Many people lost interest, so they all paid the bill together and left the hotel. When Grace Cooper got into her black SUV with Henry Bennett, their classmates looked on enviously, and someone even whistled.

Everything seemed far too normal.

“What on earth is going on?”

Once they were away from the classmates and the car was driving through the dazzling neon-lit streets, Henry Bennett rolled down the window, letting the cold night wind blow on his face, and asked in a low voice.

“I can’t explain it to you, I can only give you the answer.”

Grace Cooper gripped the steering wheel with one hand, pulled out a cigarette with the other, tilted her head to light it, and said softly, “Just as you’ve seen, all the people living around us are, in essence, no longer human.”

“Your friends, your family—they’ve long since turned into another kind of being… Maybe we should call them living beings. If you want to think of them as demons or monsters, that’s fine too. They still wear their old human skins, exist in the forms you remember, and even possess the memories and self-awareness of those you knew. But in reality, they’ve all become twisted and repulsive monsters…”

“Usually, they’ll keep up the disguise and live around you as if nothing’s wrong.”

“But whenever this city starts to harbor malice toward you, you’ll see their true faces…”

“……”

At that moment, it felt as if an electric current surged through his brain. Henry Bennett thought of his mother’s cold gaze, and of the ever-present strangeness in this city.

“Then what about us…”

He opened his mouth, as if he had countless things to say, but couldn’t form a coherent question.

“This world… it changed, and forgot to invite us along…”

Grace Cooper seemed to know what he wanted to say. A mysterious smile curled at her lips as she said quietly, “This is not our homeland. You and I are both outsiders…”

“……”

Henry Bennett didn’t know what to say. After a long while, he took the cigarette from Grace Cooper’s mouth and put it in his own.

He didn’t usually smoke, but right now he needed something to help calm his chaotic mind.

It was hard for him to accept what Grace Cooper had just said. It was too terrifying, too insane. He would rather believe that he himself had gone mad, and that everything he saw was just a hallucination.

Grace Cooper watched Henry Bennett cough from the cigarette and couldn’t help but smile. “I know it’s hard for you to accept.”

“Everyone who’s just awakened is like you. They’d rather believe they’ve gone crazy than accept such an absurd reality. But you can’t deny that maybe you’ve already sensed something was wrong with this world.”

“……”

The menthol cigarette made Henry Bennett cough badly, but he kept smoking.

He couldn’t help but think about what Grace Cooper had said. Had he really already noticed that something was off about this world?

Or maybe, to be more accurate, the one who was off was himself…

Four years ago, his parents chose to divorce, the family broke apart, and Henry Bennett’s mind seemed to shatter that summer as well.

He began to be overwhelmed by a constant sense of panic, plagued by severe vertigo, his thoughts fracturing inch by inch, never able to form coherent thinking or normal perception.

He went to the hospital, but nothing was found. His parents, and even the doctors, for a while thought he was faking it.

He couldn’t tell anyone about the pain he was enduring, so he holed up in his bedroom, spending four years learning to focus his attention.

He read books, played games, and sometimes just sat in his chair all day, learning to adapt to it all, learning to control the sense of losing control brought on by that intense fear.

Finally, after four years, he decided to return to the world.

And now, someone was telling him that this world had already been transformed into something completely unfamiliar by some unknown force?

“All right, I know you still have a lot of questions inside, but for a newcomer, there are just too many things I need to help you with, and I can’t explain it all at once.”

Letting Henry Bennett sink into his chaotic thoughts, Grace Cooper looked straight ahead. After a long while, she chuckled and said, “How about this, I’ll take you home first.”

“I need to make some preparations, to properly introduce you to this world, and tell you how to survive in it.”

“……”

“Go home?”

A sudden, intense resistance welled up in Henry Bennett’s heart. He thought of his mother’s cold eyes, of everything he’d encountered on the way, and felt a chill all over.

“Don’t be afraid.”

Grace Cooper noticed the tension in his eyes, thinking this was exactly how a newcomer should react. She smiled and said, “I told you, since you dealt with William Carter, the malice and rejection this world has toward you will ease a little.”

“Of course, that’s only temporary. At most two days, maybe just a few hours, and that malice will come back, even stronger than before.”

“It’s not just William Carter—maybe everyone you meet will want to kill you!”

“……”

Hearing her words, Henry Bennett’s body tensed slightly. “Then what should I do?”

“Stay calm.”

Grace Cooper smiled and said, “Just act like nothing ever happened, wait quietly. I’ll come find you again.”

“Stay calm?”

For a moment, Henry Bennett even found it absurd. “In a world full of monsters, you want me to stay calm?”