It rains differently in Hội An. The streets fill with a quiet kind of sadness when the monsoon comes, as if the old lanterns remember too much. I was there last summer, interning with a tourism company, helping guide foreigners through the ancient town. I stayed in a small rented room above a tailor shop on Trần Phú Street.
Every night, when the rain fell and the lights shimmered on the wet cobblestones, I’d hear footsteps outside my window. Slow, deliberate steps — like someone walking barefoot through puddles.
At first, I thought it was just the neighbors. Until the tailor downstairs told me something strange.
“Don’t open your window after midnight when it rains,”
She warned.
“That’s when Cô Mưa walks.”
I laughed it off. Local superstition, I thought. But that night, around 12:30 a.m., I woke up to the sound again — the soft slap-slap of wet feet. Curiosity won. I pulled the curtain aside.
Down on the narrow street, under the flickering yellow lanterns, was a girl wearing a traditional nón lá, the conical rain hat, and a white áo dài soaked through with rain. Her head was tilted low so I couldn’t see her face. She stood motionless, right beneath my window.
Something about her posture made my chest tighten. She didn’t seem lost rather she seemed waiting.
I whispered, “Cô ơi?” (Miss?)
She slowly lifted her chin. But where her face should’ve been, I saw only a sheet of dripping, black hair — no eyes, no mouth. Just wet strands sticking to pale skin.
I stumbled backward, heart hammering. When I dared look again, she was gone. Only the sound of rain remained.
The next morning, I told the tailor what I’d seen. She grew pale.
“She finds people who call out to her,”
She said.
“During the war, a bride waited for her groom to return from the battlefield. She stood under the rain every night, holding her wedding hat. He never came. When she died, she kept waiting.”
After that, I tried to ignore the footsteps. But they came closer each night. Up the stairs, past my door. Once, I found wet footprints leading right to my bedside. I moved out a week later.
Months later, back in Hanoi, I received a parcel from Hội An. Inside was a rain hat, old and water-stained, and a note written in trembling handwriting:
“You shouldn’t have spoken her name.”
That night, it rained in Hanoi for the first time in weeks. Outside my window, I heard slap of barefoot steps on the wet balcony. And soft whisper, soft and close.
“I’ve been waiting.”
