The Paper Lantern’s Promise

The summer I turned twelve, my mother signed me up for a special tutoring class in the old quarter of Hoi An. The class was held in a crumbling French colonial house that smelled of dust and frangipani. Our tutor, a gaunt woman named Miss Hien, promised to unlock our ‘inner potential’ through a series of nightly exercises. We were eight students, all from different schools, all desperate to pass the upcoming entrance exam for the elite Ly Thuong Kiet Academy.

The first night, Miss Hien gave each of us a small paper lantern. ‘Write your deepest fear on this,’ she said, her voice barely a whisper. ‘Then we will light them and release them into the river. Let the water carry your fear away.’ I wrote ‘failure’ on mine, and watched it float downstream with the others. A sense of relief washed over me, but it was short-lived. The next day, at school, I found a tiny scrap of paper in my backpack. On it was written ‘failure’ in the same red ink I had used. I shrugged it off as a coincidence.

But the occurrences escalated. Small objects would vanish and reappear in odd places. My favorite pen, which I had placed on my desk, turned up inside a locked drawer. A page from my textbook would be missing, only to reappear the next day with my own handwriting scribbled across it, spelling out cryptic messages like ‘it knows’ and ‘don’t trust the lantern.’ My classmates began to whisper about strange things happening at home too—their toothbrushes tasting of ash, their mirrors showing reflections a second too slow.

One evening, during a lesson on symbolism in Vietnamese poetry, Miss Hien paused and fixed her gaze on me. ‘The river remembers what we give it,’ she said. ‘And the lanterns, they are promises. When you light a paper lantern, you are making a contract. And contracts, my dear, are binding.’ She smiled, but her eyes were empty, like the black water of the Perfume River at night.

That night, I couldn’t sleep. I looked out my window and saw a procession of small lights moving along the riverbank. They were the lanterns, floating upstream, against the current. They clustered together at the old pier, forming a glowing mass. And in the center, I could swear I saw a figure—a distorted, dripping shape that resembled a student from our class, his head tilted at an unnatural angle.

I ran to the pier, driven by a fear I couldn’t name. The lanterns bobbed in the water, their paper now stained with dark, viscous drops. As I leaned closer, the surface of the river rippled, and a voice rose from the depths—not a human voice, but a symphony of whispers, overlapping and discordant. It spoke in fragments: ‘We are the forgotten assignments,’ ‘The tests we never finished,’ ‘The midnight oil burned, and the dreams we surrendered.’

Miss Hien appeared behind me, her silhouette against the lantern-light. ‘You see now,’ she said. ‘Every lantern is a soul we gave to the river. And the river, it feeds on them. It grows stronger with each promise broken. And it is hungry.’ She handed me a new lantern, blank this time. ‘You know what to do,’ she said. ‘Write your deepest fear. But be careful—this time, the river will keep it. And it will use it to keep you.’

I looked at the blank paper. My mind raced. My deepest fear? It wasn’t failure anymore. It was becoming like them—a hollow shell, adrift in the current of expectation. I wrote ‘becoming nothing’ on the lantern, and as I lit it and set it on the water, I saw my reflection in its flame. The reflection blinked, and it wasn’t mine.

The river closed over the lantern. The whispers grew deafening, then fell silent. When I turned around, Miss Hien was gone. The old house stood empty, its windows dark. I walked home, my steps echoing in the empty streets, and I knew that somewhere beneath the murky water, a paper lantern with my name would be waiting, patient and hungry, for the night I would come back to claim it.

I never attended another extra class. But sometimes, when I fall asleep, I dream of the river, and in that dream, I am holding a lantern, and I am walking into the water, and I cannot stop myself. And I see the faces of all the other students, bobbing like lanterns, their eyes glowing with a cold, endless light. And I know that the river will never let me go.