Even after the emergency meeting, Haim couldn’t shake the lingering anxiety in his chest as he made his way back to the ward. The words, “Stories spread like infection,” echoed in his mind, and he knew he had to confront the essence of this narrative addiction up close.

The ward was quiet after midnight. But beneath that silence flowed a tension that could erupt at any moment. From the patients’ rooms, low and ceaseless murmurs seeped into the corridors:

“The 901st night… She stopped speaking…” “She never lost her smile…” “The mask is laughing…”

Haim paused and slowly stepped into one of the rooms. There lay a young male patient, Kim Hyun-woo. His face was pale, his lips subtly curled in an eerie smile, and even with closed eyes, the trace of a grin lingered.

Haim approached and gently called out his name.

“Mr. Kim Hyun-woo… can you hear me?”

A brief silence followed, and then Hyun-woo’s eyelids slowly fluttered open. His gaze turned toward Haim, and at last, in a low voice, he muttered:

“She… stopped telling the story.”

Haim quietly took a seat. He still held the notes from the emergency meeting. Moving his pen slowly, he continued the conversation.

“You said she stopped. Who are you referring to? Scheherazade?”

Hyun-woo faintly nodded, the smile deepening at the corners of his lips.

“The mask… is laughing.”

“Mask? What kind of mask?”

“Its eyes… shattered into Xs. She wore that mask… on the final night.”

An image flashed through Haim’s mind — one of the ancient stone masks unearthed in the Negev Desert of Israel.

(Note: As of 2018, the Israel Museum in Jerusalem has exhibited 11 Neolithic stone masks, estimated to be 9,000 years old. Found near Jerusalem and in the Judean Desert, these masks are believed to represent early community rituals. Some possess expressions so ambiguous they are nicknamed “bound smiles,” leaving viewers unsure whether they depict joy or sorrow.)

The mask, associated with rituals of death and remembrance, had been labeled by some scholars as a tool of “memory sealing.” It was a real artifact—and now, a patient was describing it in chilling detail.

“You mustn’t hear the story to the end… or you’ll see the smile.”

Haim exhaled slowly and gave a faint nod.

Suddenly, a short siren blared from the corridor. A nurse rushed over.

“Dr. Haim, one of the new patients… keeps repeating a strange phrase.”

“What does he say?”

“He says: ‘Seeking the storyteller.’ Over and over again.”

Haim stood up, murmuring to himself:

“The story… is demanding its next phase.”

He left the room and headed for the second isolation ward. There, another patient lay recently admitted, also wearing an emotionless grin, repeating a cryptic phrase:

“Seeking the storyteller… Seeking the storyteller… Begin the tale…”

His tone was monotone, like a sacred chant. The nurse spoke nervously.

“He says it in his sleep too… his lips keep moving. It feels like he’s reciting fragments of a story from deep within his consciousness.”

Haim sat beside him and wrote a single phrase in his notepad:

“Selection of the storyteller”

“This is no mere hallucination. The narrative is active. It has structure. Purpose.”

As he turned to leave, the patient whispered once more, chilling his spine:

“You… are the last storyteller, aren’t you…?”

Haim made his way to the far end of the corridor, toward the third isolation room. A nurse approached him cautiously.

“Dr. Haim… there’s something unusual about patient Seorin.”

“What is it?”

“She’s still unconscious, but her fingers keep moving, regularly. Like… she’s writing something.”

Without a word, Haim rushed into the room. Seorin lay asleep, an oxygen mask over her face, but her right hand kept repeating precise gestures in the air.

Opening his notebook, Haim carefully transcribed the motion:

“The 901st night, the tale is incomplete.
The storyteller must carry the memory.”

Suddenly, the heart monitor flickered and displayed a line of unfamiliar text:

"The tale is an infection.
Those infected become part of the story."

A nurse screamed. Medical staff rushed in.

But Haim remained still, eyes locked on the screen.

“This isn’t a system error. Someone… is turning this hospital into a stage for the narrative.”

“We are now inside the story.”

Right then, the lights flickered as if the power surged, and the hospital’s administrative tablet turned on by itself, revealing an unsaved document titled:

File: “901st Night – Act II”

Haim quietly spoke:

“Act Two… has begun.”