"Listen carefully," said the man.
"Clementine, Dorothea, Uriel, and Karlem," listed the man.
"I'm afraid that you are going to need to come with me for a while," he said.
"But that can't be, how can all of the other children be healthy but they are sick? We feed them the freshest produce that our orphanage has to offer, so that can't possibly be!" she confessed.
"Miss, illnesses may come from many sources, yes, food is one of them, but it can also come from lack of proper hygiene, where they play, and it can also be something thats just written in their DNA," the man claimed.
Her mind puzzled, she was unable to debate with him; so she acquiesced.
The man told them, "To those whose name was called upon, meet me in my office 30 minutes from now."
The children were anxious, they had never been called to the doctors office, let alone even seen a doctor at all. The children, scared, went inside his temporary office to find out what was wrong with them.
"Children, I regret to inform you that there seems to be a disease in you that needs to be cured, I have seen and treated this kind of disease before, it is best if you take this seriously because the mortality rate of the post-procedure is quite high." he said.
"We're sick?" asked Karlem with a face of worry.
"What? No we're not." Clementine said, as she shows off the muscles she has gained after gardening together with Lorea for awhile, "See this? I'm strong!"
"Well then, shall we see how strong you really are?" said the man.
He walked over to Clementine, bent down and assessed her arm, he showed everyone in the room a part of her hand where it is purple, as if bruised.
Morgan pressed on the purple mark slightly and added more pressure overtime.
Thud.
Clementine fell to the ground, her eyes wide open, her face unmoving, it is like she has become paralyzed.
"Clem!?"
The other three kids rushed to her aid and held her up, separating Morgan's grasp on her arm.
In the process of doing this, Morgan grabbed Karlem by his hand and pressed on a purple area on his neck, immediately shocking him and making him fall to the ground.
A shriek reverberated in the room.
"W- what are you doing?! Lady Lorea! Help us!" screamed Uriel.
Morgan reached for Uriel and pressed the purple mark on her hand, making her fall to the ground immediately.
"Now do you believe me? What I have just showcased to you is how the disease affects your body, one small poke and you're done."
After around 15 seconds of silence, the three who had fallen to the ground got up and looked at Morgan with teary eyes.
Dorothea stood on the corner of the room, her hands on her mouth, her body shivering. "Are you guys okay?" she asked.
"I can't feel my fingers," said Clementine.
"This is called 'Sypold's Kuanosis Paralysis', in 2 years time the discoloration on your skin will double in size and it will continue to spread all over the body, by then you will be more prone to falling into a state of paralysis," he explained.
The children had a look of fear and disbelief on their faces.
Fearing for their lives, they pleaded for Morgan to cure them of their disease lest living a life full of fragility.
Morgan signed them up for a surgical treatment in 3 days and weekly check-ups after the surgery.
The agreement was overseen by Lorea, the guardian of the children. She had asked a couple of questions regarding the disease and how to prevent such a case to happen to the other children, to which Morgan replied by telling and assuring her not to worry about the disease as it is not a contagious disease.
3 days later, the children lined up outside Morgan's office that had been remodeled to look like an operating room.
The children went in one by one to undergo their surgery. Dorothea went in first and laid on the operating table, she looked at Morgan who had his face covered with a mask, afraid of what is to come next.
Morgan sedated her and administered anesthesia to the parts of her body he will be performing on, which is her heart.
The surgery took around 2 hours to complete, every openings that the room had has been covered to prevent people from peeking in on the surgery.
Dorothea's surgery has finished, next was Clementine's turn to be on the operating table. Then it was Uriel's, and then Karlem's.
The children said that they woke up from the anesthesia and left the room feeling like nothing has happened to them at all, only to discover an opening mark on their chests.
Before leaving the room, they had been given each a piece of candy by Morgan, he said that it was an apology for scaring and hurting them on the demonstration he did 3 days ago.
All went on like regular days, the children did their weekly check-ups with Morgan and has always been given a piece of candy after every check-up.
However, on the third week, Karlem suddenly passed away on his bed, the orphanage held a funeral for him in a graveyard outside of Romhr port town's southern gate, several friends and acquaintances of the orphanage's director came to express their sadness and mourn the loss of life.
It seemed like dark clouds were enshrouding the faces of everyone in the orphanage the week thereafter, however a week later, all seemed like it went back to normal, as if they had gotten over the fact that they had lost a dear friend.
Only the director seems to be in a bad mood for a while longer, he looked gloomy and remorseful, unlike him, the workers in the orphanage seemed the way they usually are, not showing a trace of sadness nor mourn and kept on going with their day. Perhaps they were battle-hardened by the fact that before they worked in the orphanage, they were the survivors of witch attacks and had to witness their family members die before their eyes.
Thunder roared, it is 10 pm, rain had started to pour. Clementine, Uriel, and Dorothea were huddled together past their curfew, they seemed despondent, it is likely that the death of Karlem had left a deep impact on their minds.
The daffodil inside the wooden mug in their room had completely wilted, in the room, the girls voiced their sadness on each other's shoulders and cried their hearts out, it was clear as day that they hadn't gotten over the fact that a friend of theirs had left them far too early. But perhaps what they were qualing about weren't Karlem, but the fear that their deaths might be imminent just as had happened to him.
In the middle of the night, in the rain, under the moonlight stood a man, in his hand not an umbrella, but a shovel instead.
The man stood beside a weirdly large willow tree that overhangs the cemetery of Romhr port town.
The next morning, the talk of the people in the town was the news about the graves dug up and left desecrated, among the graves that were dug up were Karlem's. The people expressed their worry and asked for the town lord to enact an investigation about this matter.
It's rumored that a witch had come in the middle of the night and dug up the graves up for their wicked experiments.
The lord didn't put this matter away, he ordered for there to be guards to watch the cemetery throughout the night in an effort to prevent any more exhumation and desecration to be done to their town's graveyard.
Although the face of the perpetrator hadn't been known, there were already a small bounty placed on their head.
Some thought that they would hit a jackpot if they could catch them alive with their own hands and even went on their own little mission to catch the perpetrator by themselves.
This affair became a hot topic in the town for 2 weeks before completely dying down due to no progress being made on the effort to catch the culprit.
Morgan, who had stayed in the orphanage for a couple of weeks now hadn't left his office which was also his room after the day of Karlem's death.
Lorea tried to comfort the doctor continuously only to be turned down when she offered a shoulder to confide on. Not wanting to waste anymore of hers or his time, she stopped persuading him.