I Possess the SSS Skill: Future Sight-Chapter 13: An Adoption Invitation

Tears were falling.

They were not ordinary tears, but droplets of the soul shattering and melting upon their small faces.

In that moment, before the glass window glowing with nightmare-red light, Kyle and Victor had mouths—but they had no voices.

It was not Kayla’s trembling, ice-cold hand clamped over their lips that prevented them from screaming. No.

Even if Kayla had removed her hands, nothing would have come out but dead air.

Their throats were paralyzed.

Their vocal cords had been severed by a shock beyond the capacity of the human mind—let alone the mind of a four-year-old—to process.

Something fundamental, something essential, had broken inside their skulls.

How do you scream when you realize the world you live in is nothing but a slaughterhouse?

How do you scream when your friend Edgar’s torn-out, blood-swollen eye is still burned into your retina like a mark from hell?

And how do you cry out loud while Serin’s small body convulses inside a thick green liquid like a cheap biological sample?

They felt a force pulling them from behind.

Kayla was dragging them with desperate, frantic strength, her steps retreating backward through the dark corridor, away from the laboratory door.

Her breathing was sharp, broken, like the rasping of a trapped animal.

She pulled them through the long concrete corridor, and the children were like lifeless rag dolls—their bare feet dragging across the cold floor without resistance, their eyes fixed into emptiness, unblinking, seeing nothing but red, melted flesh, and the dangling eye.

Kayla shoved them out through the heavy iron door, and all of them stumbled into the orphanage’s backyard.

Clack!

Kayla slammed the door shut behind them, leaned her back against it, then slowly slid down until she was sitting on the muddy ground.

The rain was still falling lightly, a cold drizzle washing over their faces—but it did not wash away the horror.

Kayla released their mouths and grabbed their small shoulders, shaking them violently, her panic overwhelming.

"What the hell are you doing here?!"

Kayla cried in a hoarse whisper, her tears mixing with the rain on her pale face.

"How did you get out?! Why didn’t you listen to me?! Didn’t I tell you never to open your eyes?!"

But Kyle and Victor did not answer.

They did not comprehend a single word she said.

They were looking at her—but they were looking through her.

Tears streamed heavily from Kyle’s crimson eyes and Victor’s blue eyes—silent, terrifying, completely devoid of any childish expression.

Their bodies convulsed violently in uncontrollable spasms, their teeth chattering, their small hands stiff like claws.

They were not crying like children who had lost a toy.

They were crying like humans who had just realized they were standing in a line for execution.

Seeing the children in such a shattered, hollow, lifeless state tore apart what remained of Kayla’s heart.

The young caretaker broke completely.

She crawled through the mud and pulled both children into her chest, hugging them so tightly she nearly crushed their small ribs.

She buried their heads in her soaked coat and began to cry in silent, chest-rending sobs.

"I’m sorry... God, I’m so sorry..." Kayla whispered, kissing their wet heads again and again, her body trembling with theirs in the mud and cold.

"You shouldn’t have seen that. I should have protected you better... I won’t let them! Do you hear me? I swear on my life, I won’t let anyone in this cursed place hurt you. I’ll get you out of here... I’ll find a way..."

But her words were like ashes scattered in the wind.

For Kyle and Victor, the world had already ended behind that glass door.

...

...

...

— Two days later —

Two full days had passed since that night of nightmare. Two days heavier than a century.

They had not recovered.

They had not even come close to recovery.

They were like ghosts inhabiting small bodies.

In the dining hall, Kyle sat staring at a bowl of oatmeal soup.

He no longer saw food.

He saw its texture, its pale color, and remembered the green liquid Serin had been floating in.

He saw an air bubble rise to the surface and burst—and imagined Edgar’s torn-out eye.

He vomited the contents of his empty stomach whenever one of the caretakers tried to feed him.

Victor—the child who had once been full of energy and smiles—had turned into a trembling statue in the corner.

He no longer spoke.

