"Okay… let me go get him," Miss Vivian said softly, brushing away the small tears that had gathered in her eyes. She hesitated halfway toward the stairs, turning back to Andre with a cautious look.
"But before I do—who sent you? And how do you even know about us?"
Andre sighed, running a hand through his hair as though still trying to understand how he'd been pulled into all this.
"A peculiar young doctor," he replied at last. "He said he was supposed to help you, but that someone named Lady Colin had asked him to come see your son. So…" he gave a faint, almost reluctant smile, "I came in his place."
Miss Vivian's expression shifted from confusion to faint amusement. "Oh, Lady Colin," she said with a soft chuckle. "That's what my boy calls her. She's his homeroom teacher." Her eyes warmed with a fragile sense of relief. "At least there's still someone on this green earth who doesn't believe my son is possessed."
With that, she turned and began to climb the staircase, her footsteps slow and deliberate. The old wooden steps creaked beneath her weight, echoing faintly through the quiet house.
Andre watched her go, the sound of her movements fading into the floor above. For a brief moment, he found himself wondering what kind of child waited up there—
the one the world had already condemned before he even had a chance to be understood.
*********
After what felt like an hour, Miss Vivian finally descended the staircase, her hand resting lightly on the shoulder of a small boy who trailed behind her.
He looked no older than four—tiny, fragile, yet carrying an unsettling stillness about him. His hair was dark, soft, and slightly unkempt, but it was his eyes that caught Andre's attention.
Emerald green. Bright, striking, and utterly out of place against his pale face. But beneath that brilliance was something hollow—eyes that didn't belong to a child his age. They were distant, detached… empty.
Miss Vivian guided her son gently toward the couch and sat beside him. The boy said nothing. He didn't fidget, didn't blink much—just stared ahead, his small hands resting motionless on his lap.
Andre watched him in silence, his trained eyes observing every detail—the lack of reaction, the absence of curiosity, the strange calm that seemed too deliberate for a child.
He wasn't just looking at the boy.
He was trying to see through him.
And somewhere deep down, something about those empty emerald eyes made Andre's chest tighten with a faint, familiar ache he couldn't quite name.