Mateo's revelation—that I was not just a seed, but the designated gardener—did not bring a sense of power, but the weight of a lead crown. The hospital room, once a sterile cage, had become the nexus of two realities, and I was the unstable bridge connecting them. My family and Valeria looked at me in a new way, no longer just as their broken son, brother, or boyfriend, but as the survivor of an impossible geography, an astronaut returned from an inner planet. There was a fragile sense of purpose in the air, the first breeze of hope after a long, stale calm.
But Mateo's expression told me the excavation had only just begun.
"Being the gardener is not an honorary title. It's a sentence," he said, his quiet voice bringing gravity back to the room. "It means you have responsibility not only for your own flowers, but for the entire garden. And to be able to cultivate anything, you must first know every inch of your soil, especially the toxic and barren areas. You must map your hell, Kenji. Without omissions."
He sat back in the chair by my bed, his leather notebook on his lap, a scribe ready to take dictation from the soul. "We'll start again. From the beginning. Take me through every level you remember. Describe the place. Explain the lesson you learned there. Don't skip a single detail. Every stone, every whisper, is important."
I looked at my family. I saw the fear in their eyes at the prospect of making me relive the trauma. But I also saw a new resolve, an understanding that this was the only way forward. Haruki nodded slightly, a gesture of pragmatic approval. Valeria squeezed my hand, her touch saying: we are here. You are not alone in this.
With a sigh that seemed to drag the dust of all levels, I began.
My voice was a monotone, that of a tour guide describing the ruins of a city where he once lived. I told them about the Limbo of Regret, about Fushimi Park turned into a wasteland, about reliving my broken promise to Yuki from the perspective of her loneliness. "The lesson," I said, "was about indifference. About how small omissions can leave big scars."
I described the school trapped in the Storm of Misunderstandings, about the wind howling my parents' voices, about feeling their fear and anxiety as if they were my own. "The lesson was that conflict is rarely one-sided. That love and fear often speak the same violent language."
My voice faltered as I reached the next level. I avoided looking at Valeria. "The Feast of Mirrors," I whispered. "A banquet hall where the food was my own selfishness. Where I had to... consume the exhaustion I caused someone I claimed to love." I felt Valeria's hand squeeze mine tighter, but I couldn't look at her.
I continued, my voice growing hoarser. "The Museum of Scars. An infinite landfill where every object was a grudge I had held. It taught me the weight of bitterness, and the strength needed to forgive, not for others, but for oneself."
I paused, my throat dry. The next memory in my mind's sequence was that of the burning city. The climax. The mirror. The final confrontation with my own falsehood.
"And after that..." I said, choosing my words carefully, constructing a narrative that made sense, that was complete. "I reached the last level. A city that was a mix of Tokyo and Mexico, but it was all on fire. It was built with my lies, and the fire was the truth. There, smoke figures whispered my deceptions to me. And in the center, I found the mirror. I faced my reflection, the fundamental lie that I was a victim. The lesson... the lesson was radical honesty. To accept that I was the architect of my own misery."
I finished, my chest heaving from the effort. The account, though summarized, had left me exhausted, as if I had climbed all the staircases again. I looked at Mateo, waiting for a word of approval, a sign that the torture session was over.
Mateo remained silent for a long time. He wasn't looking at me. He was looking at his open notebook, though he hadn't written a single word. His brow was furrowed, his mouth a tight line. The air in the room grew heavy with tension.
"No," he said finally, the word soft, but it cut through the air like a piece of ice.
"No, what?" I asked, confusion and incipient panic beginning to bubble within me.
"The map is wrong," Mateo said, looking up, his blue eyes scrutinizing me with relentless intensity. "The geography is incorrect. The jump you describe... is too big."
"I don't understand," my father stammered. "What do you mean?"
"You've described five levels," Mateo explained, his voice still quiet, but with a dangerous edge. "The Limbo, the Storm, the Feast, the Museum, and the City. But the thematic jump between the Museum of Scars and the City of Lies is illogical. You went from a level about forgiving the wounds others inflicted on you, to a level about the lies you told yourself. A step is missing. There's a wound in between. A scar you're not showing me. A sin you consider deeper than bitterness, but less fundamental than self-deception."
