Chapter 6: The House with No Name
1207 Words
The morning arrived quietly, blanketed in a soft gray mist that turned the city into a watercolor painting. Selina opened her curtains and stood by the window, a cup of black coffee in her hand, watching clouds drift lazily above the skyline of Ho Chi Minh City. It wasn’t the kind of morning that demanded decisions—but maybe it was the kind that invited them.
Her phone buzzed.
Damien: “There’s something I want to show you. No plans. No expectations. Just… come see.”
Selina read the message twice. She didn’t respond immediately. Instead, she took another sip of coffee and stared at her reflection in the window—half her face shadowed, the other lit by cloud-muted sunlight. After a pause that felt like a quiet permission, she replied:
Selina: “Send me the location.”
An hour later, Selina stepped out of a cab in District 2, where modern villas met aging French structures and wild vines swallowed forgotten gates. The address led her to a large, run-down colonial house hidden behind overgrown hedges and an iron gate.
Damien stood beside it, arms crossed, a soft grin tugging at the corners of his mouth.
“You look like you’re about to make an offer on a haunted mansion,” Selina quipped.
“Only if the ghost helps with plumbing,” Damien replied, then pushed open the gate.
They walked into the front garden—overgrown but not unsalvageable. Bougainvillea climbed the faded walls, and the air smelled of damp earth and old wood. Fallen leaves rustled beneath their shoes, and somewhere nearby, a bird called into the stillness.
“This was my grandfather’s house,” he said. “It’s been empty for over a decade. Everyone wants to sell it. I want to bring it back.”
Selina glanced around. The shutters were cracked, paint peeling. Yet there was something about it—the bones of the building still strong, the space echoing with potential.
“What do you want it to be?” she asked.
“A space for creativity. Workshops. Quiet gatherings. Maybe a co-op studio. Nothing fancy. Just real.”
“You’d need to gut half of it. Rebuild the load-bearing walls. Replace all plumbing. Electrical’s probably shot.”
He smiled. “That’s why I brought an architect.”
Selina shook her head but followed him through the creaking doorway.
Inside, the dust danced in the slanted sunlight like particles of memory. Each room seemed to hum with echoes—of old dinners, music, silence. Selina walked the halls with her hands lightly skimming walls, fingertips reading the story embedded in plaster and age.
Damien watched her quietly, letting her move through the space at her own pace. He didn’t fill the silence with chatter, and that made it easier to breathe.
In what had once been a grand salon, Selina finally spoke.
“This place isn’t dead. It’s just waiting for someone to see it again.”
Damien’s smile was quiet. “Like people sometimes?”
She met his gaze. “Exactly.”
They explored the rooms—old bedrooms with slanted ceilings, a narrow kitchen with a rusted stove still in place, a small courtyard with a fountain choked by weeds. Yet there was a sacred quality to the ruin, as though the house was holding its breath, waiting for someone to choose it again.
They ended up on the second-floor balcony, seated on the cracked tiles, legs stretched out, two sandwiches between them that Damien had packed. The city below felt far away, muffled.
“I told my mom about you,” he said, unwrapping his sandwich.
Selina blinked. “Oh?”
“She asked what I saw in you.”
“And what did you say?”
“That you make sense of the chaos. That you don’t need anyone, but you don’t push people away either—not unless they demand too much.”
She was quiet for a long time. “You read me too well.”
“I try. I fail. I try again.”
Selina laughed softly, then turned serious. “You know it’s not going to be easy, right? My father won’t let go. Your family already thinks I’m a mistake. This”—she gestured between them—“isn’t the path of least resistance.”
“I’m not looking for easy,” Damien said, his voice calm. “I’m looking for real.”
And there it was—the truth. He wasn’t trying to mold her into something he could manage. He wanted to meet her exactly where she stood, no apologies required.
By afternoon, they’d gone room by room, sketching rough plans with chalk on old wooden floors. Selina suggested knocking out a wall to open up the space into a sunlit studio. Damien wanted to keep an ivy-covered doorway untouched.
“Every building needs its secret,” he said.
They disagreed on window shapes and lighting placement but agreed on one thing: this house would not be built to impress. It would be built to hold truth.
They found a hidden staircase leading to a tiny attic. Dust coated every beam, but the space was dry, its one window offering a view of the treetops. Selina stood there a long time.
“We could turn this into a reading loft,” she said. “Or a writing room.”
“Or a place to disappear for a few hours,” Damien added.
She turned to him. “You always wanted to disappear?”
“No. Just wanted a place where I could be invisible without feeling forgotten.”
Selina nodded. She understood that better than he knew.
Back at her apartment that evening, Selina unrolled a fresh sheet of drafting paper. She drew the house—not as it had been, but as it could be. Then, slowly, she began sketching new elements: a curved skylight, a courtyard garden, a bench that overlooked a corner Damien had called “the listening room.”
At the bottom, she wrote: A place with no masks.
She stared at it, heart full and unsettled. The drawing wasn’t for work. It wasn’t for her portfolio. It was for her.
That night, she called her mother.
“Did you know Dad used to draw?” she asked.
Uyen was quiet for a moment. “He gave it up the moment it stopped being profitable.”
Selina let that sink in. “I visited a house today. Old. Tired. Beautiful.”
Uyen’s voice softened. “So are many things worth loving.”
Selina whispered, “I think I’m going to help bring it back.”
“I hope you do.”
Later, her phone lit up.
Damien: “I can already see it. The cracked walls. The sun pouring in. You, standing in the middle of it, finally at peace.”
Selina smiled. Her reply was simple:
Selina: “Let’s build something that lasts.”
Damien: “Even if it breaks first?”
Selina: “Especially then.”
And for the first time in a long time, Selina felt like the blueprint she’d been drawing in her heart finally had a place to begin.
To Be Continued...
- Writer
