The following days in the hospital were a purgatory of a different kind. One of white coats, of a silence punctuated by the beeping of machines and the worried faces of my family floating in and out of my room like tides of a sea of guilt. I was sedated most of the time, drifting in a chemical fog that kept the worst horrors at bay, but could not erase their echoes.
In my most lucid moments, I stared at the acoustic ceiling, counting the perforations, trying to find a pattern in the chaos. I saw the real world, but through smoked glass. My family spoke to me, but their voices often warped, becoming the whispers of the forest or the screams of the burning city. They tried to anchor me to reality with stories of everyday life. Akari told me about a history exam. My mother described a telenovela plot. My father read me the sports news from the newspaper. They were acts of desperate love, attempts to weave a net of normalcy around me.
I listened. But it was like hearing a distant radio while my own house collapsed around me. The only real connection I felt was with Valeria. When she entered the room, something in the air changed. Her mere presence seemed to calm the beasts in my mind. Sometimes, while pretending to sleep, I felt her take my hand. And in the darkness of my eyelids, amidst a nightmare memory, I saw that small white flower blooming again on the blood-soaked ground. A beacon of grace I did not understand.
It was on the third day when the man named Mateo returned.
I didn't witness it, but later, my father told me about it. Mateo met with him, my mother, and Dr. Serrano in the same small office as before. He demanded, with his unwavering calm, to see me.
Dr. Serrano initially refused outright. "Mr. Mateo, I appreciate your perspective, but the patient is in an extremely fragile state. Suffering from delusions of reference and severe paranoia. Introducing your... narrative... could lead to catastrophic regression. He needs stability. He needs to be reassured that his delusions are not real."
Mateo, according to my father, simply looked at her with his tired, wise eyes. "Doctor," he said softly. "With all due respect, your method isn't working because your premise is incorrect. Kenji's mind isn't broken because he doesn't understand reality. It's broken because he perfectly understands a reality you and I cannot see. Telling him that the hell he just survived isn't real is the cruelest form of invalidation. It's cosmic gaslighting. He doesn't need to be lied to. He needs someone, finally, to speak his language."
The doctor was about to retort, but my father intervened. "Elena," he said, using her first name for the first time. "Conventional medicine has no answers for what we saw in that kitchen. My son isn't simply ill. He's... lost. If this man believes he has a map, even one we don't understand, we must let him try."
Supported by my mother's desperate nod, Dr. Serrano, against her clinical judgment but unable to deny the absolute lack of progress, conceded. She would allow a short visit. Supervised.
I was in that twilight state between sleep and wakefulness when my room door opened. I saw Mateo's figure enter, but my mind didn't register it as anything out of the ordinary. In my state, ghosts and flesh-and-blood visitors held the same weight. He sat in the chair by my bed. He said nothing for a long time. The only sound was the steady beeping of the heart monitor.
I was somewhere else. I was back in the forest of wounds, with the thorny branches brushing my skin, the smell of blood filling the air.
"The forest of wounds is one of the worst," Mateo's calm voice said from the real world.
My head snapped abruptly on the pillow. My eyes focused on him. The forest in my mind receded an inch. He knew. He had uttered the forbidden words.
"You..." my voice was a dry croak. "You know it?"
Mateo nodded, his gaze filled with ancient empathy. "My sister, Inés, was lost there. Thirty years ago. Sometimes, when I visit her, she still complains about the thorns."
Tears welled in my eyes. They weren't tears of sadness or madness. They were tears of such profound relief that my chest ached. I wasn't alone. I wasn't crazy. Or at least, I wasn't the only one.
I pushed myself up in bed, the haze of sedation dissipating before the urgency of this conversation.
"What is that place?" I whispered. "Why?"
"There are many theories," Mateo said, leaning forward, his voice low and confidential. "Some call it a parasitic astral plane. Others, a flaw in the fabric of reality. I call it the Soul's Workshop. A place that exists on the fringes, and which sometimes, when a soul is broken enough or 'loud' enough in its pain, pulls it inward. It's a testing mechanism. A crucible. Most who enter are consumed, used as fuel to keep the place running. Their loops of eternal suffering are the engine."
"But I got out," I said, the statement feeling fragile and miraculous.
"Yes," Mateo said, and in his eyes, I saw a spark of wonder. "You got out. You are the fourth 'returned' I've known in forty years. And each of you, though broken, brought with you a piece of an impossible puzzle. And from those pieces, we've formulated a hypothesis."
He pulled out his worn leather notebook and opened it on his lap, though he didn't read from it. "We call it the Gardener's Hypothesis. We believe that place, Purgatory, isn't inherently evil. It's like a garden that has gone wild. It grows unchecked, feeding on the 'weeds' of the human spirit: unprocessed regret, corrosive guilt, self-deception. The garden rips you from your life to use you as fertilizer. Your pain feeds it."
"But you didn't become fertilizer," he continued, his gaze intensifying. "In the last moment, at the moment of truth, you chose atonement over despair. You chose hope over oblivion. And in doing so, you became something the garden didn't expect. You became a seed."
"A seed?" I repeated, the word strange in my mouth.
"A seed of change. Your journey didn't end when you crossed that door, Kenji. That was just the end of the tutorial. Now the real game begins. Dr. Serrano wants to cure your mind with therapy and medication. She doesn't understand that your 'illness' is now your greatest tool."
He leaned in even closer. "Think of the white flower you saw in your dream, in the middle of the forest."
My heart stopped. "How do you know that?"
"Because the second returned, the librarian from Toronto, saw one too. It appeared as her husband read poetry to her by her bedside. The hypothesis is this: every genuine act of healing you perform in this world, every sincere apology you offer, every time you choose love over fear, empathy over selfishness... it's as if you plant one of those white flowers in the garden there. Your recovery here doesn't just save you. It purifies a small part of that hell."
The enormity of what he was saying began to settle over me. It was a cosmic burden, a weight so great it threatened to crush me again.
"Why?" I whispered. "What's the goal?"
"We can't go in there and burn the garden to the ground," Mateo said, his voice tinged with the sadness of forty years of failed attempts. "It's a dimension. It would be like trying to burn the concept of sadness. But a gardener doesn't destroy a wild garden with fire. He does it with patience. He pulls the weeds one by one, and plants new seeds. If enough 'returned' like you, enough 'seeds,' manage to heal and live lives of intention and kindness, we believe it's possible to transform the garden from within. We can begin to plant so many white flowers that they drown out the weeds. We can, over time, starve the beast by giving it beauty instead of pain."
He paused, and his gaze filled with a deep, personal sorrow.
"We can redeem it. And if we redeem it... then perhaps, just perhaps, the souls that were trapped there, the ones who became fertilizer... the ones who are the engine... souls like my sister Inés... can finally find peace and end their journey."
I fell silent, the beeping of the hospital machine was the only sound. My suffering had not been a meaningless punishment. It had been an initiation. My personal pain was now inextricably linked to the sorrow of a stranger and the fate of a place that shouldn't exist. It was no longer just about my redemption. It was about theirs.
The madness that had been swirling in my mind didn't disappear. But for the first time, it began to find a focus. Like light passing through a lens, my internal chaos began to converge on a single point of burning purpose.
I looked at my hands, one still bearing the pale marks of my own scratches. I looked at Mateo, this strange cartographer of purgatories. And I asked him the only question that mattered.
"If I'm a seed," I said, my voice barely a whisper, but firm for the first time in days. "How... how do I start planting?"