Final answer:
The character decided to believe the fictional stories were real(Option 1), as a response to the inability to discern them from reality due to a deteriorating mental state.
Step-by-step explanation:
The student asked what the character in the passage decided to believe. Based on the passage, the correct answer is that he decided to believe the fictional stories were real. This decision was a result of his mental state deteriorating as he found it harder to distinguish reality from fiction, leading him to adopt this belief as a coping mechanism.
The student decided to believe that the fictional stories were real. This can be inferred from the passages mentioning the protagonist's attempts to figure out the meaning of the stories and his decision to believe in their reality. For example, in the first passage, the protagonist's brain dried up and he went out of his mind due to his efforts to make sense of the passages. As a result, he eventually decided to believe that the fictional stories were real.