Duy was thirteen, top of his class in Math, Literature, and English. His notebooks were neat, his uniform was ironed, and his teachers always smiled when they saw his name on the roster. He lived in a four-story house in District 10, just far enough from the main road to hear traffic as a whisper. The walls were tiled in marble, the staircase curved like a dragon’s spine, and the air-conditioning always hummed like it was hiding something.

On paper, Duy was perfect. But papers didn’t record quiet griefs. Not the kind that was built in corners. Not the kind that echoed in hallways when the lights went out.

He discovered the attic during Tết break, while looking for old electric fireworks. The door was hidden behind the wooden panel above the third-floor bathroom, painted the same white as the ceiling. No one had mentioned an attic before. But it opened easily.

Inside, it was hot and dry. Not dusty, just still. The space was smaller than it should’ve been, slanted roof and no windows. Only one naked bulb hung from a wire. A wooden beam stretched across the ceiling. Someone had carved a name into it, but the letters had faded into soft scratches.

He didn’t think about it at first. But the next night, when everyone was asleep and the house dipped into that strange post-midnight silence, he came back.

He brought an old skipping rope. It’s held. But the chair wobbled and tipped before he could lift his feet. His chin hit the floorboards. He told his parents it was a nosebleed.

The second time, he tried the sash from his Ao Dai. It unraveled midair like silk refusing to participate. The third time, he bought a climbing rope from a sports store near Lê Hồng Phong street. He watched the tutorials. He measured the beam. He calculated his own weight. It should have worked.

But just as he stepped off the chair, the knot slipped. Again. As if someone had untied it at the last moment.

Then he heard it.

The sound wasn’t a voice, not exactly. It was the sound the house made when you weren’t supposed to be awake to hear it. A click. A breath. A door shifting where no door should be.

Duy looked up.

There, on the beam, sat a boy. Thin. Barefoot. Wearing a torn white school shirt with the faded red scarf. His face was expressionless, but his eyes… they stared too long. As if they weren’t looking at Duy but through him, searching for the softest part of his mind.

“You shouldn't be here,” the boy said.

His voice was low and strange, as if echoing from behind a wall of water. His Vietnamese was perfect, but the accent was off. Older, northern maybe. Or older than that.

Duy froze. “You’re… real?”

The boy smiled, slightly. Not warmth—more like recognition.

“I live here,” he said. “You just forgot.”

Duy stepped down. His knees shook, not from fear but from the aftershock of almost.

“Did you… do it?” he asked.

The ghost tilted his head, slowly. His neck cracked in a way that felt too deliberate.

“Yes,” he said. “And now I’m here.”

“Forever?”

The boy didn’t nod. He didn’t have to.

“I thought it would be silence,” the ghost said after a long pause. “But it’s just this. Over and over. The knot. The fall. The rope holding. And then... not.”

The bulb above them flickered violently, casting their shadows like long tongues across the slanted walls.

“Why stop me?” Duy asked. He meant it sincerely. Not accusing. Not hopeful. Just confused.

The ghost stepped down from the beam. His feet didn’t touch the floor, but dust rose anyway.

“Because you still know who you are.”

Duy blinked. “What do you mean?”

“I forgot. My name. My school. My mother’s face. I only remember the moment I let go. That’s the only part that stayed.”

Outside, a motorbike passed. The sound was sharp, brief, real.

The attic suddenly felt smaller, like a throat closing.

“If you insist on doing it, you’ll forget too,” the ghost said. “And you’ll stay. With me. Forever.”

Duy dropped the rope. It coiled like a question at his feet.

He didn’t run. He didn’t cry. He just stood there as the ghost stepped back into shadow, becoming less shaped, more memory. The attic light flicked once more, then held steady.

Duy didn’t tell anyone. But he never went back up there.

Instead, he studied harder. Smiled at his mother more often. Not because things were fixed, but because they were not. And that was enough.

Some nights, he would lie awake and think about the attic. Not the rope. Not the ghost.

Just the fact that the door never opened again.

Not even when he knocked.