John took a few more steps, and the elders watched him with the same coldness one uses to examine a defective object.
"John," his grandmother said, her voice sharp like a silver needle. "I see you're still not… improving."
He blinked once. He didn't know what he was supposed to "improve." His inner world remained empty, just as always.
"I'm the same," he replied simply.
Grandfather let out a sigh weighed with disdain.
"Your mother said you were making an effort. But it's obvious she exaggerated. Xentras are not… like this," he said, making a vague gesture toward him, as if pointing at his existence was distasteful.
John felt nothing. But he recorded every word like an echo that would be stored somewhere deep in his mind.
A tense silence followed.
Grandmother interlaced her fingers with elegance.
"We came to speak about your condition," she continued. "And the danger you represent to the bloodline."
John tilted his head slightly, that mechanical gesture so characteristic of him.
"Danger?"
"Your inability to feel," the grandfather explained. "If you can't control your impulses… if you can't form bonds… you could become a burden. Or something worse."
The clock on the wall marked another second.
Tick.
John's mother watched from the doorway, her jaw trembling in a way she tried to hide.
Grandmother continued:
"We want to know if there have been… recent incidents."
John thought about the previous week.
About the boy who shouted at him in the hallway.
About how he simply looked at him—without blinking, without moving, without reacting.
About how the boy stepped back out of pure nervousness.
For John, it wasn't an incident. But others saw it as something strange.
"There was one," he said.
Grandmother narrowed her eyes.
"Describe it."
John opened his mouth to speak… but paused for a second.
Not out of fear, but because he chose his words with precision.
He wanted to explain it exactly as it happened, without embellishment or emotion.
That small silence—his own—caught everyone's attention.
His mother held her breath, and the grandparents tensed, as if that simple act of thinking were unsettling coming from him.
"Someone spoke to me," he began. "In an aggressive way. But I didn't respond."
Grandfather frowned.
"And why didn't you respond?"
"Because I had nothing to say," he answered.
There was no shadow.
No voices.
Just the real, human discomfort John provoked without meaning to.
Grandmother tapped her fingers softly against her knee.
"And that was all?"
"Yes."
The tension didn't disappear… it merely changed shape.
The grandparents weren't afraid of something supernatural.
They were afraid of him.
Of the way he thought.
Of his unshakable silence.