The Bet by Anton Chekhov

A banker and a young lawyer make a wager: the lawyer must live in voluntary solitary confinement for fifteen years in exchange for a fortune. As the years pass, both men change in unexpected ways—one consumed by materialism, the other transformed by knowledge and isolation. The plot builds toward a final, startling reversal. A profound story about freedom, meaning, and the cost of conviction. A brief but powerful moral parable.