He kept his knees pulled to his chest at all times, covering his ears tightly with his small hands until his knuckles turned white, as if trying to block out the echo of that wooden door’s creaking inside his skull.

As night approached, the terror reached the peak of madness.

They wet themselves from sheer fear the moment the lights went out.

Any shadow moving along the wall looked like the orphanage director holding a surgical scalpel.

Any whisper or sound of footsteps meant their turn had come—to have their chests split open and those monstrous wires placed into their hearts.

And on the morning of the third day, what they had feared came to pass.

They were sitting in a corner of the courtyard, curled into themselves like insects waiting to be crushed under a massive shoe.

Suddenly, the sharp sound of heels striking the floor echoed.

Click... click... click...

Kyle’s blood froze.

He knew that sound.

It was the sound of death approaching.

"Mrs. Grace," the orphanage director, appeared in the courtyard.

Her strict black dress, her tightly pulled-back hair, and that dead plastic smile drawn across her thin lips. 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝚠𝚎𝚋𝗻𝗼𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝚘𝐦

She stood in the middle of the courtyard and raised her voice, which sounded to Kyle and Victor like a blade being sharpened.

"Kyle. Victor."

She spoke their names.

In that frozen moment, Kyle’s heart stopped beating.

His crimson eyes widened with infinite terror.

He slowly turned toward Victor and saw the same absolute horror reflected in his friend’s blue eyes.

Is it our turn?

Will they tear open our chests now?

Will I die the way Edgar died?

Will they put me in that green liquid to suffocate while wires pierce my flesh?

The thoughts crashed through their minds like storms of shattered glass.

Mrs. Grace continued with her poisoned smile:

"Come here, my little ones. I have wonderful news for you. A noble and very important person has come today to adopt you both together. Isn’t it a miracle? Heaven is opening its doors for you!"

Heaven.

The same cursed word.

The same word she had used with Edgar. With Serin.

This was not an adoption invitation.

To them, it was an execution notice.

And suddenly, the dam broke.

The silence that had bound them for two days shattered into a scream—not the scream of children crying.

It was a scream of pure terror.

The scream of animals being dragged alive into a slaughterhouse.

"NOOOOOOOOOOO!"

Kyle screamed at the top of his lungs, a scream that tore his throat and made the other children in the courtyard flinch in fear.

He stumbled backward until he hit the wall.

"No! I don’t want to! I won’t go! Get her away from me!" Victor screamed hysterically, clawing at his own face and kicking wildly at the air.

Mrs. Grace frowned.

The plastic smile vanished in an instant, revealing the face of the true monster beneath.

Her dead eyes ignited with filthy anger and disgust.

She was not used to such resistance from "the goods."

"What is this nonsense?" Grace growled in a low, terrifying voice.

She nodded toward two large guards standing by the courtyard gate.

"Bring them. We have an important guest, and I will not waste their time on this trash."

The two guards stepped forward—massive men in dirty gray uniforms.

"No! Stay away! Kayla! Kaylaaa!" Kyle screamed as he tried to run, but one of them grabbed him by the collar and lifted him into the air like a sick cat.

Kyle began kicking and striking wildly with his small fists, biting the guard’s hand viciously until he tasted blood—but the guard slapped him harshly across the face, a blow that made his ear ring and bleed slightly, silencing his scream for a moment from the pain.

Victor was dragged by his legs across the ground, his nails scraping against the floor until they tore and bled.

He screamed and cried, begging anyone for help—but the other children stood frozen in fear, and the caretakers turned their faces away.

Kayla was not there.

There was no one to save them.

"Shut up, you little brats, or I’ll cut out your tongues before we even arrive," Mrs. Grace hissed like a snake as she walked beside them, her eyes burning with hatred.

The children were being dragged away—but there was something they did not notice at first, lost in their terror.

The direction.

They were not heading toward the basement.

They were not descending into that long, dark concrete corridor leading to the red-lit door.

Instead, the guards dragged them through the clean main corridors of the orphanage—toward the administrative wing, toward the rarely opened double front gates.