My blood ran cold. I tried to keep my expression neutral, but I felt the color drain from my face. "No... there was nothing else. I went from one to the other. I remember."
Mateo's calm shattered. He sprang to his feet, his movement so sudden it made my mother gasp.
"DON'T LIE TO ME, KENJI!" he barked, his voice a thunderclap in the sterile room. "Not after you've come this far! Not after what you've survived! I KNOW THE GEOGRAPHY OF THAT PLACE BETTER THAN MY OWN CITY! I'VE SPENT FORTY YEARS MAPPING ITS TERRAIN THROUGH THE BROKEN STORIES OF OTHERS! I KNOW THERE'S A CIRCLE BETWEEN BITTERNESS AND FALSEHOOD! IN THE ANCIENT MAPS, THEY CALL IT THE CIRCLE OF VIOLENCE! THE PLACE OF IRREPARABLE WOUNDS! I KNOW YOU WERE THERE!"
He loomed over my bed, his face inches from mine. His breath smelled of coffee and decades of despair.
"WHAT LEVEL WAS IT, KENJI?!" he roared, his voice making the air vibrate. "WHAT SIN IS SO TERRIBLE, SO INTIMATE, THAT YOU CAN'T SAY IT ALOUD IN FRONT OF THE PEOPLE WHO LOVE YOU!? TELL ME WHAT IT WAS LIKE! DON'T OMIT IT!"
I broke. His fury was not that of an attacker, but of a surgeon who has to break a rib to reach the heart. I flinched under his gaze, the last of my defenses crumbled. Tears welled up again, but this time they were hot with shame. I couldn't look at my family. And above all, I couldn't look at Valeria.
"The garden..." my voice was a whisper, the sound of surrender.
"Louder," Mateo commanded, his voice now quieter, knowing he had broken me.
"It was a garden," I repeated, my eyes fixed on the white hospital sheets. "There were no trees. They were... they were flesh. Pulsating. And the air... it smelled like a hospital."
I described the scene in broken fragments, each word a piece of glass I ripped from my throat. I told them about the luminous, blurry forms floating. "At first I didn't know what they were... I thought they were spores, or... or souls..."
"And then you knew?" Mateo asked, his voice a soft scalpel.
The sob that shook me was so deep I felt my chest split. Finally, I looked up, but my eyes passed over Valeria, unable to land on her. I looked at the white wall, as if I could project the memory there for all to see.
"The memory... it took me to her bathroom," the word "her" hung in the air, heavy with terrible meaning. "I saw the test. The two lines. And then... then I saw the clinic. The lavender poster on the wall. And she was alone. Completely alone. Because I... I was too busy feeling sorry for myself."
I looked at Mateo, my eyes those of a condemned man. "The floating forms... they were futures. Futures that never existed. The garden was a cemetery of possibilities."
Finally, I gathered the last ounce of courage I had left and turned my head. My eyes met Valeria's. Her face was pale as paper. Her eyes, wide, were fixed on me, and in them I saw a storm of disbelief, of shock, and the beginning of a horror that echoed my own. Her hand slipped from mine.
"I'm sorry, Vale," I sobbed. "I swear on my life I didn't know. I'm so sorry."
The moment the last word of my final confession, the omitted scar, left my lips, the air in the room changed. It became charged with static electricity, and a smell of ozone and burnt plastic, the smell of the burning city, filled my nostrils.
Akari screamed first. Her scream was sharp, a sound of pure terror. "Mom! The bed!"
Everyone turned. And I looked down.
The base of my hospital bed was on fire.
They weren't normal flames. They were bluish-white, cold, and silent. They produced no smoke. They simply consumed the sterile sheet and the plastic mattress with unnatural speed, without spreading to the floor or surrounding objects. It was the fire of truth. The fire of Purgatory. It had crossed over. My confession, the deepest, most painful truth, had opened a crack between worlds.
The hospital fire alarm began to blare, a shrill, piercing beep. My family recoiled, their faces a mix of panic and supernatural awe.
But I felt no fear. I sat there in the midst of the cold flames, watching them dance. The fire didn't burn me. It was part of me. It was my truth, made visible. And in the midst of the chaos, the sound of the alarm, and my family's screams, I felt a strange and terrifying calm. I was greeting an old acquaintance.