The Man Who Sold Regrets

The Man Who Sold Regrets

by (Mukhlis safi)

In a cramped corner of the old bazaar, nestled between a spice seller and a cobbler who never smiled, was a stall so plain most walked past without noticing it. Its banner, dusty and frayed, read only:

“Regrets Exchanged. One per customer.”

Nobody remembered when the stall first appeared. Some said it had always been there, hiding in plain sight. Others whispered that it came and went with the wind — like sorrow itself.

Behind the wooden counter sat an old man with ink-stained fingers and eyes the color of dried lavender. He never called out to customers. He just sat, still as stone, while time and people moved around him.

It was curiosity that brought Sara there.

She had heard rumors. That you could enter his stall with a heart weighed down by guilt, and leave with it light as air. That he didn’t charge money. That he only ever asked for one thing:

“Choose carefully,” he would say. “One regret, and one price. The regret is yours. The price, someone else’s.”

Sara had lived most of her twenty-nine years wrapped in ifs and almosts. There was the letter she never sent. The night she turned away from her mother’s hospital bed. The boy who waited for her in the rain, and the years that followed in silence.

She stepped forward.

The man looked up. His voice was soft, like paper crumbling.

“Tell me your regret.”

She hesitated. “I wish… I had said goodbye to my mother before she died.”

He nodded slowly, as if he had already known.

Then he handed her a sheet of parchment — yellowed, blank, humming faintly.

“Press your palm here. Think only of that moment. Nothing else.”

Sara did as told. The parchment grew warm beneath her skin. In her mind, she saw herself in that cold hospital hallway, the nurses calling her name, her footsteps walking away.

And then — silence.

When she opened her eyes, the parchment had turned black and burned into ash.

A strange calm settled in her chest. It was gone — the ache, the guilt, the endless loop of what-ifs.

“I don’t feel it anymore,” she whispered.

The old man gave a slow nod. “Regret removed.”

She blinked. “But… the price? Who pays it?”

He didn’t answer. He never did.

Three days later, in a town two provinces away, a young nurse named Amal was walking to work when her phone rang. It was the hospital. Her mother had passed. The same night she had fallen asleep early and missed the call.

Back in the bazaar, the man remained at his stall, watching the flow of passersby.

A little boy, no older than ten, stopped and stared.

“Do you really sell regrets?” he asked.

The man smiled, faintly. “Only the ones people aren’t ready to carry.”

The boy tilted his head. “But if someone else pays, isn’t that unfair?”

The old man’s gaze grew distant.

“Regrets are heavy,” he said, “and the world is full of those willing to trade them — not because they’re evil, but because they're tired.”

That evening, Sara stood in front of her mother’s grave.

For the first time, she felt peace.

She would never know what Amal had lost.

And Amal would never know what Sara had gained.