At Charlotte’s question, the couple looked at each other with anxious expressions.

They seemed desperate but clearly reluctant to speak.

“What are your names?”

When Charlotte asked, the man jumped as if struck and stammered a reply.

“Hoperwell. Rhine Hoperwell. This is my wife, Sella.”

“Alright, Mr. Hoperwell. And Mrs. Hoperwell. I don’t know what’s happened to your child, but my being here means we’re past the time for fretting. Even as we speak, the child’s condition is worsening by the minute.”

The Hoperwells looked at Charlotte as if drenched in cold water.

Sella Hoperwell suddenly burst into convulsive sobs, then stood in front of a door on the right side of the living room.

With trembling fingers, she pointed at the handle.

“He-here. This is Ben’s room.”

“The child’s name is Ben?”

“Raven, Raven Hoperwell. We call him Ben in the family. Since he was little.”

“I see. If you’re not going to open the door, I’ll do it myself. Step aside.”

Sella Hoperwell, wringing her hands as if she’d committed a grave sin, startled and backed away as Charlotte and Taemi approached.

Charlotte placed her palm on the handle and took a moment to steady her breathing.

Compared to the stuffy, humid air inside the house, she felt a dry coldness, but not to an unusual degree.

She turned the handle and the door opened.

The boy called Raven Hoperwell lay motionless on the bed, covered with a sheet.

The very faint rise and fall of his chest showed he was still breathing, but it seemed it could stop at any moment.

His complexion was pale and his lips completely bloodless.

“How old is he?”

Charlotte asked, approaching the bed and touching the child’s forehead.

“He just turned 7,” Rhine Hoperwell answered solemnly.

Glancing at the couple anxiously hovering by the open door, Charlotte carefully felt the child’s forehead again and checked his pulse.

His temperature was normal, but his pulse was extremely slow.

Taemi, standing with arms crossed, asked the couple:

“How long has the child been like this?”

Sella’s shoulders trembled.

“Fo-four days or so. After dinner, he was playing… fell asleep on the floor, so we moved him to bed. Since then, he’s been… continuously…”

Checking around the child’s neck, Charlotte rolled up his sleeve to examine his forearm and inner elbow, asking:

“Did you show him to a doctor? What did they say?”

“Th-they all said they didn’t know! That it’s ra-rare for a child to suddenly… become like this… But sometimes this ha-happens… losing consciousness, but it’s hard to find the cause, sob…!”

“I understand. Now please be quiet. I need to examine the child.”

Sella stared at Charlotte’s back, startled.

Her expression suggested she wanted to protest such words.

Her husband Rhine’s expression, embracing his more violently sobbing wife, didn’t look pleased either.

‘Since he’s unconscious… I’ll need to use another method to find out what’s inside him.’

Charlotte lifted the child’s pajamas to expose his stomach, then took out something copper-colored from her flat leather bag.

It looked like overlapping gears, similar to clock parts, but much larger in size.

“What is that?”

As Sella cried out in a frightened voice, Taemi explained:

“Ma’am, calm down. We need to know what’s happening to the child, right?”

“Darling, what should we do? If anything happens to our Ben, how will I go on living!”

Rhine Hoperwell’s voice could be heard trying to comfort his wife, assuring her nothing of the sort would happen.

Charlotte, suppressing the rising irritation welling up inside her, placed her index finger on the center of the gear device.

One of the interlocking gears made a click sound.

It was similar to the sound of a small box being unlocked.

The gears began to tick and turn… and Charlotte could feel something squirming beneath the child’s stomach.

A coldness similar to when she grasped the door handle, and a dry sensation…

‘No, there’s something more. This dry feeling is fake… The real thing is deeper inside. This is…’

The gears began to spin faster. It sounded like a broken clock grinning and spinning its second hand wildly.

Taemi shuddered imperceptibly at the sound.

Even knowing it was just to identify the nature of the monster, hearing this rapid ticking always made him feel like he was racing full speed towards death.

Charlotte, who had been frowning with closed eyes, exhaled sharply and raised her head.

“It’s a cocoon.”

