The end of the second semester of 9th grade was an exhausting affair. Hanoi was trapped in a heatwave that made the air feel like thick, humid wool, and the looming high school entrance exams—the "do-or-die" threshold—hung over every student like a guillotine.
"Enough with the mock tests," Jake had declared during lunch. He looked at Khôi and Nhi, who were currently drowning in a sea of algebra problems and English grammar drills. "My place. The workshop. We're building something for the three of us—something that doesn't involve a standardized answer key."
Khôi and Nhi, their eyes underlined with the dark circles of chronic sleep deprivation, didn't need much convincing. After a final, grueling cram session, the three of them trekked to the workshop. But they were met with a locked steel door. Uncle Quân's CNC shop, usually an open invitation to chaos, was hermetically sealed.
"Great," Khôi groaned, kicking a pebble into the gutter. "Your uncle's legendary workshop is a fortress, and we're locked out."
"Plan B," Jake shrugged. "My place. Maybe the spare key is tucked away in his room."
The search for that key was a masterpiece of teenage energy. They tore through the house like a small tornado. They tossed sofa cushions, rummaged through drawers filled with half-assembled circuit boards and oily rags, and even checked under the dusty carpets, but the key remained elusive. Hunger soon overtook their search, leading them to the kitchen. They scavenged for whatever they could find—cold rice, instant noodles, and the last of the chilled tea.
Jake dialed his uncle's number. The phone buzzed for a long, agonizing time before Quân's voice broke through, distorted by the deafening, rhythmic roar of industrial machinery in the background. "I'm in Thanh Trì, big order, won't be back until tomorrow," Quân yelled over the noise. "Order some food, stay out of trouble, and for the love of God, don't touch the lathe controls. I'm serious, Jake."
They grabbed a quick dinner at a roadside stall, the familiar taste of spicy noodles grounding them. With no school the next day, Jake saw the perfect opening to keep the distraction alive. "Stay the night," he suggested. Khôi was in immediately—his parents were used to his spontaneous sleepovers. Nhi, however, was hesitant. Her parents were the "check-in every hour" type, but they had a bizarrely soft spot for Uncle Quân—who, despite his gruff, unshaven, and vaguely bựa (bizarre) appearance, managed to charm every parent he met with his deadpan humor and an aura of "responsible adult" reliability.
One quick, overly polite call to Quân, and even Nhi's parents gave the green light.
By midnight, the house felt restless. The adrenaline of being "home alone" morphed into a need to walk off the stagnant energy of the day. "Let's go for a stroll," Jake proposed. The city streets were cooler now, bathed in the sickly orange glow of sodium-vapor streetlights and the faint, rhythmic hum of a city that never truly slept. They walked, chatting about the future—about which high school they'd pick, how they'd survive the entrance exams, and what life would look like in ten years, their voices weaving through the quiet, narrow alleys.
As they looped back toward the neighborhood, a bakery caught Jake's eye. It was open, which was statistically impossible for 2:00 AM in their district.
"Late-night snack?" Jake nudged his friends, his stomach giving a rebellious growl.
Inside, the store was eerily pristine. No bread was on display. There was no baker, no smell of yeast, just a sleek, metallic device sitting on the counter, glowing with a soft, pulsing violet light that felt completely out of place against the dim, yellowed walls of the shop.
Nhi shuddered, her instincts screaming. She grabbed Jake's sleeve. "Something is wrong here. It's too quiet, Jake. Let's go."
"Just a look," Khôi grinned, moving closer, his curiosity overriding his caution. "It's probably just some high-tech convection oven, right?"
Jake approached the device. Up close, it looked less like an appliance and more like an array of fiber-optic sensors fused into a hardened, industrial housing. He reached out, his fingers grazing the surface. It was freezing cold, unnervingly smooth. Nothing happened. It was a dead circuit.
Jake turned to leave, dismissing it as some failed prototype or high-end piece of art. But as he turned, he noticed a small indentation on the side of the housing—a circular slot that seemed to be waiting for something. Without thinking, he pressed his thumb against it, curious if it was a touch-sensitive interface.
Beep.
The sound wasn't a digital notification; it was a high-frequency, piercing screech that seemed to bypass their ears and vibrate directly in their skulls.
"Jake, stop!" Nhi screamed, her voice cracking with terror as the room began to blur.
It was too late. The light shifted from a soft, harmless violet to a violent, pulsating crimson. The air pressure in the room plummeted, the sudden vacuum snapping the glass display cases into a thousand shards. Then came the blast—a soundless shockwave that hit them like a physical wall, throwing them backward.
As the world dissolved into jagged streaks of white noise, Jake felt the floor fall away. He was pinned, his senses flickering out like a dying lightbulb. Through the haze of his failing consciousness, he looked at the center of the device. The surface of the machine was opening up like an origami puzzle, and from its core, a crimson light projected onto the ceiling—a perfect, glowing symbol of a lotus flower, intricate and deep as a fresh, wet wound.
The last thing he felt was a heavy, metallic coldness wrapping around his mind, and the sight of his friends sprawled on the ground, motionless, before the bakery dissolved into absolute darkness.