It began almost imperceptibly, the kind of subtle warning signs that are easy to dismiss.
Pavel, a thirty-four-year-old man, had always considered himself healthy—disciplined, resilient, and practically immune to the ailments that plagued so many around him.
His friends admired his stamina, and his mother, though overprotective, often shook her head in disbelief at his seeming invulnerability.
Yet, one ordinary morning, as Pavel brushed his teeth in his cramped apartment bathroom, he noticed something unusual.
A thick, bitter sensation coated his tongue. At first, he assumed it was a fragment of last night’s dinner or maybe a small abrasion inside his mouth.
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