The sunlight was blinding the next morning.

I found that I could not taste anything. The exquisite breakfast the hotel sent tasted like cardboard. There was only a sweet and strange honey scent that lingered stubbornly at the back of my tongue.

I looked at Nicholas, who was sleeping beside me, and a wave of nausea washed over me. However, I then noticed some fine, honeycomb-like hexagonal patterns faintly emerging beneath the skin of his exposed back.

The patterns rose and fell slightly with his breathing, as if his deep-seated greed for money had materialized into some kind of scar after being in contact with my body.

My nausea was instantly suppressed by an icy hunger. I no longer saw him as a despicable liar, but rather a ripe honey source to be harvested.

Disgust turned into scrutiny. My gaze on him was like that of someone evaluating livestock close to the end of its life.

I grabbed Nicholas' wrist, and his skin was hot, like it was on fire.

The moment I stepped into Dewy Honey Shop, the cloyingly sweet honey scent intensified tenfold. It was like invisible syrup flooding my lungs. It almost made me nauseous, yet it simultaneously stirred the damned desire deep at the back of my tongue.

"Madame Morgan!" Nicholas' knees buckled at the sight of my mother, his face a mixture of greed and fanatical excitement.

He pulled away from my hand and went over almost obsequiously. "Madame, I'm back! I'll do anything for you as long as you give me a chance!"

He rubbed his hands together, his gaze fixed on my mother as if she were a walking gold mine.

My mother did not even look at him. She looked at me first with a barely perceptible hint of approval and satisfaction.

She muttered with her voice as sweet as honey, "My good daughter, I'm satisfied with the honey source you brought back."

Only then did she turn to Nicholas, a meaningful smile playing on her lips. Her smile sent chills down my spine.

"A chance?" she repeated as she slowly walked up to Nicholas and gently traced his cheek with her well-maintained fingers. "Of course. Would you like to become part of Dewy Honey Shop as an eternal beehive?"

"I do! I do!" Nicholas nodded excitedly. He even interrupted my mother before she could finish speaking. "I'll do anything, not just be a beehive. I'm even willing to be a stepping stone beneath your feet! Wealth! Power! I'll do whatever you say!"

The instant he shouted ‘wealth’ and ‘power’, I saw the faint hexagonal lines on his exposed neck and wrists begin to shimmer with a faint red glow. Every time he mentioned his fantasies about money, the red glow grew brighter, as if his boiling desire was the fuel that ignited him.

I wanted to tell this madman to run, but the sweetness rising in my throat felt like a hand choking me.

A sense of powerlessness, mixed with fear and a sense of inevitability, overwhelmed me.

I saw Nicholas, at my mother's prompting, rush ecstatically toward the wooden door leading to the beehive in the backyard. He maniacally muttered, "Mine... All mine..."

The door creaked shut behind him, silencing his final words.

My heart sank to my stomach with the sound of the door closing. I had not been judging a villain. I had simply pushed a rotten sacrifice onto the altar. I could no longer endure the torment of being kept in the dark. The fear and nausea in my chest felt like they were about to explode.

I lunged forward, grabbing my mother's cold wrist. My voice trembled uncontrollably with a sob and a resolute tone I did not even recognize. "Mom, what is this? What will happen to Nicholas?"

My mother looked back at me coldly, her eyes devoid of emotion, as if my question was merely that of a child causing a fuss.

She calmly withdrew her hand and muttered, "Haven't you already sensed it? Now is the time for you to see everything."

She spoke as she walked straight to the deepest part of the beehive and grabbed a heavy velvet curtain.

As she pulled hard, a cloyingly sweet and pungent stench assaulted me, almost suffocating me.

A buzzing sound frantically pierced my eardrums like countless electric drills, making my head spin violently.

Behind the curtain was not a beehive at all.

Several enormous, human-sized, honeycomb-shaped containers stood in the darkness, emitting an eerie glow.

It was not beeswax at all, but a translucent biomass with a surface covered in countless hexagonal pores. It seemed to even be breathing as it pulsed.