Eric hesitated for a moment but eventually nodded.


    On my way to the mental institution, my body couldn’t stop shaking.


    I couldn’t pinpoint the sadness, but my mind was haunted by that room, charred ck.


    The fire, the thick smoke, the desperate screams.


    Sharing a room with Colin, I knew his back was a canvas of gruesome scars, his hands, his calves – all


    marred by burns.


    Remnants of that devastating fire.


    The pain he must have endured back then.


    “The mental institution was shut downter. The director was arrested after abuses were exposed.”


    On the ride there, I Googled the mental institution, uncovering a slew of horrifying scandals.


    Doctors using patients for their amusement, torturing them.


    Electroshock, waterboarding, suffocation, torment. Humanity’s worst magnified within those


    walls.


    “Besides the director’s arrest and his subsequent death from a heart attack in jail, the other doctors, the


    ones not convicted, seemed to have died off over the years.” A realization made me sit bolt upright.


    Coincidence?


    Those doctors had met their ends in idents,


    Car crashes, falls from buildings, drownings…


    “Some online post imed it was karmic retribution for the St. Aria Psychiatric Center’s sickos.” I felt a


    chill reading that post.


    Could all this really be a coincidence?


    If their deaths weren’t idental, could there be a link to the orphanage serial killings?


    A sudden headache struck, and I grabbed my hair, trying to stay cool.


    It had to be a coincidence, right? Just a twist of fate.


    “I’ve always believed in karma,” Eric said, not borating as he got out and opened the car door for


    me.


    I knew he was holding back, that some questions would remain unanswered with him.


    N?velDrama.Org owns this text.


    The mental institution was closed down; we had to sneak in through the side gate.


    12:07


    It was as eerie as the orphanage, a ce that unsettled you the moment you stepped inside.


    A recent viral exploration livestream had featured this ce, iming it was haunted.


    “This was Mr. Caleb’s room. The Langley family had arranged for a private room.” Eric’s voice was


    hoarse. “We hoped… he’d have it better here.”


    But it was hell on earth.


    I pushed open that door and froze.


    The walls were covered in equations, numbers – he was calcting something.


    The room was eerily clean, and I could almost see a young man in a white hospital gown scribbling


    endlessly on the wall with a pencil.


    Touching the numbers, I moved forward.


    At the end of the room, I found the equation – he was using calculus topute pl… endlessly working


    out each digit after the decimal.


    “What was he trying to do?” My voice was a rasp, almost as if I was asking myself.


    Colin was a genius in mathematics and finance, no doubt about that.


    But why this obsession with calcting pi?


    “The doctor who blew the whistle on the hospital said that Mr. Caleb was determined to prove that


    everything followed a pattern, like pi… that it could be resolved, that time would circle back, and


    everything could start anew, that souls could exist in multiple dimensions, and as long as everything


    could beputed, as long as the pattern was found…”


    Eric clearly didn’t understand either. In the world of the insane, anything was possible.


    $


    I stared at the wall full of numbers, feeling as if I was submerged in ice–cold water.


    If everything followed a pattern, if time could be reversed, if souls could be reborn…


    My hands flew to my mouth in shock. Colin, was he trying to prove that this world was an illusion, that


    nothing was real, or was he trying to prove that in many years, everything would begin again?