Sebastian woke up feeling… good.
Not just good. Refreshed. Energized.
Like he could run two extra punishment laps around the school field and still have enough breath left to complain about it.
He flexed his fingers. Rolled his shoulders.
Then he reached up and touched his neck.
Smooth.
Hmm odd
He grabbed the small mirror by the bedside cabinet and angled it properly. The skin along his neck looked almost new. Not pale-new. Not shiny-new. Just… clean. Like it had regrown.
He ran his thumb over it again and felt that it was softer than the rest of him.
That was important.
Only the skin on his neck looked like that.
He lowered the mirror slowly his expression depicting a strange look.
He had all these advantages — weird stamina, strange recovery, clearer memory than usual.
And yet he felt like a drowned cat someone had dragged back to life and told to attend a meeting.
This was because he felt he might be losing his mind.
What does someone feel when they admit them to a psychiatric ward?
Confused?
Angry?
Embarrassed?
Wronged?
All of it.
Well he was mostly feeling confused.
The incident yesterday kept looping.
The man in the white suit.
The two men in black.
He wasn't stupid. People dressed like that should stand out. Especially in a hospital ward guarded by officers.
He had asked the officers the next morning why they had let the man in and in response they looked confused.
Not fake confused.
Actual confused.
At first, Sebastian assumed they were acting. But how many people can fake confusion that cleanly? Even the man who trained him in spotting deception — and that guy had been annoyingly hard to fool — couldn't hide tells half the time.
By the end of that training, Seb had been the one running circles around him.
So that left three options.
One — he was seeing things.
Two — everyone else deserved awards for their acting skills.
Three — it was all real, and somehow only he remembered.
Two of those options meant he was inches away from losing it.
The third one was worse.
Because if it was real, and those people had such an ability
well then that was something interesting to keep in mind.
He stood up abruptly and started searching.
To the outside observers watching his room feed, it probably looked like a breakdown.
To him, it was a hunt for his sanity.
Drawers. Cabinets. Under the mattress.
The paper.
He needed the paper.
Nothing.
He stopped, breathing heavier than he liked.
Sat down on the edge of the bed.
He felt like smashing something.
That specific kind of frustration — when things don't go slightly wrong, not even diagonally wrong — but completely opposite to how they should.
He glanced at the ECG monitor beside him. It wasn't beeping steadily anymore, lines now rising and falling quickly.
He stared at it for a few seconds.
Funny how they had machines to track his heart but nothing to monitor memory.
He stood again.
Paced.
Breath in.
Breath out.
Did it several times.
Then forced himself to run through everything logically.
The camera had already been checked. His mother did that earlier.
All the footage showed was him talking to himself.
The door had opened briefly. No one commented on it. He felt like slapping them — well, with the exception of his mom.
He would probably just bring her to have tea, focusing especially on how mundane doors love to open themselves granting entry to ghosts and why a police officer of her rank did not think of altered footage.
Well according to the "authentic footage" no one entered.
At least — no one visible.
He had seen her face when she came back from the doctor. Devastated. Like something inside her had cracked.
There was also the missing paper.
That bothered him more than anything.
And then there was the healing.
The bruise had been ugly.
Now it was gone.
Not faded.
Gone.
The doctor said it was normal variation.
Sure.
Either he was secretly superhuman, or someone had healed him.
He didn't like either answer.
The door opened.
His mother stepped in.
She was gentler now. Careful in her movements. Like he was glass.
That almost irritated him.
Almost.
But he kept it in.
"Hello, Mom," Sebastian said, smiling.
Her face softened instantly. "How are you feeling?"
"Bored," he replied, glancing around the ward.
She nodded knowingly. "Yes… it can be dull. But it's for your own good. Your condition needed monitoring."
Needed.
Not needs.
He caught that.
He didn't react, but hope flickered briefly.
"Have you been seeing anything? Anything odd?" she asked, watching him closely.
He shook his head.
She exhaled, relief obvious.
"The doctor says we should have a talk with the on-site psychiatrist. Just in case. Experiences like that can have adverse effects on the mind."
She sounded distracted while saying it.
Seb noticed.
"Work issues?" he asked.
She smiled quickly, stood up too fast. "It's something else. I'll go let the doctor know you're ready."
It was abrupt.
Too abrupt.
Clear subject change.
He watched her leave. An odd expression on his face. The only time she behaved like that was when the topic was on his father or his relatives. Well he would think of that later, right now he just didn't want to see a psychiatrist.
Seeing one felt like admitting something was wrong with his head.
And as far as he remembered, the forest incident hadn't been traumatic.
They were trapped with five others. Cold. Hungry. Sure.
He lost consciousness at one point.
But fainting doesn't equal mental collapse.
If anything had messed with him, it was this hospital.
The isolation incident.
