The bed moved.
It wasn't shaking. It wasn't sliding because the floor was slanted. The thin mattress behind Arga let out a long breath, as if something huge were sleeping beneath it.
Elara grabbed Arga's arm.
From behind the bathroom door, Damar's voice came again.
“If you're awake, then who's sleeping in that bed?”
Arga stared at his mattress.
A dingy blanket covered a body whose form was difficult to make out. It looked like someone lying with their back to him. Its shoulders were too broad. Its head was too high. On the pillow, an indentation shaped like a face slowly appeared.
Elara pulled him back.
“Don't go near it.”
“What if it's Damar?”
“Damar wouldn't ask that.”
“How do you know?”
“Because someone who wants you to trust them always starts with a question that already has an answer.”
A knock came from the bathroom.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
“Arga,” the voice said, “I know you're still keeping the key.”
Arga lowered his head. The key-shaped line on his chest pulsed beneath his skin. With every pulse, the sound of the old fan overhead seemed to grow more distant.
Elara looked at him.
“He can't know the key is inside your body.”
“He already knows.”
“Then don't answer.”
The voice behind the door chuckled.
“You used to say that too, Elara.”
Elara's expression changed. Not fear. A memory.
For an instant, Arga saw it: a hospital corridor, white lights that were far too bright, little Elara standing in front of the same bathroom door. Her hand was clutching a woman's dress. Someone on the other side of the door knocked three times.
Then Damar's voice said, “Don't let her wake up.”
Arga blinked. The boarding room returned to normal.
“What did you see?” Elara asked.
“You've been here before.”
Elara didn't deny it.
“I don't know how.”
“Don't tell me you forgot.”
“I did forget.” She stared at the bathroom door. “But my body may not have.”
On the bed, the blanket moved again. This time, a pale hand emerged from beneath it.
Its fingers were long and stiff. Its nails were inscribed with black ink. Each knuckle bore a name Arga had heard in his dreams: Bima, Damar, Rafael, Mother.
The final finger bore his own name.
Arga backed away until his spine struck the table.
The coffee glass fell and shattered.
He heard no sound from the shards.
Instead, the boarding room filled with soft applause.
The figure beneath the blanket sat up.
Its face was still hidden in shadow, but Arga recognized the shape of its head and hair. It was him—thinner, younger, its eyes squeezed tightly shut.
The body lying on the bed opened its mouth.
“Don't wake me,” it said.
The voice belonged to Arga.
Elara pulled Arga toward the front door.
The door was gone.
All that remained was a damp wall stained with handprint-shaped marks.
“This room changed,” Arga whispered.
“Not the room.”
Elara pointed at the floor.
Their shadows didn't follow their movements. Arga's shadow stood facing the bed. Elara's shadow faced the bathroom.
Then Elara's shadow knocked on the floor three times.
Damar answered from behind the door.
“Good. You still remember how.”
Elara closed her eyes.
“Arga, when the door opens, no matter what you hear, don't go in first.”
“And you?”
“I'll go in.”
“Why?”
“Because I once left someone in there.”
“Me?”
Elara stared at him for so long that Arga found himself hoping she would lie.
“No.”
The bathroom door opened on its own.
There was no bathroom behind it. Only a long hospital corridor, its lights flickering and its floor wet. The smell of antiseptic overpowered the cheap coffee in Arga's room.
At the end of the corridor, a little boy stood with his back to them.
Damar.
He was wearing a patient's clothes. His bare feet were wet with black water.
“Damar,” Elara called.
The boy didn't turn.
“Don't call his name,” Arga said.
Elara looked at him.
“Why?”
“Because that voice is waiting for us to acknowledge it.”
Damar smiled without turning around.
“Arga's getting smarter.”
The figure on the bed snickered. The sound echoed from the walls, the floor, and Arga's own chest.
Damar raised a hand.
There was a photograph in his palm.
“Look who's sleeping.”
The photograph slid across the floor and stopped at Arga's feet.
He didn't want to pick it up. But the photograph had already revealed itself to him.
Arga was asleep in the boarding room.
Elara stood beside his bed.
Damar stood behind Elara.
And in the corner of the photograph, Bima held a camera.
Arga stared at the date printed beneath the image.
Today.
The time read 3:13.
The clock on the boarding room wall read 3:12.
One minute had yet to happen.
In the photograph, Elara raised a silver key to Arga's chest.
She hadn't done it yet in the real world.
But Elara's hand had already vanished from beside his body.
Arga felt a chill in his chest.
He turned.
Elara stood behind him, holding a key he had never seen enter the room. Her face was wet with tears.
“It's not me,” she said.
“Not yet,” Damar answered from the corridor.
The wall clock ticked.
3:13.
The silver key pressed against Arga's chest.
