I Possess the SSS Skill: Future Sight-Chapter 10: The Orphanage (2)

When Kyle whispered, she started and turned toward him, tension evident in every line of her face.

She hurried over to him, her steps barely making sound.

She sat beside him and placed her shaking, ice-cold hand on his forehead, while raising her other index finger to her lips.

"Shh... calm down, little one," Kyla murmured in a rapid hush, her voice quivering as if on the verge of tears. She stared fearfully toward the partially open door.

"It’s only a dream. Don’t open your eyes. The dark is scary, but I’m here. Close your eyes, don’t look at the monsters."

Her words worked like a charm, or perhaps her touch was a familiar warmth despite her chill.

Kyle shut his eyes obediently and sank back into sleep beneath her hand, believing whatever he’d seen was only a nightmare.

As soon as his breathing evened out, Kyla slipped away into the darkness.

The next morning everything seemed normal.

The children woke and went to the dining hall for their usual breakfast. Kyle told them what he had dreamed.

"I had a strange dream last night," Kyle said, waving his spoon. "Kyla came in and she looked so scared. She put me back to sleep. It felt so real."

Victor laughed. "You dream about Kyla because she feeds you all the time! Maybe she brought you sweets and didn’t tell us!"

While they laughed, the dining hall door opened sharply. Mrs. Grace, the orphanage director, entered.

She was tall and thin, wearing a strict black dress, and her smile was always... too perfect.

Perfect enough that it never reached her dead eyes.

Mrs. Grace clapped her hands to attract attention.

"Children! I have wonderful news this morning!" she announced in a sharp voice devoid of warmth. "Paradise opens its doors again for one of you. A very wealthy family arrived this morning, and they chose..."

She paused, her gaze sweeping the innocent faces. "...Edgar!"

A stunned silence fell before the children burst into applause.

Edgar’s brown eyes widened in shock, then filled with unrestrained joy.

"I? I’m being adopted? I’ll see the outside?" he shouted, hugging Victor, Kyle, and Siren who jumped with him in excitement.

From a distance, Kyla stood by the kitchen door. She wasn’t smiling.

She gripped the edge of her apron so tightly the fabric tore.

She acted as if in mourning... no, as if terrified.

Her eyes were glassy with tears as she watched Edgar run toward the director.

Edgar came over to say goodbye.

The scene was dramatic and painfully honest in its childhood truth.

"Don’t forget us, Edgar!" Victor cried as he hugged him. "Send us toys from outside!"

"I will! I promise!" Edgar said, innocent tears filling his eyes. "I’ll tell my new family about you, and we’ll play together in a real garden!"

Siren wiped her tears with her small sleeve. "Goodbye, Edgar... be happy."

Kyle waved and smiled. "I hope you’re happy, Edgar. Paradise awaits."

Mrs. Grace took Edgar’s hand and led him out of the dining hall. The three children left behind—Kyle, Victor, and Siren—didn’t know that this was the last time they would see Edgar wave at them.

They didn’t know that the "wealthy family" was actually an armored black car bearing the logo of a biological lab owned by a guild, and that "paradise" was nothing but a cold metal autopsy table.

Only three remained. The dormitory felt noticeably colder and emptier that night without Edgar’s quiet breathing.

Days passed slowly.

The one thing that kept repeating—disturbingly—was Kyle’s dream.

On several scattered nights he woke to the same sound: the door opening.

Each time he saw the same scene with slight differences.

He saw Kyla, but the variations made the "dream" more terrifying.

Once he saw Kyla standing at the door with a huge shadow behind her—no longer human, its eyes shining in the dark.

But Kyla always rushed to him, hands trembling, whispering her soothing words and smoothing his crimson eyelids until he sank into sleep again, as if she were protecting him from seeing something.

Then... the doomed day arrived.

A few days after Edgar left, Mrs. Grace again entered the yard, the same plastic smile plastered on her face.

"Children," she said, her eyes settling on the silver-haired girl, "Siren, it’s your turn. A wonderful family is waiting for you in the administration office."

Kyle and Victor stopped playing and looked at Siren. The shy little girl’s pale blue eyes widened in shock, then she smiled timidly.

Siren’s farewell was quick, full of innocent tears and wishes for a happy life "outside."

But as Mrs. Grace left with Siren, Kyla ran to the yard.

The young caretaker could no longer hide her collapse. She fell to her knees in front of Kyle and clutched his small body to her chest with such force it nearly broke his ribs.

She wept bitterly, hot tears soaking his shoulder and mingling with his black hair.

