The young Captain pulled his tiny boat onto the beach, his muscles flexing under sun-bronzed skin as he hauled the craft onto the warm sand. With two steady hands, he gripped the arm of his only passenger, helping him step ashore. Though the passenger moved with the fragility of an old woman, he was only middle-aged—a man clearly unaccustomed to beach life, appearing lost and in need of constant guidance.
The captain escorted him to a spot beneath one of the umbrellas set along the shore for guests, moving with the quick agility of a smuggler delivering forbidden cargo before disappearing from sight.
The passenger collapsed onto the lounger and lifted his heavy head to thank the captain, but he was already gone, heading back toward his boat. Exhausted, the passenger fell into a deep sleep after his "adventurous" tour.
He woke up with a severe headache and intense thirst. He was so dehydrated that he immediately reached for the large glass of water another guest had left behind. The ice had long since melted in the tropical heat, leaving the water tepid, but he didn't mind. He drained it in one desperate gulp.
The sun had already set, and the beach was empty except for a young guard patrolling with a flashlight and a small black kitten struggling to lick the last drops of water from an empty glass just to survive. The sight filled him with a strange sadness for the tiny helpless creature, and he tried to stand to help it, but dizziness overcame him and he immediately sat back down.
The guard approached to see if everything was alright and politely asked whether he needed help getting to his room. The passenger accepted the kind offer and followed him to reception. Seeing that the passenger was not really in a condition to answer many questions, the receptionist quickly checked his ID and registered a new key to his room. The kind receptionist even went a step further and offered him a pack of light aspirin.
The room had been serviced and was clean and tidy, except for a short note left on the desk. He could make out the few large words written on it: "See you in court." But he was not conscious enough to make any sense of it. Almost automatically, he went straight to the shower, brushed his teeth, took a pill, and slept through the rest of the night.
The Next Morning
He woke up with almost no headache, but this time he was starving. He could not remember the last time he had eaten. He rushed to the minibar searching for something to eat, like a wild hungry animal sniffing for prey. Finding nothing except a bottle of water, he went back down to reception. A different receptionist greeted him warmly and told him the breakfast buffet had just opened and he was welcome to enjoy it.
At the entrance, an employee glanced at the purple bracelet on his wrist and showed him to a good table near the buffet. He quickly filled his plate with different foods, snacks, and drinks. After finally getting full, he leaned back and noticed that everyone around him was either checking their phones or taking selfies.
Suddenly, he wondered where his own phone was. He could not remember the last place he had seen it. He went to the beach and searched under the same umbrella, then returned to his room and looked everywhere. He spent the entire morning searching for his phone without success. By then, he felt stressed and completely lost. When he saw everybody heading toward the lunch buffet, he simply followed them.
He began looking through all the bites and snacks laid out on the tables, but he had no appetite for them. He passed the colorful food stands and finally stopped in front of a young woman in a clean, neatly pressed uniform that fit her perfectly, her hair tucked neatly beneath a mesh cover. She was frying fresh local white fish fillets on a comal for the small group of guests waiting in line.
When his turn came, she greeted him warmly—more warmly than the receptionists had. She spoke like an old friend picking up a conversation exactly where it had been left. He went along with it, watching her work as she handled the fish with quiet skill and ease, as effortlessly as the captain handled his small boat. Yet despite all that skill, one good piece of fillet slipped from her hands and fell beneath the table. She continued cooking as if nothing had happened. Wanting to please the kind young woman, the passenger immediately bent down to pick it up, but she blushed slightly, almost guilty.
Under the table, he found the same black kitten struggling to chew the fillet with desperate appetite. He slowly stood back up and looked into the woman's beautiful, gentle eyes. Without a single word, the three of them shared the same quiet satisfaction.
The meal was as good as expected—simple, fresh, and perfect in its own way. He felt no need to add anything except having a soda with ice beside his meal that the server offered to him. He ate slowly, enjoying every bite.
That strange feeling of emptiness—something he still could not name—returned after he got full again. His headache came back as well. He took one of the same pills the night-shift receptionist had given him and lay down under the same umbrella on the beach hoping to feel better.
