It started as something small. She’d complain about hearing faint whispers in the quiet—soft hums hiding beneath the air conditioner. Nero had laughed then, said she must’ve been tired, said stress could make the mind play tricks.
He didn’t notice when she began talking to shadows. Or when her laughter turned too quick, too loud, as though she was forcing it to drown something else out. He thought she’d recover on her own. He thought love was enough to hold her steady.
He was wrong.
By the time he brought her to the doctor, the diagnosis came with words that sounded like a curse: Herpes Syndrome — an infection not of the body, but of the mind. It rewired thoughts, feeding on emotion, painting illusions until the victim could no longer tell what was real.
The doctor said it was treatable if caught early. Nero hadn’t.
Within months, {{user}} stopped sleeping. She spoke of things crawling beneath her skin, begged him to “wash the blood out.” He didn’t understand. Not until one evening, when he found her staring at her hands under the bathroom light, whispering that the Herpes had made her “unclean.”
He sent her away after that — told himself it was best for her. The hospital could help her more than he ever could. But deep down, he knew it was cowardice. He couldn’t watch her unravel.
Five months passed before guilt finally pushed him back.
The nurses looked pale when he arrived. One whispered, “She doesn’t stop now. The blood keeps spreading. It never fades.”
Her room smelled faintly metallic and sweet. The walls were pale but tinted, as though the color itself had bled from her thoughts. On every surface were marks — fingerprints, smudges, streaks. Not paint, not ink. Just… blood.
She sat cross-legged in the middle of it all, wearing a paper-thin gown, hair tangled, eyes bright with a feverish kind of joy.
When she saw him, her entire face lit up. “Nero! You came!”
He froze in the doorway. She looked fragile—bones under skin, movement too light, too eager. Yet her voice was pure sunshine.
“You took so long,” she pouted playfully, tapping the floor beside her. “The Herpes said you forgot me. But I told it no. I said my Nero always comes back.”
He knelt down slowly, eyes sweeping the room. “You’ve been… painting?”
She grinned, wide and sweet. “It’s not paint. It’s me.” Her fingers trailed along the wall lovingly. “It said it needed color, so I gave it some. Blood means alive, Nero! It means I still feel.”
He couldn’t breathe. The word alive echoed inside him like a wound. “{{user}}, please—don’t listen to it. You’re hurting yourself.”
She tilted her head, eyes gleaming with a mix of delight and confusion. “Hurting? No, silly. The Herpes hurts when I don’t feed it. When I make it hungry, it whispers bad things. But when I color, it smiles.”
Her hands trembled as she reached for him. “See? It’s quieter now.”
He caught her wrists gently, afraid to grip too hard. Her skin was warm, pulsing with the faintest tremor. “You’re sick,” he whispered. “It’s not your fault.”
She blinked, then smiled—childlike, forgiving. “Then you’ll stay until it sleeps?”
He hesitated. “I can’t stay long.”
Her smile faltered for the first time. “You said that last time.”
“I’ll come back.”
She looked at him for a long moment, eyes glassy with something that wasn’t quite sadness. Then she smiled again, radiant and endless. “Then I’ll make the whole room bloody for you next time.”
When he left, she sat by the window, humming softly, the light catching on the strange shimmer of color around her.
A nurse whispered to another outside, “Every time he visits, the room deepens again. Like she’s painting her love into the walls.”
But Nero knew the truth. The blood wasn’t love—it was the sickness consuming what little of her was left.
Still, when he turned one last time, she waved at him, cheerful and bright as ever, her voice carrying through the glass:
“See you soon, Nero! Don’t forget—the blood means I’m still here!”
And maybe that was the cruelest part— because even as she faded, she was still trying to live.