In a dimly lit apothecary tucked into the twisting streets of a forgotten city, Viktor Petrov stood, his brow glistening with sweat. The smell of earth and decay clung to the cramped little shop, a pungent bouquet of damp soil and long-wilted herbs. His trembling hands gripped a ceramic pot filled with what the eccentric shopkeeper had described as a “令人愉快的potting mix.”
“Pleasant for who?” Viktor muttered under his breath, glaring at the shopkeeper. The man, with his silver-streaked beard and vaguely hypnotic, colorless eyes, chuckled—a sound more akin to grinding stone than human laughter.
“Well, for your dreams, of course,” the shopkeeper replied, in a voice heavy with the kind of ominous mystique Viktor had hoped to avoid. “This mix coaxes out the truest desires buried in the soil of your soul.” He reached over the counter, his movements lazy but deliberate. “But beware—every seed you plant in this,” he tapped the pot Viktor held, “grows only what you deserve.”
“What I deserve?” Viktor asked, his voice cracking in a way that betrayed how deeply the words unsettled him. He hadn’t come here for riddles. He’d come here to escape. Unpaid debts weighed on him like millstones, and the shadows of his past—those who had once called him friend, lover, even savior—were now chasing him down alleys both real and metaphorical. “Do you take me for a fool?”
“Take you?” The shopkeeper tilted his head, smile widening. “Oh no, dear boy. I sell to fools. And you, Viktor Petrov, are my most delightful customer yet.”
Viktor slammed a few crumpled bills on the counter and left in a fury, ignoring the shopkeeper’s parting words: “Be careful what you think you plant, my friend.”
Back in his dreary apartment, lit only by the faded glow of a single streetlamp filtering through cracked blinds, Viktor sat at his desk and stared at the pot. A packet of seeds labeled “New Beginnings” lay beside it. It was comically naive, he thought. The kind of thing you’d see in the garden of a suburban family with a white picket fence and no understanding of how the world actually worked.
As though in defiance of its cheery name, Viktor poured the “令人愉快的potting mix” into the pot—a dark, loamy soil flecked with something like glittering quartz. The very texture unnerved him. It felt both damp and dry, light yet impossibly weighty, whispering against his fingertips as though it had its own voice. He shoved the seeds in with more force than necessary, his hands trembling with frustration, hunger, and something worse: hope.
“Grow me an escape,” he snarled, voice low but trembling. “Out of this debt. This guilt. This city.” He laughed bitterly. “Grow me the life I should have had.”
That night, he dreamed of a towering tree, its branches twisted like the veins of an exhausted heart. From its gnarled branches, gilded fruits hung low, glittering in the moonlight. One by one, the fruits burst, spilling not juice but shadows—visages of faces he thought he’d long forgotten. They whispered accusations in voices barely discernible, their words a razor’s edge slicing through his very sense of self.
He woke in a sweat, the pot now overflowing with a vine that pulsed as though it were alive. The flowers—black with crimson veins running their length—seemed to turn toward him in silent reproach.
The next day, when Viktor stepped outside, he saw people from his past lurking in shadows or passing by in crowds. Elena, the woman he’d betrayed in a desperate bid for wealth, stared at him with eyes that seemed far too alive for someone he knew to be six feet under. Alexei, his childhood friend—whom he’d cheated at cards and left penniless—watched him from across the street with a look Viktor recognized as a mix of pity and disdain.
By the week’s end, Viktor could no longer leave his apartment. Every time he passed the pot, he felt the vine shifting imperceptibly, as though its growth fed on not just water but his very presence. He tried to throw it out, but the moment he touched it, the tendrils snaked around his fingers like shackles. And every night, without fail, he dreamed of that tree—its fruits bursting, its branches curling tighter around him, mocking him with the faces of those he had wronged.
It was only when he returned to the apothecary, bedraggled and desperate, that the shopkeeper’s words resurfaced. “Grows only what you deserve.”
“You sold me a curse,” Viktor spat, slamming the pot on the counter.
The shopkeeper merely smiled. “No. I sold you soil. Your own soul decided the crop.”
Viktor’s shaking hand knocked the pot to the floor. It shattered, the mix spilling out like black tar. But something else emerged, writhing—indistinct, shadowy figures whose faces mirrored Viktor’s in flashes of agony and despair.
The shopkeeper leaned close, voice a soft whisper. “Careful, Viktor. The roots run deepest when watered by regret.”
It was then Viktor realized: there was no escape, no new beginning. The life he had planted in greed, cruelty, and cowardice had blossomed into a prison from which he could never truly break free. And it was, undeniably, his own doing.