Searching for Relief
After sunset, he went to reception and asked for help finding his phone. He also asked if they had anything stronger for his headache, since it still had not completely gone away. While the receptionist checked with Lost and Found, the passenger found himself talking about the strange feelings he had been experiencing.
The receptionist told him he would keep him informed about the missing phone and explained that he was not allowed to offer guests anything stronger than aspirin, though he suggested taking a double dose. Then, with a wide receptionist smile, he added that the nightclub might have something much stronger.
At the nightclub, after a couple of tequila shots, the passenger forgot about his headache and finally began to feel good. Soon, he ordered more drinks and asked for a full bottle. The bartender explained that bottles were not included and recommended getting a private table as well. The passenger admitted that he did not have any cash with him, but the bartender smiled and said it was not a problem. All he needed was the room number.
The passenger took the best table and ordered drinks and snacks generously. Before long, he noticed attractive women glancing at him and smiling. The more money he spent, the more attention he received, until eventually he ended up back in his room with one of them.
He woke up with a slight hangover. It was almost noon, and the girl was already gone. Assuming the breakfast buffet had closed, he decided to wait for lunch instead.
Meanwhile, he opened the laptop on the desk. Two windows were open on the desktop—one showing his bank account, the other his stock market account, most of the numbers still green. His bank account looked fine too, and the couple thousand dollars he had spent the night before seemed insignificant compared to the hundreds of thousands still sitting there.
He went deeper into his older folders and files, searching for something—anything—that might ease the strange feeling of loneliness. But the more he searched, the stronger that feeling became. It was all piles of digits and numbers.
Patterns of the Heaven
By lunchtime, he was starving again. He tried a few different dishes from the buffet, but nothing tasted like the food prepared on the young woman's comal. When he approached her station, she greeted him even more warmly than before and offered different meats and vegetables. It seemed she could prepare almost anything he wanted on that comal.
After lunch, looking after answers to the reason of the existence, he headed to his umbrella at the beach and tried talking to a couple lying on the chairs beside him, asking how they were feeling. They said they were very happy. They had just arrived and were excited to try everything the resort had to offer. When he asked where they came from, they mentioned the name of a town he didn't know. He nodded and asked whether they preferred their hometown or this place.
The couple laughed.
— "Of course here," they said. "If we had the choice, we would stay forever. But reality was waiting outside, and sooner or later every guest had to leave this heaven behind. We wished we could afford more days, but we would soon have to return to work and hope we could come back again someday."
The conversation left him feeling worse. He tried speaking with other guests of different ages and appearances, but the answers were always more or less the same. One man, around his own age and clearly enjoying himself, told him that as long as he tipped well, people treated him like a king. What could be better than that? Still, the man admitted he envied the passenger for being single and free to spend time with different women if he wanted to.
The passenger's headache slowly returned. He took a couple of aspirin and spent the rest of the day watching people, hoping to find out something different. But it was always the same patterns repeated in slightly different ways by different-looking people who, underneath it all, seemed almost identical.
He went back to the nightclub that night, hoping to forget his headache and maybe enjoy the excitement of being single after such a disappointing, empty day. In the morning, he found himself in bed beside a woman he had met at the club, but now he found her unpleasant—nothing like the exciting and seductive woman he thought he had seen in the dark nightclub while drunk and full of desire.
At the breakfast buffet, he could barely look at the fried sausages and pastries anymore. To him, they all seemed made from the same meat and dough, simply cooked and presented in different ways. He took some sourdough bread and cheese instead and ate them with the coffee the server brought him.
He did not feel like going to the beach, so he decided to return to his room. There was a problem with his payment and room access, but he handled it with the receptionist. He extended his stay for ten more days, the longest the hotel allowed before another credit check. This time he was even given a better room. Still, it was mostly the same thing with a slightly bigger window, which hardly mattered since a room was only for sleeping and maybe sex.
The Proposal
He collapsed onto the bed and felt like doing nothing at all. The emptiness inside him became so heavy that he seriously thought about ending his life. Then he became hungry again—but only for the comal lady's food. Suddenly, he felt full of hope and excitement. He jumped off the bed, took a long shower, dressed casually but as well as he could, stuffed his pockets with cash to tip generously and win the employees' love, and headed to the lunch buffet.
