The consultation room fell into a suffocating, dead silence.
Nobody moved. Nobody dared to breathe.
The woman standing in the doorway looked as though she had sprinted through the entire city to get there. Her chest rose and fell in ragged, uneven hitches, wet strands of hair clinging to her pale cheeks, yet her wild, bloodshot eyes never left Kelvin.
Not for a single second.
Kelvin frowned, taking a cautious, hesitant step forward. "Do I... know you?"
The question seemed to shatter whatever fragile strength she had left. A small, dry laugh escaped her lips—broken, disbelieving, and painful to hear.
"Do you know me?" she repeated softly, testing the words on her tongue as if they were a cruel joke. She shook her head, tears spilling over her lashes. "Of course. Of course you don't."
The room grew colder with every passing second. Miso shot a wide-eyed glance toward Arora. Nick's jaw set into an unreadable, lethal line. Even Jack dropped his playful smile entirely, his sharp blue eyes locking onto the emotional wreckage unfolding in front of them. Edwin, still standing stiffly in his tailored silk dress and wig near the back, looked utterly paralyzed.
Only Kelvin seemed completely, desperately lost.
"I'm sorry," Kelvin said carefully, his voice dropping into his calm doctor's register. "I think you've mistaken me for someone else."
The woman looked away for a moment, swallowing hard as if gathering the shattered pieces of herself. When she looked back at him, a faint, tragic smile touched her lips—the kind people forced when they were trying desperately not to break down.
"You haven't changed at all," she whispered.
Across the room, Arora's tactical instincts were already operating at high speed. Something about this scenario was deeply wrong. The woman wasn't acting like an operative, a blackmailer, or someone hired to create a scene. Her grief was raw, unfiltered, and devastatingly real.
Which made this situation infinitely more dangerous.
Arora shifted slightly in her armchair, her dark eyes tracking every micro-expression. Watching. Analyzing. Waiting.
"Who are you?" Kelvin asked again, his voice softer this time, laced with genuine concern.
The woman stared at him for several agonizing seconds before finally answering.
"My name is Jennie."
The room froze.
Complete, absolute silence.
Miso blinked. Jack's eyes widened. Even Nick raised a sharp eyebrow.
Slowly, every head in the room turned toward the reception nurse standing near the wall.
The other Jennie.
For a split second, a flash of pure, unadulterated terror crossed Nurse Jennie's face. The color drained from her skin so fast she looked like a ghost. It vanished almost immediately as she forced a neutral expression, but Arora caught it.
Fear.
Interesting. Very interesting.
Kelvin looked between both women, his confusion deepening by the second. "Wait..." He pointed toward the nurse. "You're Jennie." Then he pointed toward the weeping stranger. "And... you're Jennie."
Neither woman answered. The heavy silence was answer enough.
"What on earth is happening right now?" Miso whispered under her breath.
"I have no idea," Jack admitted quietly.
"For once in my life, I agree with him," Nick muttered back.
The newcomer took another unsteady step into the room, her hands trembling violently—not from fear, but from raw, suffocating emotion.
"Tell me something honestly, Kelvin," her voice trembled, barely above a whisper. "Have you truly forgotten me?"
Kelvin stared at her. Every rational instinct told him he had never seen this woman before in his life. Yet something felt terribly wrong. There was an eerie, haunting familiarity in the cadence of her voice, the shape of her eyes, and the desperate way she looked at him—as if she had known him for years.
And yet... his mind was a complete blank.
Beside the doorway, Nurse Jennie shifted uncomfortably, her fingers tightening around her stack of patient files until her knuckles turned snow-white.
Another clue. Another crack in the illusion. The pieces weren't fitting together yet, but Arora knew they were all part of the same puzzle.
Finally, Kelvin shook his head, looking deeply pained. "I'm sorry," he said, the honesty in his voice brutal and unavoidable. "I don't remember you."
The woman closed her eyes, swaying on her feet as though she might collapse onto the linoleum. She let out another weak, hollow laugh—the sound of someone hitting rock bottom.
"Of course," she wept softly, wiping a tear from her cheek with the back of her trembling hand. "Of course you don't."
Nurse Jennie looked increasingly panicked, taking a tiny, subtle step back toward the open corridor. Arora's eyes narrowed into dark slits, memorizing her posture.
Then, the stranger looked straight into Kelvin's eyes and dropped the bomb that shattered whatever remained of the room's reality.
"I'm pregnant."
Nobody moved. Nobody spoke.
The woman placed a trembling hand over her stomach, her voice cracking. "With your child."
The world stopped spinning.
Miso's jaw dropped. Jack almost lost his balance against the desk. Nick muttered a low, sharp curse under his breath. Nurse Jennie went completely, deathly pale.
And Kelvin... Kelvin simply stared, his mind completely short-circuiting.
"What?" The word escaped him in a breathy gasp.
The woman let out a bitter laugh through her tears. "That's all you have to say?"
"No!" Kelvin stood up so fast his consultation chair skidded backward, slamming against the wall. "No! What are you talking about?!"
The woman flinched violently at his raised voice, her posture shrinking—a reaction so painfully genuine it made Kelvin's stomach drop.
"I knew you wouldn't believe me," she sobbed. "I knew it..."
"I've never even met you!" Kelvin shouted, panic finally breaking through his composed doctor facade. But the moment the words left his mouth, regret flooded his expression. She looked completely shattered.
For the first time since entering the room, Arora stood up from her chair.
She didn't stand because she believed the woman. She didn't stand because she had answers. She stood because every tactical instinct in her body was screaming that a massive, calculated play was unfolding right in front of them.
The terrified nurse clutching files. The heartbroken pregnant stranger. The Boar Horns scrubbing records at St. Gabriel. The twenty-year-old photograph left in the warehouse.
It was all connected.
The pregnant woman wiped her eyes with a shaking hand, looking at Kelvin one last time with a profound, quiet sadness that settled like ash over the room.
"Maybe you're right," her voice dropped into a hollow whisper. "Maybe I should have known better."
She turned slowly toward the hallway, moving like someone carrying a weight too heavy for one person to bear. At the threshold, she paused. Without looking back, she spoke her final words.
"You may not remember me, Kelvin..."
The room held its collective breath.
"...but I remember everything."
She walked out into the corridor, her wet footsteps fading down the hall.
Left behind was a suffocating silence, a room full of unanswered questions, and the chilling realization that whatever trap had just been sprung... this was only the beginning.
To Be Continued...