My next awakening was fragmented. A mosaic of broken sensations. There was no violent pull or gentle dissolution. Instead, I was a shipwreck survivor drifting in a sea of haze, floating between unconsciousness and confused awareness.
The first sense to return was hearing. The rhythmic, constant beeping of a machine. Beep... beep... beep... It overlaid the memory of the garden's heartbeat, creating a two-note symphony I couldn't quite grasp. I heard muffled, professional voices, using words I didn't recognize: "stable blood pressure," "light sedation," "acute psychotic episode."
Then, smell. The unmistakable scent of antiseptic, alcohol, and overly laundered sheets. It was the smell of Valeria's clinic memory, and for a moment of icy panic, I thought I was back there.
Finally, sight. Fluorescent lights on a white acoustic ceiling, moving above me. Blurry faces with surgical masks. The sensation of movement, of being rolled on a gurney. Every stimulus was processed by my damaged brain through the Purgatory filter. Was this a new level? The hospital level? Were these blue-gowned paramedics the new monsters, the new guardians of my next punishment? I was too drugged to feel fear, only a distant, detached curiosity. The world was a parade of senseless shapes and sounds.
I was wheeled into a quiet room. I felt a prick in my arm, a cold sensation spreading through my veins, and the haze thickened. The last image I saw before darkness claimed me completely was that of a plastic crucifix hanging on the wall. Even here, in this new, sterile hell, a silent god watched me. I sank into restless sleep, a whirlwind of descending staircases and broken mirrors.
Time in a hospital doesn't pass; it seeps. For Kenji's family, gathered in the waiting room of the psychiatry unit, every minute was a slow drop of acid. The air smelled of burnt coffee and fear. The orange plastic chairs were uncomfortable, designed to prevent anyone from feeling at ease in limbo.
Sofía, his mother, had run out of tears. Now she just rocked gently, her gaze distant, whispering prayers to no one in particular. Her mind replayed Kenji's childhood, searching for a sign, a premonition, an explanation for the strange broken man her son had become. She found none.
Haruki, his father, stood by the window, though outside he could only see a brick wall. His posture was rigid, a statue of forced control. He didn't speak. He dedicated himself to solving the problem in his mind as if it were an engineering fault. He analyzed the variables: university stress, lack of direction, the argument the other night. But none of the variables justified the outcome. His son's machine had broken down in a way his logic manuals couldn't explain, and impotence was gnawing at him from within.
Akari, his sister, was huddled in a chair, scrolling through social media on her phone at a frantic pace. She wasn't reading anything. The constant movement, the senseless flow of images, was the only thing preventing her mind from dwelling on the image of her brother with a knife to his throat.
And Valeria sat a little apart. She felt both at the center of the crisis and like a complete stranger. The episode had happened in her house. Kenji's meaningless words replayed in her head: the feast, the garden. She felt an irrational guilt, as if the katsudon she had cooked with so much love had been the trigger. She felt like an intruder in the family's private grief, but the thought of leaving, of abandoning Kenji now, was unthinkable. So she waited, trapped between her love for the boy she knew and her terror of the man he had become.
A woman in a white coat with an expression of professional calm approached them. "Tanaka family. I'm Dr. Elena Serrano, the head of psychiatry. Would you please come to my office?"
They gathered in a small office that smelled of books and chamomile tea. The contrast with the waiting room's tension was almost violent. Dr. Serrano gestured for them to sit. Haruki and Sofía took the chairs in front of the desk. Akari remained standing next to her mother. Valeria hesitated at the door.
"You too, please," Dr. Serrano said, with a kind look. "From what I understand, you're an important part of this."
Valeria sat, feeling the weight of that affirmation.
"I've had a chance to speak briefly with Kenji," the doctor began, clasping her hands on her desk. "And I've reviewed the nurses' notes. What I'm about to tell you may be difficult to hear."
Sofía stifled a sob. Haruki nodded, his jaw tight.
"Your son is suffering from an acute psychotic episode, with clear symptoms of depersonalization and derealization," Dr. Serrano said. "In simple terms, his mind has lost the ability to distinguish between what is real and what is not. The fact that he threatened himself believing he would simply 'reappear' is an extreme example of this. It's not a suicide attempt in the classic sense; in his current state, it was an experiment to verify the nature of his reality."
"But... why?" Sofía whispered. "Where did this come from? He was fine... a little apathetic, but fine."
"That's where this gets complex," the doctor continued, leaning forward. "The language he uses, the references he makes in his delusions... I've asked the nurses to note everything he says while asleep. He talks about 'levels,' about 'descending staircases,' about a 'bleeding forest,' about a 'feast of mirrors.' These are very structured symbolic systems, almost like the mythology of a cult or the rules of a highly elaborate game. It's not the disorganized thought pattern we usually see in rapid-onset schizophrenia."
She paused, choosing her next words with utmost care.
"In my career," she said, her voice now softer, "I've worked with war veterans, with survivors of natural disasters, and with victims of prolonged captivity. And the structure of Kenji's trauma, the way his identity seems to have been systematically dismantled and incorrectly rebuilt... is extraordinarily similar to the latter."
Haruki frowned. "Are you saying someone kidnapped my son?"
"Not literally," the doctor clarified. "Obviously, he's been attending his classes and living at home. But his mind... his psyche... shows the exact type of damage we see in someone who has been isolated and subjected to intense, repetitive psychological torture over a long period of time. It's as if his mind has been held hostage. As if someone or something forced him to participate in a series of 'tests' or 'games' designed to break him, to force him to confront past traumas in the cruelest way possible. It's not just depression or anxiety. This is deep, architectural damage. It's as if the building of his mind has been demolished and rebuilt with the wrong blueprints."
The silence in the office was absolute. The doctor's words hung in the air, both clinically logical and incredibly fantastic. Psychological torture. Systematic dismantling. The family looked at each other, their faces reflecting complete confusion. How? When? Where could something like this have happened? The doctor's explanation, instead of offering clarity, had opened an abyss of terrifying questions.
Meanwhile, in room 303, I floated in a red dream. I was back in the forest of wounds, with the fleshy, thorny branches closing in around me. The sound of painful sighs was my only companion. The beeping of my heart monitor in the real world had become the constant, sticky dripping of blood from the trees. I was trapped, reliving the pain, the guilt, the violence.
In the midst of the nightmare, a black thorn, long as a finger, slid from a branch and slowly moved towards my chest. I couldn't move. I was paralyzed, condemned to receive this final wound.
But just as the thorn was about to touch my skin, I felt something.
A warmth.
In my hand.
It was a sensation that did not belong in this place. It was real. Soft. Warm.
I looked down in my dream. My hand was clenched into a fist, but through my fingers, a small light began to glow.
In the real world, Valeria had slipped away from the consultation and entered my room. She had sat in the chair beside my bed and, seeing my face contorted by nightmares, had taken my hand in hers. She wept silently, her warmth and presence an anchor in a world that had gone mad.
I couldn't see her. I couldn't hear her. But in my personal hell, something had changed. The thorn hovering over me stopped. On the forest floor, at my feet, amidst the blood-soaked moss, a single, small white flower bloomed. It was impossible. It was beautiful. It made no sense. Its whiteness was so pure it hurt to look at it amidst all that red.
I didn't understand what it meant. But as the thorns loomed and the trees bled, I stared at that small, stubborn speck of grace. An anomaly in the system. Proof that, even in the darkest corner of my hell, something from the outside world, something real and warm, was trying to reach me.