The lady was kinder than ever, and in return he tipped her $2,000 dollars. Her eyebrows lifted in surprise, but she quietly slipped the cash into the pocket of her clean apron and continued acting as usual.
Then immediately he asked her out to have dinner together, but she explained that the restaurants were only open to guests, and he would have to figure out something else for their date. He told her he could do anything except leave the hotel. He did not know the outside world here, and honestly, he was scared of it—especially after hearing so many people describe it as hell compared to the resort.
She quietly agreed. She said she also would not recommend guests going outside the hotel, but added that she might be able to figure something out for them by tomorrow.
Not long after he had eaten and got full, his depression returned with the same weight as before. The only thing that kept him from not killing himself, was the small hope the woman had given him.
The next day, she returned with an idea. She told him she wanted to be able to date him properly inside the hotel, but to do that she would need $250,000 to quit her job and become a guest. Without hesitation, he agreed. She added that the money had to be in cash, along with a few additional instructions.
After his lunch, the passenger went directly to the money exchange. He gathered everything together, placed it into a duffel bag, and waited for sunset. As darkness settled over the beach, he carried the bag along the shoreline in the direction she had given him, until he reached the large rocks.
She was waiting there. He handed her the bag.
— "Here, $250,000. Now we can meet each other in the hotel."
She checked inside. Her eyes widened at the sight of the money. She closed the bag quickly and said, "Thank you… thank you. You are an angel. Now I have to wait here for someone to pick me up by boat. You can go back, and I'll see you tomorrow."
He told her he would rather stay until her ride arrived. He sat beside her and spoke about everything he imagined they would do together in the hotel. She just listened.
Betrayal at the Rocks
A boat emerged from the darkness. To his surprise, it was the same small vessel—and the same captain—who had brought him to the hotel beach days earlier. An unexpected calm settled over him, as if the world had briefly closed a circle, and offered him something familiar.
The young captain pulled the boat onto the sand with the same effortless precision as before and approached them. He took the bag, weighed it briefly, then placed it into a waterproof storage box in the boat, and locked it. Without a word, he turned and began pushing the boat back toward the water.
The woman suddenly stepped forward, trying to climb in after him. The captain blocked her path. His voice was flat, final. He said he could not take her—that the people he had to settle with were dangerous drug dealers, and that this was as far as it went.
For a moment she stood still, as if trying to understand what she had just heard. Then she broke. Tears came quickly as she cried out that he had promised. That if she brought the money, they would leave together—somewhere safe, somewhere no one could ever reach them again, and they will start a real diving tours business together. She begged him not to abandon her.
This time, the captain did not hesitate. He shoved her back with force, as though whatever history they shared no longer mattered. She fell hard onto the sand.
Through sobs, she shouted, "I waited for you for years. I always I kept all your secrets. I did everything you asked. I risked my life for you."
The captain did not respond. He stepped into the boat, turned away, and prepared to depart, as if neither the passenger nor the woman were still part of his world.
His girlfriend suddenly stood up and ran toward the boat again, crying out, "I love you. I love you with all my heart." She slipped into the water but managed to pull herself up into the boat. The captain grabbed her, slapped her and she fell into the sea once more. Without hesitation, he turned away and started the engine.
The passenger, overwhelmed by what he was witnessing, could not stay still. Despite everything, he rushed forward and tried to stop the captain. But the captain overpowered him easily, pushing him back as if he weighed nothing. His voice was sharp now—final, warning him to stay away or he would kill him if necessary.
As the engine roared louder, the situation broke apart into chaos. In a desperate moment, the passenger climbed back into the boat just before it left the shore. The captain turned on him immediately and punched him on the face. In seconds, the passenger was on the deck, pinned down, the world collapsing into noise, motion, and pain. Then—sudden stillness.
Shifting Memories
The captain leaned over his subconscious body, gripping his collar, his voice low and controlled.
— "You prefer to die, huh?" he said. "I already took your memory. Now I'm taking your money. You don't need it. Do you hear me?"
He shook him once, then again, repeating the words as if trying to force them into place:
— "Do you hear me?"