"Kyla? Why are you crying? Siren is going to freedom," Kyle said, confused, patting her back with his small hands.

Kyla whispered into his ear in a choked, broken voice he would never forget: "Listen to me, Kyle... whatever you do, do not open your eyes at night. No matter what you hear... no matter what happens... do not wake up. Stay asleep. Play dead. Promise me!"

"I... I promise," Kyle stammered, not understanding the terror that gripped his caregiver. 𝓯𝓻𝓮𝙚𝙬𝓮𝙗𝒏𝙤𝒗𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝒐𝓶

She kissed his forehead deeply, then stood, wiping her tears violently.

She turned and walked away, shoulders shaking with silent sobs.

The night after Siren left, Kyle dreamed the same dream again with new differences. The door opened, footsteps drew closer, muffled sounds.

But this time, Kyla was not there to put him back to sleep.

He saw a long shadow bend over one of the beds on the other side of the dormitory and then fall into a sleep from sheer fear and exhaustion.

Then, on a rainy night some days later—

It was not an ordinary night. The sky emptied its fury over Elysium.

Rain fell with terrifying force, battering the orphanage windows like an attempt to shatter them.

Thunder rolled deafeningly, and lightning lit the dorm with cold white flashes like an autopsy room’s lamps.

Kyle slept beside Victor. The two of them were the only ones left from their group.

Screeeech...

The heavy metal door creaked.

This time, Kyle didn’t wake immediately.

He kept his eyes closed, breathing evenly. He clearly remembered Kyla’s warning: "Do not open your eyes... play dead."

He heard footsteps—these were not the light steps of Kyla creeping in to check on them.

They were heavy, wet steps, as if someone in huge rubber boots walked through a puddle of mud. Ssshhhk... Crraack...

Strange sounds filled the dark.

Breaths that didn’t sound entirely human. Harsh whispers.

Then the noise of something being dragged, as if a very heavy sack was pulled across the wooden floor.

Finally... the door clicked shut from the outside.

Kyle waited a full minute. His small heart pounded wildly.

When he made sure the sound had truly faded, he opened his crimson eyes slowly.

Lightning flashed, and he saw that Victor wasn’t asleep either. Victor sat with his knees hugged to his chest, his blue eyes wide in the dark.

Kyle looked at Victor. The children’s innocent silence collided with the psychological terror thick in the air.

To any adult, the truth was obvious and sickening: "adoption" was just a nightly hunt.

Staff—or other guild-linked entities—entered the dorm at night to choose victims for experiments, taking them away in silence.

Kyla knew this and intervened each night to put Kyle back to sleep so he wouldn’t see the kidnappers and scream himself to death.

But Kyle and Victor... they were just four-year-olds.

Their innocent minds couldn’t translate this horror into its brutal reality.

Their minds clung to the safest explanation, the one they’d grown used to.

"Was it... Kyla again?" Kyle whispered so faintly it was barely audible over the rain, his crimson eyes searching the darkness.

Victor looked toward the closed door and swallowed.

"I think it was her..." Victor replied in a shaky voice.

"Why does she come every time?" Kyle asked with fatal childlike innocence, knitting his small brow. "I thought she was just dreaming... maybe she checks on us? Maybe she needs help?"

Victor rubbed his arms against the cold and considered it with a child’s logic. Another flash of lightning lit Victor’s pale face.

"Maybe..." Victor said slowly, his voice filled with a hope so pure it hurt. "Maybe she needs our help outside, but she’s too afraid to ask since we’re small?"

Kyle’s crimson eyes widened with a childish misunderstanding, but one filled with pure devotion to the caregiver who’d become like a mother to him.

"She needs our help?" Kyle echoed, a muffled excitement replacing his fear. He had forgotten Kyla’s warning.

If Kyla was in trouble and came every night but was too hesitant to ask for help, that changed everything.

"Shall we look for her and help her?" Kyle asked, slowly rising on his bare feet on the cold floor.

Victor looked at him, a big, bright, hopeful smile spreading across his face—a smile that contrasted painfully with the hell they lived in.

"Yes! We’ll help her!" Victor cried, leaping to his feet and grabbing Kyle’s small hand. "We’ll find her, help her, and make her happy like she makes us!"

Two barefoot children, hearts brimming with excessive innocence, holding each other’s hands in the dormitory’s darkness, took steady steps toward the wo oden door—the very door behind which not Kyla but a human slaughterhouse waited.

Their naivety was their only weapon, and they didn’t know it would lead them straight to the gates of hell.