Patient File No. 7
The silence in that room was so heavy I could hear my own breathing — fast, trembling, waiting for something I knew was about to change my life forever.
"Say it," I said at last. "Whatever it is."
Mr. Monday, for the first time, rose from his seat — not in a threatening way, but slowly, like someone carrying a heavy weight on his shoulders and not knowing how to bear it.
"Patient No. 7," he said, "the one you thought was a witness, a ten-year-old boy who just watched from the window..."
"What about him?"
"He didn't lie about being a child on that street. But there's something he hid from you." He paused, for a long time. "He wasn't just a witness, Doctor. He was one of the ones who helped me."
My breath stopped. "What?"
"That night, when the Sadeghi family was disappearing, when I was learning how to rewind time — there was a boy who, instead of running, came closer. Not out of courage. Out of a kind of dark curiosity that some children have, without understanding how dangerous it is."
I shook my head, not wanting to believe it.
"He told me to keep going," Mr. Monday said, his voice now carrying a new pain. "Not because he wanted the family to suffer. Because he thought he was watching a game, something magical, something exciting. He told me, 'Do it again. Show me again.' And I..."
"And you listened."
"Because he was the only one who talked to me," he said, his voice now more broken than ever before. "The only one who, instead of running, came closer. The only one who, instead of calling my name with fear, told me to 'play for him.' And I, who was just learning how to exist, thought maybe this was what friendship meant."
I sat there, stunned, as the pieces of the puzzle came together in a way I didn't want to see.
"He grew up," Mr. Monday continued, "with this secret, with this guilt. He tried to forget it. He tried to tell himself he was just an innocent witness. But part of him always knew that a piece of this was his own fault — not as much as mine, but enough that he could never truly be free."
"Why am I only learning this now?" I asked, my voice trembling. "Why didn't he tell me this part when he was telling his story?"
"Because he couldn't face it himself," he said. "That's why every previous doctor, every time the story got close to this truth, something happened to interrupt everything. Not because I wanted to stop him. Because he himself, Patient No. 7, unconsciously, always found a way to prevent it from reaching this point."
"Then where is he now?" I asked, with a sudden new fear. "When he disappeared from the hospital?"
Mr. Monday looked at me, and in that moment, for the first time, I saw something in his gaze that truly resembled pity — not the pity he had manufactured to deceive, but something real.
"He went back," he said, quietly. "Back to the alley, for the last time, to finally face his truth. To finally decide — either confess, or stay there forever, in one of those repeating versions, where he no longer has to live with his guilt."
I stood, suddenly gripped by an urgency I had never felt before.
"I have to go there," I said.
"If you go," Mr. Monday said, his voice now a warning, "you may never be able to come back. Because this time, Doctor, this is no longer just my story. It's his story too. And when two stories meet, in a place where time no longer has meaning..."
He paused.
"No one can predict what will remain."
Outside my apartment window, with no wind, with no reason, a small calendar page fell to the floor — the one I had always thought was just decorative, useless, from an old gift.
I looked at the date.
Monday.
But this time, for the first time, beneath the date, in handwriting I was certain wasn't my own, one more word had been written:
"The last."
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To be continued in Chapter Eighteen...