Now let's get rid of the "not-a-good-wish" man to... focus solely on Arthur.
For some reason, Martin's wish had worked exactly as he asked. When he went home, everyone treated him differently. He abused that wish to make Arthur's father write him into the will before he died, saying things like, " will I get the key."
Of course, you will....
the wish was that everyone should fear saying the truth. anything in front of him, so he inherited a great fortune and built an empire on the best terms imaginable — all because of the wish, all because people were too afraid to tell him the truth....
Everything looked perfect — until it all began to rot.
It started with his wife. Martin discovered she had been cheating on him with many people, and let's leave it at that. The flaw in his wish was that the fear only worked when he was present. When he wasn't around, people could still think freely and more worst want remember that they were a friend of such or such..
Then he remembered: he had told her, "I love you — what about you?" and the wish had bound her as well without him knowing.
He divorced her and threw himself back into work. But the wish had already poisoned everything. Martin made thousands of bad decisions because no one could tell him the truth. Whenever he asked for advice, they only said, "You're absolutely right."
Not long after, the company went bankrupt. Martin fell ill. At the hospital, doctors told him he had nothing wrong. He asked again if he was allowed to leave. They answered "yes" — but the real answer was "no."
A few nights passed. Then came the night he lay suffocating in his bed, fluid filling his lungs. Before he died this awful death, he looked toward one of the dark corners of the room. A figure stood there — one with a hat and a bag, smiling at him. Was it a hallucination? Or someone with glowing red eyes in the dark?
At exactly midnight, Martin no longer can feel to speak about his pain.
Finally we're done with Martin let's focus on Arthur...
Arthur went straight home after the wish. Years went by—he had a family now. He hated Martin for some reason, but he couldn't remember why.
Until… every story has an until.
Arthur began to see numbers above the people he loved: his father, his wife, his daughter and son, his sister and her husband, and their children. Mostly, his family.
When he first went home after making the wish, nothing happened. He only saw his grandpa, and that was it. He thought the whole thing was a scam—not like the other person who didn't see anything until he drank from the fountain.
Arthur went to college far from home. While he was there, he got the news that his grandpa was sick. But on his way to visit him, his grandpa died. So Arthur forgot about the wish indefinitely.
Life went on. He graduated from college, had nowhere to go, worked here and there. He befriended a man old enough to be his father, who treated him as a son. That man was Mr. George. He welcomed Arthur into his family and introduced him to his two daughters. At first, Arthur treated them with respect, like sisters.
One day, Mr. George asked him: "What do you think about my daughters?"
Arthur didn't know how to respond. Eventually, though, his feelings for one of them changed. He married mia, had children , and they were deeply in love.
The night Arthur saw the number above Mia's head, after the kids went to bed, they had this conversation before sleeping:
Mia: "Remember our first date?"
Arthur: "I still can't believe how your father
sold his case."
Mia: "Case? Father? What do you mean?
Didn't you like me at the time?"
Arthur: "Like you? No. You were nothing special."
Mia: "NOTHING SPECIAL?!"
Arthur: "Yes. I thought of you more like a
sister."
Mia: "A SISTER?!"
Arthur: "That's how I thought."
Mia: "Thank God. I thought I was going to murder you."
Arthur: "At the time, you were nothing special. My impression of you was an ugly girl who thought she was beautiful."
Mia: "Don't push your luck with me."
Arthur: "I even thought your sister was mor—"
She quickly put her hand over his mouth.
Mia: "I dare you to finish that sentence. Okay, I get it. I was annoying. So how did my father change your mind?"
Arthur: "Okay, okay… he didn't change my mind. He made me realize that I did love you. There were times I caught myself looking at you, but then I quickly looked away."
Mia: "Hmm. Do you think that's enough? I'm still mad. My sister is more beautiful than me, right? Why didn't you marry her?"
Arthur: "Your father thought your sister was what I wanted more than you. He said he caught me looking at her. He asked me, 'Don't you want to protect her? Don't you want her to be your wife, with kids?' I told him, 'No way, me and her—never .' And then that bastard gave me a smile and said, 'So you've been thinking of Mia this whole time.' I didn't know what to say….. This was his trap to make me realiz my feelings... And then I asked you out, and here we are."
Mia: "W father… but how did he know?"
Arthur: "I think parents know their children best. And I'm so lucky to have joined this family. Your father is my father, your sister is my sister. I couldn't ask for anything more."
Mia fell asleep before he finished. Arthur kissed her forehead, covered her with a blanket, and got out of bed to check on their daughter and son. But before leaving, he looked back—there was a series of numbers above Mia's head.
When he checked on his children, he found different numbers above each of them too.
He didn't know what it meant.
Someone knocked at the door. Arthur opened it—it was his father-in-law.
"Dad, is something wrong?" Arthur asked.
"No," George said, "I just came to check on you."
Arthur told him about the numbers above his family, unsure what to do.
His father-in-law tried to calm him. "Don't worry, maybe it's just stress." Then he left.
But Arthur did not tell him about the number he had seen above his father-in-law.
The next day, Arthur got a call. His father-in-law had been in an accident and was in unstable condition.
He rushed to the hospital. Somehow, he was authorized to be present in the surgery room, but only to watch from afar.
---
(I won't say the exact date. Instead, let's put it like this: I loved the year 2014 because of the World Cup, and I loved the year 2020 because of how time passed… so let's take something in the middle: 2017.)
---
The surgery took place on 12/5/2017, at exactly 04:35 a.m.
Arthur watched the doctors and nurses working as hard as they could, but he didn't understand what they were doing. Then he heard:
"Time of death: 4:55 and 40 seconds, 12th of May, 2017."
After that, Arthur didn't hear anything else.
Because the number above his father-in-law had been:
455401252017
Separated, it read:
4:55:40 a.m. — 12/5/2017
The exact time of Mr. George's death.
And at that moment, Arthur remembered the wish.
The worst part was the realization: his wife, daughter, and son had numbers above them too.
But when?