For a moment, everything blurred. Then something inside the passenger shifted. Not new information—something returning. A memory surfaced through the pain. He had been here before. The same boat. The same voice. The same question echoing across the water: "Do you hear me?"
It had happened a week ago, just before the captain brought him back to the beach in the boat. The captain had been trying to revive him after pulling him from the water, performing CPR as the sea moved indifferently around them. That was the moment everything began—though at the time, none of it felt like the beginning of anything.
Now, fragments began to return. The passenger felt his past resurfacing in disjointed flashes, as though memory itself were trying to rebuild him.
He remembered that he had come to this all-inclusive resort with his wife after their heartbreaking breakup, as a last attempt to save their collapsing marriage. They needed a good getaway. They chose the same place where he had proposed fifteen years earlier. They returned hoping to relive the same love—or perhaps to find a way to fall in love again.
On the second day of their stay, the kind woman at the lunch buffet told them about a private diving tour with an experienced local captain, someone she knew, who could take guests to untouched diving locations for a fee. The passenger decided to take the diving tour. He did so without asking his wife's opinion, and it broke her heart.
That night, she argued with him. She said he had never shown interest in diving—not even once, even when their ten-year-old son had asked for it before. She also said she did not trust it, that it felt dangerous, and that she did not like the idea of going with an unfamiliar local man. She insisted they should not go.
But when his wife woke up in the morning, the passenger was gone—he had left without waking her.
The dive went wrong. The equipment was old and poorly maintained, and it failed underwater.
He drowned.
The Truth Revealed
It was the captain who pulled him back into the boat and performed CPR, bringing him back to life. Afterward, the captain grew fearful of reporting what had happened. He told no one except his girlfriend, who worked in the hotel kitchen. He asked her to keep an eye on the passenger, as he seemed disoriented and unstable after returning from near death.
That was why she was so kind to him. Why she stayed close, quietly trying to take care of him. But everything changed when the captain heard about a $2,000 tip the passenger had given at lunch. He no longer saw the passenger as someone recovering, but as someone fragile and confused—someone whose judgment could not be trusted. In his mind, it became almost reasonable: the passenger would not truly understand what was taken from him. Not in this condition. And if he didn't take it, someone else eventually would.
The passenger suddenly stopped thinking and began to laugh uncontrollably, blood on his face, his laughter rising in a way that no longer seemed entirely human. The captain, convinced the man had completely lost his mind, lifted him up and threw him into the shallow water. Then, without another word, he turned away and disappeared into the darkness of the ocean with his boat.
The girl remained on the shore, crying heavily. She said she was sorry—so sorry. She said she never should have listened to her boyfriend, and begged for forgiveness. Through tears, she said she had ruined her own life. She had broken the heart of a good man who had loved her purely, perhaps for the first time in her life. She said the hotel was everything she had. Her entire world. And if he told anyone what had happened, she would lose it all.
The passenger kept laughing, splashing water over his head as if trying to wash away something that had long since settled into him and hard to be removed. Then he suddenly shouted, "Yes… you're absolutely right."
He paused. Slowly, he walked back toward her on the sand. The woman froze in place. Her body stiffened, fear tightening her breath.
He lifted her chin gently, almost tenderly, and looked into her eyes.
— "You are absolutely right," he said. "I love you purely. But how could you love me back? A man with no memory…"
"You have no idea how miserable life becomes in a place like this—an all-inclusive where you no longer remember what it took to arrive, or what you left behind to get here. How empty and lifeless it feels when you begin to believe there is no limit to your stay, no outside pulling you back, no reason waiting beyond the horizon.
"Now I know I have seven more days here if I want to stay. I'm so thrilled to live every moment of it as a free man. I'm so happy to have this chance—especially to be in the same place as the love of my life. I'm euphoric for that small chance I've been given to win your love. I loved you the moment I saw you.
"Why do you think I took that private diving tour you recommended? I wanted to get closer to you. Also, I thought that it was a good deal. I still think it is, including everything that I went through and might keep going through for the remaining 7 days of my stay here.
"I love it all, all-inclusive: of pain, of pleasure.
"I love the way you care for that helpless kitten. No one else seems to notice here. I fell in love.
"I fell in love with you with my memory. I fell in love with you without it too."