Taemi and the Hoperwells looked at Charlotte simultaneously.

“A cocoon?”

Rhine Hoperwell’s deep voice trembled faintly.

Charlotte removed the device from the child’s stomach and turned to them.

“There are various types of parasitic monsters. The one that’s entered… Ben’s body is an extremely tricky kind to extract. Moreover, it’s almost reached adulthood. A cocoon has already formed inside his body.”

The Hoperwells gaped, too shocked to know what to say.

“What kind of monster is it, Charlotte? I mean, what happens if it wakes up?”

“It’s a monster that swaps souls and bodies. When it matures and awakens, it’s born looking exactly like its host.”

After saying this, Charlotte looked up at the Hoperwells.

“It means another child exactly like Ben will be created. Do you understand?”

Sella let out a small scream. A hissing breath escaped between her lips pressed against her palm.

Charlotte continued her explanation:

“The mature creature takes over the host’s body and soul completely. In other words, from that point on, the host becomes an empty shell as a human. The mature creature lays and hides its eggs inside.”

“Eggs? Did you just say eggs?”

Rhine inhaled sharply, asking in disbelief. His face had turned ashen, and Sella was on the verge of fainting.

Charlotte looked back and forth between Rhine and Sella Hoperwell and Taemi, trying to maintain her composure.

When she placed the device on the child’s body to examine inside, when she put her finger on it… she could feel the rapid pulse, as if it was about to tear through the cocoon at any moment.

That feeling was like…

‘Like watching a mad train racing towards a cliff with broken tracks.’

Charlotte swallowed dryly and continued:

“And it pretends to be the host—acting like the real one, that is—waiting until the eggs hatch.”

Rhine Hoperwell asked:

“Then, then what happens when those eggs all hatch?”

“You’re asking what happens inside the body of the host that’s become an empty shell after its soul was stolen? The hatchlings devour the entire body. To obtain nutrients. You’ve heard stories of small insects laying eggs in the bodies of larger insects, right? Like spiders or moths. It’s like that.”

At this point, Sella Hoperwell let out a groan and burst into tears like a madwoman.

Crying won’t solve everything. Charlotte thought.

Was she being heartless? Maybe so. Charlotte stared blankly at Sella Hoperwell, who was wailing incomprehensibly, and said:

“This monster doesn’t just appear out of nowhere. Either someone planted it with malicious intent, or…”

At that moment, Taemi, who had been silently lost in thought, snapped his fingers and looked at Rhine Hoperwell.

“Did the child bring home any strange objects recently? Received from someone, or picked up?”

“There was nothing like that!”

Sella Hoperwell screamed through her tears.

She looked at her son, still lying like a corpse, with trembling eyes before covering her face and running away.

Rhine Hoperwell, left alone, said nothing… he just hung his head, his face darkened, looking as if he wanted to give up on all of this.

“Pull yourself together, if you don’t intend to let the child die like this!”

As Charlotte raised her voice, Rhine’s neck flushed red.

The situation he didn’t know how to handle was driving him to an irrational state.

He was an ordinary, simple man.

The type who couldn’t recognize as reality things happening outside his common sense, and when faced with an incomprehensible situation, he became uncontrollably angry.

He glared at Charlotte with hostile eyes, then suddenly let out a painful sigh.

“My aunt… My aunt came to visit. A week or ten days ago… Around then. She gave Ben something like a small pouch.”

“Did you see what was inside?”

Rhine Hoperwell bit his lip and shook his head.

“I didn’t. Ben wouldn’t show us, and we thought it was probably just marbles or a silver coin… something like that. Even if it was just odds and ends, kids that age think of such things as priceless treasures, so we just let it be…”

“Where is that pouch?”

As Charlotte stood up, the bed frame creaked slightly.

Still, the child continued only the slowest of breaths without moving at all.

Rhine Hoperwell rummaged through the child’s drawers a few times before pulling out a pouch slightly larger than a palm.

It appeared to be satin with a slight sheen, with embossed wave patterns.

The opening was tied with a white string, which Charlotte untied, causing something to spill out.