As the pale pink sky quietly chased away the night, Mai stood at the foot of the bridge.
Every morning a little after 5 a.m., she jogged along the riverside near her university. Without fail, a man would be running from the opposite direction at the same time. Unshaven, in plain running gear. They never exchanged words, but he always gave a polite nod. That brief moment of formality, for some reason, stayed with her.
But one morning, the man vanished.
At first, she thought it was just coincidence. But even after a week, he didn’t return. A mix of worry and curiosity prompted Mai to jog in the direction he usually came from. She passed through a quiet path and found a narrow pedestrian bridge over the river—rusted and usually blocked off by a locked fence.
Then one day during her run, she spotted a scrap of paper caught in the grass, fluttering in the breeze. It looked like something someone had lost. On it was a single line:
“4:44 a.m. — it opens only at that time.”
Could it have belonged to that man?
The next morning, Mai set three alarms and made her way to the bridge while the night still lingered. And just as the note said, the fence was quietly open—as if it had been waiting.
No one was there on the other side. But the air felt different. The sounds seemed distant. Silence settled like time itself had paused. Beyond the bridge, hidden in the overgrown grass, stood a small, abandoned building. The door hung loose, and on the damp floor lay a soaked journal.
It belonged to the man.
“Beyond this bridge lies a certain ‘space’—a door that opens only in the in-between of night and morning. They say those who enter never return.”
The entries read like something out of an urban legend. But as the pages turned, the man’s words grew more intense, culminating in one final line:
“Tomorrow, I’m going to find out. If I don’t come back, this record will be the only clue.”
That was the last page.
Mai took it straight to the police, but they dismissed her. “There’s no evidence of a missing person,” they said.
From that day on, her mornings changed. Without telling anyone, she began waking at 4:30 a.m., making her way to the bridge. But the gate remained closed. It never opened again like it had that morning.
Still, Mai didn’t give up. She didn’t believe the man had simply vanished. He was still out there—somewhere beyond the bridge. Believing that, she laced up her running shoes again today.
Until the door opens once more.
