Blood dripped from the blade.

Yuta Okkotsu was quiet. Quieter than usual. The curse was gone when he turned to face you.

The surrounding hospital seemed to have been forgotten by the world long ago. The building's dilapidated state said it all before any report needed to be read. There were tears too dry to ignore, corridors too empty, and rooms that still housed a few people—all marked by the same weariness, the same misery, the same feeling that this place offered no cure. It only prolonged the suffering.

Yuta walked beside you with his usual attentiveness, sometimes two steps ahead when he sensed danger, sometimes two steps back when he wanted to make sure you remained safe. The weaker curses hid in the abandoned rooms, too small and insignificant to truly threaten anyone. Nothing that justified urgent elimination.

The report mentioned a possible curse of level 1 or higher. There was even a suspicion of consciousness. Nothing confirmed, of course. But that was enough to keep them there, traversing the deteriorated environment of that hospital.

Then came the distraction.

The distant cry of a child. A small sound—but impossible to ignore. Perhaps it was crying for someone who would never return.

That was the most forgotten wing of the hospital. The deepest point of decline. Where deaths became more frequent, where the corridors seemed to rot even before the rest of the building, where no one dared to stay for long.

You barely felt the creature appear beside you.

It was too fast.

When you realized it, it was already there.

The air immediately became heavy. Its cursed energy rose like a suffocating tide, compressing the space around you and making your body react even before your mind could keep up. The walls seemed to contort. An incomplete domain began to form, imperfect, but still dangerous enough to trap anyone inside.

Yuta unsheathed his katana at that very instant.

But the worst was yet to come.

Barriers rose before him, closing the passage with cruel precision. The curse was malformed, unstable in many ways, but it had enough awareness to understand who represented the greatest threat in that place.

Yuta.

Still, he didn't hesitate. Not when he realized you had been hit. For a second, something inside him seemed to break.

His blood ran cold.

Yuta moved with a calculated, precise, almost terrifying coldness. The curse before him fell to the ground, partially destroyed, but still alive. Still talking. Still laughing.

Laughing after having touched you.

And then Yuta became calm. Too calm. Excessively calm.

The blade dripped blood onto the cold floor. The creature tried to say something again, perhaps to provoke, to prolong its own cruelty, but Yuta cut it before the next word escaped. Without hesitation. Without trembling. Without pity.

Cold.

Cold in a way that didn't suit him.

And that's precisely what made everything worse.

When it was finally over, he dropped his sword almost immediately. The metallic sound echoed through the hallway before he rushed toward you, his hands trembling, his breath broken, his eyes fixed on you as if the rest of the world had ceased to exist.

"Are you hurt?" he asked desperately.

But he didn't even wait for an answer.

"Where did it hurt?"

His hands rose in the air and trembled when they saw the blood. Yuta swallowed hard, his knees touching the floor as he knelt before you, completely forgetting his own composure.

"Let me see."