The Paralel World Doctor

The Bed Used as Collateral

The city after midnight did not sleep. It only changed faces.

Peter walked past closed shops, a coffee stall with dirty glasses left on the tables, and online loan posters pasted crookedly to electric poles. A streetlight flickered at the end of the alley. Beneath it, a motorcycle taxi driver yawned on his bike while two night workers ate instant noodles without speaking to each other.

The air smelled of drains, gasoline, and old rain. In Zicari, people killed with poison, swords, and imperial decrees. Here, they killed with cameras, debt, and contracts printed too neatly for poor people in panic.

The apartment building stood behind an old minimarket. Seven floors, stained walls, a broken elevator, and damp corridors. Apartment 307 was at the end of the third floor, where the hallway light blinked as if it had wanted to die for a long time.

The old key turned roughly. As soon as the door opened, the smell of stale alcohol and damp clothes greeted him. Peter stood in the doorway for a moment, not shocked by poverty, but by the way the room felt like a long record of someone losing slowly while no one cared.

Moldy plates filled the small sink. Empty bottles lay beneath the table. Sedatives were scattered near the thin mattress. Bills covered the floor, some already stepped on until the ink had faded. Every object seemed to speak, telling him the owner of this body had sunk too deep to remember how to climb.

Peter picked up one bill. His name was written under loan amounts, overdue interest, and a threat of field collection. Another sheet made his fingers pause.

A hospital notice.

Patient name: Margaret Davis. Room 6B, Bed 19. There were overdue charges, a follow-up schedule, and a payment warning too polite to call itself a threat. Beneath it was an oxygen receipt dated last week. The illness was not an old wound already closed. This body still had someone waiting for payment, and perhaps still waiting for her son to wake up.

In a crooked drawer near the window, Peter found an old photograph. A young man with his face stood beside a middle-aged woman. Margaret held his arm with a tired smile, the kind of smile a mother used so her child would not be afraid.

Fragments of memory moved through the body. Disinfectant. Hospital lights. A thin hand patting his head. A staff member saying surgery could not wait forever.

Peter placed the photo back carefully. This body had not merely failed. It had been used, ruined, and abandoned to carry the consequences. In the five missing years, the name Peter Davis had become a joke, his face a symbol of drunken failure, and his life a stack of debt placed over his mother’s illness.

A hard bang shook the door.

“Davis! Open up!”

Safety chains shifted in several units. Neighbors’ faces appeared through narrow gaps, wide enough to watch, not wide enough to help.

“Davis again?” an old woman called from across the hall. “I said people like him would bring trouble to this building.”

“Must be debt,” another man whispered. “A drunk like him was bound to be visited by thugs sooner or later.”

“Don’t make it last too long,” someone complained from behind a door. “I work in the morning.”

Peter opened the door.

Five men stood in the corridor. The one in front was of medium build, with a hard face, cropped hair, and a leather jacket marked by a small red sickle. Hector. A small leader who did not need to move much to make others step back.

Beside him, a thin man played with a folding knife between his fingers. Dagger, smiling like he was always waiting for a reason to hurt someone. Brock stood behind Hector with a thick neck and heavy body. Vince leaned against the wall with cynical eyes. Skull stayed silent under a dark hood, and somehow made the hallway feel even narrower.

Hector looked Peter up and down. “You were brave enough at the karaoke room. Are you brave enough to pay your debt?”

Across the hall, someone whispered, “See? Debt.”

Dagger tapped the knife against his palm. “Mr. Goro said your hands like touching things that aren’t yours. Tonight we’ll break them so they behave.”

Brock laughed heavily. “Break both. Let him sign with his mouth.”

Vince lowered his head slightly to look at Peter’s face. “You look more sober than usual. Too bad sober men usually scream louder.”

Peter did not answer at once. He looked at their shoes, shoulder distance, hand positions, and the way Hector did not attack immediately. This was not a stupid thug. He knew when to use violence and when to let the audience pressure the victim first.

“How much?” Peter asked.

Hector lifted an eyebrow. “Now you ask? One hundred million principal. With interest, visiting fees, and the face you made Mr. Goro lose tonight, it’s one hundred and fifty million.”

“What was the loan for?”

Dagger sneered. “You forgot that too? Your life really is rotten.”

Hector took out a folded paper and slapped it against Peter’s chest. “Your mother’s treatment. That was your reason when you bowed in front of our people.”

The corridor grew quieter. Some neighbors held back their comments. Debt for a sick mother sounded more complicated than gambling debt, and people like them disliked complicated things. They were more comfortable when Peter remained a drunk who deserved mockery.

Peter opened the paper. His signature was there. The date matched Margaret’s hospital notice. There was a piece of truth inside the lie, and that was always more dangerous than a pure lie.

“Davis,” a male neighbor said from behind a half-open door, pretending to be wise. “Just pay if you can. If you can’t, don’t drag the whole building into it.”

The old woman snorted. “He has no money. People like him only know how to make others ashamed.”

Hector smiled because public pressure had started working for him. “Hear that? Even your neighbors are tired of you.”

Peter folded the paper. “I need seven days.”

Dagger laughed. “Seven days? Are you going to print money in that rotten room?”

Brock stepped forward. “Boss, Mr. Goro doesn’t like coming twice.”

Hector nodded slowly, as if that sentence deserved to become law. “In Central Market, people don’t say Goro’s name loudly unless they’re ready to lose something. Money debt is paid with money. Face debt is paid with bones.”

So the karaoke video was also about face.

Peter’s gaze sharpened.

Hector caught the change and smiled. “Don’t look at me like that. I’m only the collector. But if you made my boss lose his show, someone has to pay.”

“Give me seven days.”

“And if we don’t?”

“I pay.”

Vince laughed coldly. “Not a rich man. A madman.”

Brock lifted an iron rod. “Boss, let me start.”

Hector did not stop him. He only looked at Peter with a cold face. “If you have no money, we’ll start with your hands. After that, if Mr. Goro still isn’t satisfied, we’ll visit your mother’s bed in Room 6B.”

The air changed.

The neighbors who had been whispering went silent. Even Dagger stopped playing with his knife. They might not care about Margaret Davis, but they were human enough to know a line had just been crossed. Unfortunately, none of them were brave enough to name it.

Peter stared at Hector for a moment, then half closed the apartment door, as if he did not want the smell of the corridor or the dust from the collectors’ shoes to enter the room where Margaret’s photo sat. His movement was calm, too calm for someone who had just been threatened.

From inside his sleeve, he drew a silver needle. The corridor light touched its tip, thin and cold.

Hector narrowed his eyes. “What is that?”

Peter raised his face, his voice low. “Then don’t move too fast. I don’t want my hand to miss.”