He wasn't fighting Elara. He was fighting something that was using Elara's hand to repeat an old decision.
Arga caught her wrist.
Elara wasn't very strong, but her hand moved like it belonged to someone else. The key kept descending.
“Look at me,” Arga said.
Elara lifted her face.
“Arga, I can't stop it.”
“You can.”
“I've tried before.”
“Then try again.”
Behind them, the body on the bed opened its eyes.
They were completely white.
“Don't force her,” it said. “You've done this over and over.”
Arga tightened his grip on Elara's wrist.
“What happens every time?”
The body on the bed smiled.
“Elara kills you. You wake up. Then you come looking for her again.”
“Why?”
“Because you never learn.”
“No,” Elara said.
She was trembling, but the key stopped descending.
“I'm the one who never learns.”
Arga looked at her.
Elara turned toward the figure on the bed.
“Every time I kill him, I erase his memory. I turn him back into someone who can be used.”
“And this time?”
“I don't know.”
“Liar,” Damar said.
The boy finally turned around.
His face wasn't the face of the Damar Arga had seen in photographs. It had Bima's eyes, Rafael's mouth, and the thin scar belonging to Arga's mother.
“He knows exactly what's going to happen.”
Elara let go of the key.
It fell to the floor without a sound.
Arga was still holding her wrist.
“What do you know?”
Elara looked at the hospital doorway, then the bed, then Arga.
“I know the body sleeping in that bed is the part of you that never woke up.”
“Part of me?”
“The part that wants all of this.”
The figure on the bed stood.
Its feet touched the floor, but left no shadow.
“I was the one who asked for the money,” it said. “I was the one who asked for Elara. I was the one who asked the world to give it a reason to love you.”
Arga felt sick.
“So you're the faceless man?”
“I am the first face you threw away.”
The hospital corridor lights came on all at once.
The walls of the boarding room collapsed without a sound, revealing a white room filled with beds. On every bed lay Arga at a different age. A baby. A child. A teenager. A young man.
They were all asleep.
Elara stood beside every bed.
Some were crying.
Some held a key.
Some were smiling.
And at the end of the room, a woman who looked like Arga's mother was writing something on a glass board.
Don't wake him until Elara is ready to love him.
Arga approached the glass.
The words changed.
Don't wake Elara until Arga is ready to kill her.
Elara stood beside him.
“Now you understand,” she said.
“Not yet.”
“If we wake up completely, one of us has to keep sleeping.”
“Why?”
“Because the Dream Project doesn't create dreams. It transfers lives.”
“Transfers them where?”
Elara pointed at the rows of beds.
“To whoever is willing to bear them.”
A sound of heavy breathing came from one of the beds.
Arga turned.
Bima was lying there.
His eyes were closed. His chest rose and fell. Black cables entered the wall above his head.
Beside him, Damar stood holding a pair of broken scissors.
“Bima isn't dead,” Elara said.
“Then why did he let us believe he was?”
“Because someone who's asleep can be the safest door.”
Damar raised the scissors.
“Choose, Arga.”
“No.”
“You always used to choose.”
“Back then, I didn't know the choice was mine.”
The figure resembling Arga walked closer. Its face began to change—becoming Arga's for a moment, then the faceless man's, then the face of a little boy in a glass box.
“You can't get out without leaving someone behind,” it said.
Arga looked at all the beds.
He saw the lives he might have lived, the grief he had kept buried, the fears that had been given bodies.
Then he looked at Elara.
“Then I'm not the one who gets to choose who gets left behind.”
Elara understood first.
“Arga, don't.”
She reached for his hand.
Arga lifted the silver key from the floor.
Not to stab Elara.
Not to lock himself away.
He drove it into the white floor between them.
Cracks spread throughout the room.
All the beds trembled.
The figure resembling Arga screamed.
“What are you doing?”
“Cutting off the door.”
“If that door is severed, everyone sleeping here will die.”
“No.”
Arga looked at Elara.
“Only the dream that's been using them will die.”
Elara reached for the key with him.
Their fingers met.
This time, there was no plea to be saved. No vow of love. Only a decision they made in fear.
They pulled the key upward.
The white room shattered.
Before everything vanished, Bima opened his eyes on his bed.
He smiled at Arga.
“Don't trust the person who wakes up first.”
Then the world turned upside down.
Arga woke on the floor of the boarding room.
The spilled coffee still pooled near the table. Rain still hammered against the window. Elara lay beside him, gripping his hand.
The bathroom door was closed.
There was no corridor.
No Damar.
There was no one on the bed.
Arga nearly laughed with relief.
Then he realized one thing.
Elara was still asleep.
She had woken up first.
From behind the bathroom door, Bima's voice said:
“Good. Now we can start over.”