (or at least if it matched with the one Truc had given him), it was hard for him to tell what might come up.

Duy Anh seemed also curious about the noise, as he kept glancing outside—even if he wasn’t able to see much due to the trees and walls. Binh quickly noticed the puzzled look on both of the men’s face and gave them the answer they were looking for: “The men are coming back from the West” she said, “they’ll probably arrive to the city tomorrow morning or so.”

Hearing this, Duy Anh had a complicated expression on his face as his hand froze mid-air. When the cup he was holding onto finally touched his lips, he only whispered a low “hm”. Arthur didn’t want to ask much about it so he stayed quiet and acted as if he hadn’t seen nor heard anything.

Even though it had already been a few days, Arthur still didn’t know anyone that well yet. That could seem pretty obvious but Arthur was the type to get acquainted to others fast and so he was quite bothered by the fact that he still felt fairly distant with everyone still.

He had thought that it would be easier to get to know Duy Anh, Binh and Lien since they were living together but they all were so busy that all he knew about them were their schedule and maybe their preferences in clothing. He didn’t know much about their background and today was probably the day he had learned the most about Duy Anh—which made him very happy.

The more he noticed Duy Anh’s many facial expressions, the more he realized he still had to learn about him though. That was one of the things he found impressive about Binh: despite being grumpy, she read the room and other’s thoughts really well. It was to the point where it felt like Binh and Lien could communicate with a single glance while Binh was also able to see what was in everyone’s mind. It was both scary and amazing.

The four of them had, as usual, a fairly calm and quiet dinner and Duy Anh had returned to his usual self—softly smiling whenever he met eyes with anyone around the table.

This time, Arthur carefully arranged his notes in his sketchbook. Looking back, they looked messy and were full of small child-like doodles—sketches of things Arthur didn’t know nor remembered the name of, so that Duy Anh could teach him those. They were clumsy but always brought an amused smile to Duy Anh’s face whenever he saw them. No matter the time and place, body language and drawings were universally understandable and could always lead to some funny situations.

Arthur didn’t mind the awkwardness as long as he got the message across and made the other comfortable enough to open up or want to converse with him. He was still glad he at least knew at few basic words though.

He read his notes one last time before drifting off to sleep.

That night, he saw himself in the bottom of the well again. As always, it was dark and the only source of light was the moon’s. Although it was still chilling and creepy, Arthur got used to the place. It was always the same wet yet shallow well, in the middle of a clear yet windy night. He knew what to expect and repeated each step according to previous events: looking up and around to observe the place, finding the glistening item, try to touch it (and successfully doing it, once in a while), getting interrupted by voices and a decaying body.

But each time, a detail will be off or take him by surprise. This time, the corpse had grabbed his wrists when he inspected the small gem he had retrieved from the mud. This time, the corpse wasn’t just a bunch of rotting flesh and bones. A pair of thin, pale hands had reached out from below. They were cold and wet, but soft, almost human-like...or rather, still alive. He never got to see or feel the whole body appear like the other times.

The feeling took him aback. Something about a still living and breathing being laying trapped under the sticky mud was alarming and nauseating.

It didn’t help that all of his dreams always felt vivid enough for him to always think that they were reality. He had tried anything to wake up from it before or realize that it was all a dream, following any tip that he had seen online before: pinching himself, closing his eyes and imagining to have superpowers, looking at his hands expecting a missing or extra finger but nothing worked. He still remained trapped there (with all five fingers on each hand).

The only thing that had changed was the corpse’s questions and appearance. As time passed, it appeared more and more vividly and so did its voice. On that night however, it stayed silent. Only the screeching of the wind could be heard until the hand slowly retracted back into the mud, only leaving the high-pitched whistles echoing into Arthur’s ears.

When Arthur drifted back to sleep and was surrounded by nothingness, he thought he had heard a very faint, distant voice.

One that told him “find me”.