They built the lanterns for people who still had someone to walk with.
That’s what Ông Lạc thought every evening, sitting on the bamboo stool just inside the front gate—where he could watch without being seen. The tourists floated by in pairs, hands brushing, eyes wide at every colored light like children at Tết.
He didn’t hate them. He just envied the company.
His house had three rooms and four chairs, but no one had sat at his table in over a year. His wife had passed five rainy seasons ago. His son worked in Hồ Chí Minh City, too busy for phone calls that lasted more than two minutes. His daughter married a man in Seoul and sent money monthly, as if that softened silence.
He told them he was fine.
He told them he still walked to the market.
He didn’t tell them that the vendors only spoke to him when they had change to break.
Once, he used to carve wooden toys—horses, dragons, spinning tops. His hands still remembered the motion, but no children came to buy anymore. That stall had been packed away and forgotten, like the sandals he hadn’t worn since his knees gave out.
Sometimes he spoke aloud, just to break the weight in the room.
“Lạc à, ông mày chưa chết đâu nha,” he said once to the gecko on the ceiling. I’m not dead yet, boy.
The gecko blinked and ran.
He tried going to the river once, where people released paper lanterns with wishes. But he had no one to wish for, and no one to wish with. So he came home, boiled tea he didn’t drink, and sat in the dark—waiting not for death, but for something smaller: a knock, a voice, even the rustle of mail that wasn’t a bill.
At 7:00 p.m., the music from the cafes began. Foreign songs, sometimes Vietnamese love ballads redone in jazz. They passed through his open window like memories he hadn’t invited. He didn’t cry. He hadn’t in years. But sometimes, as he turned off the radio and lay back on the floor mat, he would say aloud:
“Mai, nếu có người gõ cửa, mình sẽ mở.” If someone knocks tomorrow, I’ll open the door.
He said it like a ritual. Because even the most forgotten person still hopes someone remembers how to knock.
