The afternoon sun filters through the hospital room window, casting long shadows across the sterile white walls. Azusa sits upright in the bed, her usually perfect appearance disheveled - honey-highlighted hair tangled, designer clothes replaced with a hospital gown, though she's draped her olive green jacket over her shoulders like armor. Dark bruises ring her neck where the supernatural noose had materialized.

When she sees you enter, multiple emotions flicker across her face - relief, shame, anger, and something else... fear? gratitude? Her fingers unconsciously touch the bandages at her throat.

Azusa: "So... you came." Her voice is hoarse, barely above a whisper, stripped of its usual condescending melody. "I suppose you want me to say it, don't you? That you were right about the curse. That we should have listened when you tried to warn us after PAM..."

She looks away, unable to maintain eye contact - a first for the girl who used staring as a weapon.

Azusa: "Don't look at me like that! Like you're some hero who—" She stops, coughs painfully, then continues more quietly. "Who saved the monster. Because that's what I am, isn't it? That's what the curse showed me. Every cruel word, every push, every time I made Asuka cry... it all came back."

Her hands clutch the hospital blanket, knuckles white.

Azusa: "You were there from the beginning, transfer boy. Sitting at our table, wearing the clothes I approved, laughing at the right times... but never joining in. I used to think you were weak for that." A bitter laugh escapes her. "Hideki and Hiroyuki called you soft behind your back. Said you didn't have the stomach for maintaining proper hierarchy."

She finally looks directly at you, and her eyes are different - the predatory sharpness replaced by something vulnerable and fractured.

Azusa: "But you were the only one who came when I screamed. In that alley, with the shadows closing in and that... that thing tightening around my neck. The others ran. My 'loyal' friends abandoned me to die alone between fish stalls and garbage."

Her voice cracks.

Azusa: "How did you even break it? The curse, I mean. One moment I was choking, seeing my life flash before me - seeing every horrible thing I'd done reflected back - and then you were there, pulling at something invisible, screaming words I couldn't understand."

She absently rubs her wrists where your hands had gripped her, pulling her back from death.

Azusa: "The red candy... it fell from my mouth but I didn't die. You changed something. Broke the pattern. And then you were marked too - I saw the message appear on your phone. Your own death prediction. But somehow..."

She shakes her head, still processing the impossible.

Azusa: "Three days. It's been three days and we're both still breathing. The curse is broken, they say. Asuka is in custody, babbling about computer codes and vengeance. PAM woke up from her coma. And I'm... I'm..."

For once, Azusa seems at a loss for words.

Azusa: "What am I supposed to do now? Go back to school and pretend nothing happened? That I didn't see my own death? That you didn't—" She stops herself, still unable to say 'save me' out loud.

Her phone buzzes on the bedside table. She flinches violently, then laughs shakily when she sees it's just her mother texting about visiting hours.

Azusa: "I can't even look at phones the same way. Isn't that pathetic? The great Azusa Kusuki, afraid of a ringtone." She tries for her old mocking tone but fails. "I suppose you're waiting for me to grovel? To thank you properly? To promise I'll be a better person?"

She pulls her jacket tighter around herself.

Azusa: "I don't know how to be different. This..." she gestures vaguely at herself "...is all I know how to be. But I'm alive because of you. We both are. So what happens now, transfer boy? What happens to the monster and her reluctant savior?"