The air in the hospital room had become breathable again. The revelation that his family's love could, in some way, penetrate the walls of his personal hell, had been an anchor. Kenji felt like a diver who, after agonizing decompression, could finally process oxygen without his lungs burning. He looked at the faces surrounding him: his mother, eyes swollen but now filled with fierce determination; his father, whose stoic facade had cracked to reveal the solid foundation of unwavering concern; Akari, whose fear was transforming into a protective curiosity; and Valeria, whose hand still held his, her touch a constant current of warmth in his frozen world.
He wasn't cured. Far from it. The echoes of the levels still resonated in the quiet corners of his mind. But for the first time since he crossed the oak door, he didn't feel alone in his own head. There were others on the battlefield, even if they were on the other side of the hill.
He thought the conversation, the excavation, was over for now. He thought a period of calm, of rest, would follow.
But Mateo wasn't finished.
The old man, who had remained silent during the moment of family connection, cleared his throat. His expression was not one of relief, but of even deeper concentration, like a detective who has just found a crucial, yet incongruous, clue.
"What we've just discovered is the 'how'," Mateo said, his quiet voice cutting through the fragile peace. "It's how we can help you stay anchored. It's how we start working in the garden. But it doesn't explain the 'why.' The most important question remains unanswered."
He turned to Kenji, and the intensity of his gaze made Kenji's skin prickle. "Why you, Kenji. I've known three other returned ones in my life. I've studied them, documented their stories in this notebook for decades. Their journeys were brutal, yes. But yours... yours was different. Most who come back are like ghost ships, empty, sails tattered, drifting. They live small, terrified lives, always looking over their shoulder, afraid to make the slightest ripple for fear of being pulled back in. But you..."
Mateo moved closer to the bed. "You are different. Even now, broken and traumatized, there's a fire in you. I felt it when I spoke to you in the void, before you even realized my presence. A will that not only survived, but was forged in the heart of hell. The others escaped. You fought your way through."
Dr. Serrano took a step forward, protectively. "Mr. Mateo, I believe the patient needs rest—"
"No," Mateo interrupted her, not taking his eyes off Kenji. "He doesn't need rest. He needs to remember. Because the answer is there. That's why you're special, Kenji. And that's why you have to listen to me very carefully. Purgatory didn't just torture you. At the most crucial moment, in your darkest hour, it helped you."
The word "helped" dropped into the room like a stone into a calm lake.
"Helped him?" Sofía exclaimed, her voice trembling with disbelief. "Did you see the state he arrived in? Look at him! That place almost destroyed him!"
"No, Mrs. Tanaka," Mateo countered with unwavering calm. "It destroyed the lazy, self-pitying boy he was, so the man sitting before us could be born. It put him in the forge. And a blacksmith doesn't just heat the metal; he hammers it mercilessly to shape it. And at the end, he gives it one last thing to temper it. It gave you a gift, Kenji. A terrible and perfect gift. And I need you to remember it."
Kenji's mind rebelled. He didn't want to go back there, to any part of there. Especially not to the last levels, where his sanity had completely unraveled.
"I don't... I don't know what you're talking about," he stammered.
"Yes, you do," Mateo insisted, his voice now urgent, pressing. He was running out of time, or he felt Kenji's window of lucidity might close. "Close your eyes. Go back to the burning city. Not the fire, not the smoke demons. Forget the noise. Go to the center. To the eye of the hurricane. You were alone. The city of your lies was collapsing around you. You were completely lost. What was there?"
Kenji squeezed Valeria's hand, his knuckles white. The smell of ash filled his nostrils. The roar of the fire in his ears. He saw himself, his maddened self, stumbling into the black marble plaza.
"Nothing," he whispered. "It was empty. It was cold."
"A LIE!" Mateo's voice boomed, not with anger, but with the force of absolute certainty. "It was the biggest lie of all! It wasn't empty! There was something there for you! Something the system deliberately placed there! It wasn't a part of your memories! It was a tool! A gift from the blacksmith!"
His voice rose, filling the room, making everyone flinch.
"THAT PLACE HELPED YOU, KENJI! I WANT YOU TO REMEMBER WHAT WAS IN THE CENTER OF THAT PLAZA!"
The shout was a catalyst. It broke Kenji's defenses. He saw himself dragged back, not as a participant, but as a floating observer, watching his broken, maddened self look around the silent plaza. And he saw it. So clear, so impossibly out of place.
His eyes snapped open.
"The mirror," he said, his voice a whisper choked with awe. "There was a mirror. Full-length. With a silver frame. It was... clean. Perfect. The fire didn't touch it."
A triumphant smile, the first they had seen on him, spread across Mateo's face. He turned to the others, his eyes gleaming. "The mirror. Do you hear that? None of the other returned ones had that. Their final battles were internal, abstract struggles against their own minds. But him... he was given a physical adversary. He was given a face to his self-deception. He was given the gift of direct confrontation. Purgatory broke its own rule of non-intervention to give him one last chance to save himself from the fire."
Kenji looked at him, his mind reeling, trying to process the incredible implication of it. The most terrifying moment of his journey, the conversation with his reflection, had not been the system's final attack. It had been an act of... help. A lifeline thrown at the last second.
"Why?" Kenji asked, the question that hung over everything else. "Why would a place that feeds on suffering help me escape?"
Mateo sat down again, the fire in his eyes softening, replaced by deep contemplation. He looked at the notebook on his lap, then at Kenji, and then at the family around them.
"That, my young friend," he said softly, "is the million-dollar question. For forty years, I've believed that place was simply a trap, a predator. But your story... your story suggests something more. The others were just accidental survivors. They escaped through the cracks. But you..."
He paused, as if weighing the import of his next words.
"I believe you were chosen. Or you earned the right to be. Not as another victim. But as a potential remedy. Kenji, think of the garden analogy. What if the garden isn't just wild, but it's sick? What if it's so full of grief and despair that it seeks a cure itself? Perhaps it realized that the cycle of consuming souls only made it bigger, but not healthier."
He looked at Kenji with an intensity that seemed to see directly into his newly rebuilt soul.
"Perhaps, after countless failures, the garden finally found someone who could not only survive its trials, but who had the capacity to understand them and, ultimately, to heal them. Perhaps it gave you the mirror, it gave you Koro, it gave you the door to your house, not out of pity, but as an investment. As a gamble."
"A gamble..." Kenji repeated, feeling the weight of a universe on his shoulders.
"Yes," Mateo concluded. "The garden is sick, Kenji. And I believe that, after an eternity of suffering, it has just found its gardener."