The out of body feeling.
The nurses attitudes.
"Good care," he muttered.
He pulled the blanket over himself and waited.
Twelve minutes later, the door opened again.
Polite. Measured. Studied.
Seb almost laughed.
That smile.
He'd seen it on every medical drama ever made.
Calm eyes. Slight nod. Controlled tone.
We're concerned about you, son.
It would've been funny if he wasn't the patient.
Dr. Hale pulled up a chair.
"How are you feeling right now, Sebastian?"
"Alive," Seb replied lightly. "Which I assume is a positive indicator."
"Yes, as we would hope," the doctor said.
He opened his folder, skimmed it, then looked up again.
"Your mother mentioned you've been seeing things. I want you to know this is a safe space. We're not here to judge. Just to understand."
Seb paused, organizing his thoughts. he decided to let it out, however some details where a bit iffy
"Sort of," he answered.
"Could you describe it? And if it feels overwhelming, you say so we can wait till your ready or simply skip it for the time being."
Seb nodded.
"How do I start…" He gave a short breath. "I saw someone in the hospital. I was a little startled. Anyone would be if strangers walked into their room."
"Strangers?" the doctor asked, eyes still on the file.
Seb didn't answer immediately.
That made the doctor look up.
"Can you describe them? Or have you forgotten?"
"How would I forget? There were three."
His tone sharpened slightly.
"One in a suit. Heavy preference for white. White gloves. White walking stick. Even the mask was white."
"So he was entirely in white," the doctor clarified.
"Yeah."
"Do you remember his face?"
"Mask covered it. Full-face type."
"And the other two, All black right."
The doctor tilted his head slightly questioning.
Seb's eyes flickered upward briefly surprised though he hid it quickly. This however only escaped the doctor.
"Yeah. How'd you know?"
"Continue."
Seb described everything.
Even the parts involving his deeds in the toilet.
He watched carefully for the doctor's reaction.
Nothing significant.
His mom's though was rather foul.
"According to your report, you remember very little after a certain point during the forest incident," Dr. Hale asked.
"Just the few hours before we were released."
"Do you remember losing consciousness?"
Seb opened his mouth.
And then—
The tree.
The memory hit like a snap.
The bark moving.
The branches—
No.
He shut it down immediately.
"Feeling dizzy," he said smoothly. "Then waking up later."
"No panic?"
"Nah. It wasn't fun. But I wasn't clawing at trees or anything."
Nope.
But the tree did claw at me.
Dr. Hale continued calmly, "Loss of consciousness, combined with stress and dehydration, can affect memory processing."
He placed his pen down.
"Do you believe the individuals you saw were real?"
"Yes," Seb answered before thinking.
"Were some more real than others?"
Seb paused.
The white-suited man felt solid.
The black ones…
"They appeared only at specific moments," he said slowly. "When I tried to call a nurse. And when the white guy called them."
"They interacted?"
"Yeah."
"Did the white-suited individual speak first?"
"Yeah."
The doctor recorded this carefully.
"You answered quickly when I asked how real they felt. Was there an incident that reinforced that belief?"
Seb smiled faintly.
"Yeah. I didn't see the black-suited guys enter. And the white one healed my neck."
"He also almost made me sign something and said he was with a special bureau."
His mother stiffened.
"White hat?" the doctor asked.
"He also had a hat. But that's not the point. The bruise healed."
He tilted his neck.
The doctor glanced at it.
"Minor bruising can resolve rapidly," he replied evenly. "The mind can integrate dream-like experiences with physical sensation."
Seb didn't argue.
"Have you been sleeping normally?"
"More or less."
"I need to be transparent," Dr. Hale continued. "Strong visual hallucinations, combined with memory disruption, raise concern for a psychotic spectrum disorder."
His mother straightened.
"It could still be stress."
"It could," the doctor agreed. "But the structured nature of these figures, and your maintained conviction in their reality, are significant."
Then he said it.
"I believe you may be experiencing early symptoms consistent with schizophrenia."
The word didn't explode.
It just settled.
Heavy.
His mother face fell.
"This diagnosis is not made lightly," Dr. Hale added. "And all is not loss as early intervention improves outcomes."
Seb exhaled slowly.
"So what now?"
"I'd like to start a low-dose antipsychotic. Mild. To reduce the visual disturbances. Possibly a short-term anxiolytic for sleep."
"I'm not agitated," Seb muttered.
"You are," his mother said quietly.
He didn't argue.
"The goal isn't sedation," Dr. Hale said. "It's stabilization."
Seb nodded once.
Medication.
Official.
He didn't agree.
Didn't disagree.
He just wondered whether pills could erase something that could drag you half way through a forest.
And whether the missing ending in the forest—
Was even the problem.
He felt they was a lot more to this than psychosis.