A FEW HOURS LATER
The cinema had become quieter.
A few of Safsan's friends came in together.
They had been coming to the cinema for a long time. They knew Safsan, and Safsan knew them.
When it was time to pay, one of them smiled.
"Can we pay next time?"
Safsan looked at them.
For a moment, he said nothing.
Then he simply nodded.
"Okay."
They thanked him and walked inside.
Safsan watched them disappear into the cinema.
He wasn't the kind of person who would normally do something like that with something that didn't belong to him.
If the cinema had been his, he would probably have let them in for free.
They were his friends.
They were his customers.
But it wasn't his.
So he only said:
"Okay."
Then he noticed something.
A little girl.
She was sitting in her father's arms.
Safsan stopped.
The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
His eyes remained on them.
To everyone else, it was nothing unusual.
Just a father holding his daughter.
But Safsan saw something deeper.
The way the girl rested against her father's chest.
The way her father held her.
The quiet trust between them.
Something moved inside Safsan.
A deep desire.
One he had buried.
One he had learned to suppress.
His eyes became wet.
He quickly looked away.
But a few unwilling tears escaped.
He wiped them before anyone could notice.
He didn't understand why the sight affected him so deeply.
Or perhaps...
he did.
He simply didn't want to admit it.
SEENEE watched.
Sometimes the smallest moments reveal the things people spend years hiding.
Safsan didn't know it yet.
But the thing that was chasing him had already shown him its face.
His own.
To run from change is to run in a circle.
And there is no monster in the darkness more frightening than the version of ourselves we refuse to become.
When Safsan ran through his dream, he wasn't running from an enemy outside himself.
He was running from something within.
The subconscious is a mirror that refuses to lie.
When we suppress what we truly want...
when we let the days pass...
when we lock our potential away in silence...
what is buried does not simply disappear.
Sometimes...
it waits.
And sometimes...
it follows us into the night.
Meeting yourself can feel like a frightening kind of birth.
Because for the person you want to become to awaken...
the person you have been may have to die.
Safsan would wake again.
And again.
And again.
But every time he thought he had escaped...
he would discover another dream waiting behind the one before it.
A room inside another room.
A door that was never really a door.
A waking that was never truly waking.
His own fear would become the walls of the labyrinth.
And somewhere in that labyrinth...
a mirror would be waiting.
Not a monster.
Not a stranger.
Him.
The exact same face.
The same body.
The same clothes.
The same movements.
Running.
Always running.
Until the question was no longer:
"What is chasing me?"
But:
"Why am I running?"
And when the human mind refuses to listen to its own voice...
the night sometimes speaks in older languages.
It sends symbols.
Warnings.
Things that crawl through the darkness.
And eventually...
a black snake.
---
### THE DREAM OF THE OTHER SELF
You run through the smoke of night,
from footsteps following where you have been.
You carry a fear you cannot disguise,
and tremble before the eyes of the one behind.
But when you finally turn around,
there are no claws.
No teeth.
No monster waiting in the dark.
There is only your own face.
Your own source.
Your own reflection.
And it is chasing you toward a land called change.
You wake into darkness...
but the walls betray you.
A room inside a room.
A dream pretending to be reality.
For the one who refuses to take the step,
becomes a prisoner of the dream that hides it.
And the snake will come when the stars grow pale.
A poison from within,
demanding an answer.
For if you wait too long for the signs you refuse to see...
the chase may become the only thing you have left.
The fire was almost gone.
Only a few red embers remained beneath the ash.
An old woman sat beside it.
Her hands were covered in wrinkles,
each one like a road carved by a long life.
She slowly lifted her head.
Her eyes were old.
Deep.
Quiet.
But there was something else in them.
Something Safsan could not explain.
She fixed her gaze upon him.
Safsan stopped.
The old woman said nothing.
She simply looked at him.
As if she had been waiting.
Her name was...
Safuu.