Treatment

 The Red Lift

It is a gloomy afternoon with a hint of melancholy. The bustling street is filled with people and moving vehicles. The streetlights gradually illuminate the road that Bao Duy, a high school student, is walking on. It seems like he has had a long day at school. However, the young man cannot yet return home to rest. At this moment, he slowly takes out a small piece of paper from his pocket pant, on the white paper with the written content: The address is abcx XDC,12.

A few moments later, Bao Duy continues walking and stops in front of an old apartment building. There are very few cars passing by, and the bustling shops from earlier are no longer there, indicating that this place is quite far from the city. He enters the building and walks straight to the elevator in front of him. After stepping into the elevator,. It has been a long time since he came back here. When he left, Duy was just a 7-year-old boy. He hesitates between the 4th and 5th floors and then decides to press the number 5 button after a few seconds. The elevator starts going up, and "ting", the doors slowly open. Duy steps out and begins to search for his old home. Holding the key, he tries to open the doors that look familiar, but none of them are correct. There is a hint of disappointment on Duy's face as he reluctantly returns to the elevator. Suddenly, the elevator opens without him pressing any button. Inside the elevator, there is a strange woman in a tight scarlet red dress and a large round black hat that covers her face. Then Duy notices the necklace she is wearing. It's a black pearl necklace, isn't that what his mother asked him to retrieve? It's his mother's necklace, why is she wearing it? There is something unusual about this woman that makes Bao Duy shudder and sends chills down his spine.

Suddenly, his mind flashes back to a memory. Somehow, it includes the presence of that woman. Although it's very vague and not clear anymore, it's enough for Duy to recognize it as an image of his father and this woman embracing each other. It turns out that this is the dark memory of his father's affair, which left a mental scar and haunted Duy. Fear and panic take over, and he starts running down the stairs. However, when he reaches the 4th floor, the elevator doors open again, and the woman appears once more. Duy continues to run, and those fragments of memories keep reappearing and tormenting his mind. The relentless echo ‘ting' of the elevator's opening haunted him, revealing the crimson-clad figure on every floor, weaving a sinister pattern that mirrored a painful past. When he reaches the ground floor and has run out of options, his limbs weaken, his body is soaked in sweat, and tears of fear stream down his face. Unable to do anything else, Duy musters up the courage to ask the woman, "I... Do we know each other?"

There is a dreadful silence that feels like it's squeezing the young man's heart. Then the woman slowly tilts her head up, looks at him, and smiles eerily.