Suguru could sense it before he saw it.

A first-grade curse.

What was a first-grade doing in the middle of a residential area? Suguru thought to himself, his ears thundering with the sound of blood coursing through his body. He rounded a corner, and then another, following the maze by detecting the pulsating core of cursed energy radiating from somewhere in one of these streets.

And finally, skidding around the last bend, he entered the curse's territory. 

The amount of cursed energy emanating from this block was chilling, petrifying. Tendrils of the dark energy lapped at his skin, rendering a shiver to erupt thousands of tiny bumps upon his arms, the hairs on his neck standing on end.

The most chilling sight of all, however, was the familiar phone left discarded in the middle of the street.

Suguru tightened his jaw, sucking in a breath. 

He lifted his head and saw a small apartment complex looming in front of him, the entire building radiating with the vast wickedness of cursed energy. 

He clicked his tongue bitterly and then pulled out his own phone without a second thought, quickly dialing a number. He brought the phone up to his ear, and within seconds, it clicked.

"Suguru!" A familiar, bubbly voice answered on the other end. "It's a bit late for a phone session, don't you think?"

"Shut up, Satoru," he growled. "I'm in Setagaya, and a first-grade curse just appeared. I need back up."

"Haa?" Satoru whined. "A first-grade should be no problem for you, though. Don't tell me you've gone soft?"

Suguru buried his face into his hand.

"It's an incomplete domain," he explained. "In an apartment complex. I don't know how many are trapped in there."

There was a pause on the line, and then Satoru let out a sigh.

"I guess it can't be helped," he said. "Send me your location. I'll be right there."

The call ended and Suguru immediately sent a pin to his and Satoru's chat. He shoved his phone into his pocket, and then turned his attention to the abandoned phone on the ground. He recited a silent plea, hoping he was gravely mistaken. He picked it up and double tapped the cracked glass, revealing the image of a tuxedo cat on the lock screen. 

Suguru grit his teeth, his chest lurching.

"What a cutie," a voice said into his ear.

Suguru slid his eyes to the side, unfazed.

"You got here quick."

Satoru shrugged, raising his arms up into a stretch. He was dressed in his dark blue Jujutsu High uniform, with a pair of round, black opaque glasses sitting on the bridge of his slender nose.

"I've been working on teleporting long distances. I almost got it mastered." Satoru peered a pair of crystalline eyes over to him, raising a white brow. "Are you proud?"

Suguru snorted.

"When have you ever needed my approval?"

"Come on!" Satoru laughed, slinging an arm over Suguru's shoulders. "Say you're impressed! Shoko definitely was."

Suguru shrugged his arm off, whipping a pair of iron eyes over to him.

Satoru whistled.

"Wow. Who pissed in your miso today?"

Suguru shoved his friend on the shoulder with a firm hand.

"Shut up," he glowered. "We're wasting time." He motioned to the apartment complex.

Satoru whistled again, putting his hands on his hips.

"Man. What a pickle, huh? An incomplete domain. Maybe we'll see something interesting tonight."

Suguru ignored him.

"If you see a girl with a dark bandana, save her first."

Satoru's piercing blue eyes slid over to peek at his friend, the corner of his lip tugging up into a smirk.

"Your girlfriend?" He teased.

"A friend," Suguru hissed. "Now come on, we've wasted enough time already."

Suguru took the lead and pushed the door into the complex open, Satoru following at his heels. The air around them immediately grew heavy with despair and hunger, darkness creeping up onto every hair and into every pore in their bodies. 

Suguru furrowed his brows; Satoru yawned.

"Why did it have to be a first-grade?" Satoru complained, shoving his hands into his pockets. "Today is my only day off, you know. I was just about to shower too."

"You can shower after you're done helping me," Suguru said. "Better to do a job before showering than after, anyway."

Satoru shrugged.

"You've got a point."

The two boys headed deeper into the complex, the walls dripping with a bloody, waxy material, the floors pulsating as though the entire building jolted with a heartbeat. Suguru felt it through the soles of his shoes, and he felt the air grow thicker with cursed energy the deeper they went. It reeked of rotting flesh.

Suguru and Satoru then approached a set of stairs that led to the second floor, and the boys glanced at each other.

"You think this'll turn into one of those paradoxal staircases?" Satoru mused. "Like the ones that loop in a circle and never end."

Suguru frowned.

"It's not impossible," he said.

"What a pain in the ass," Satoru groaned, scratching the back of his head. "Wanna rock-paper-scissors for it?"

Suguru slid hooded eyes over to glare at him.

"What would the other person do in the meantime?"

"I dunno," the white-haired boy said, shrugging. "Not get trapped in a never-ending staircase?"

Suguru could only stare at the guy before shoving him onto the steps with one quick, forceful push. Satoru stumbled onto the staircase, screeching, and as his foot fell on top of the first step, he held out his arms horizontally, staring up the steps through his glasses.

"No paradox here," he announced.

Suguru rolled his eyes.

"Good. You take the top floor and I'll search the bottom floor, then."

Satoru flashed him a smile, sticking up a single thumb.

"Roger that."

The two split up, and Suguru made his way over to the mailbox corner, set off to the side of the main staircase. 

The light overhead was flickering ominously, the melting wax on the walls dripping down onto the floor, coating the wall of letter drops in its visceral, goopy substance. Suguru scrunched his face in disgust, but ran his attention over to the list of names posted on the wall next to him. It was encased in the same gory matter that enveloped the rest of the complex, but the writing on it was still legible, though barely.

Makino Hina, 206

Suguru made a silent curse to himself, but turned on his heel and continued down the first floor hallway. 

Second floor, huh?

He made a run through all six rooms, three on either side of the main staircase. And with every door he kicked down to reveal absolutely nothing, the churning in his stomach dropped and knotted even more. 

It was nighttime, around 8pm when he last checked. Most people should've been home by now, and yet, there was no sign of anyone in their units. Had they been consumed already? And if so, where was the curse?

Where was Hina?

Something in Suguru's iron eyes flashed, and he bolted towards the staircase, speeding up the steps. He felt his feet pounding against each step, over and over, over and over, until he stopped in the middle of the stairs and glanced his eyes down once, and then forward. He made his way around the next bend, peeking around the corner, only to reveal another set of stairs. 

He clicked his tongue in annoyance.

Paradoxal steps. Of course.

"Satoru!" He called out, but no one responded. He expected as much, but the issue now was getting out of this loop.

Suguru held two fingers up to his forehead, eyes hooded menacingly. A fissure of shadow opened up next to him, and from it emerged the figure of a woman, cloaked in a lavish silk kimono, her dark hair woven into a neat, traditional updo, adorned with jewelry and golden hairpins. Across her pale face, painted with red lips, was a single, maliciously cruel smile, revealing black teeth.

"Rokurokubi," Suguru said, his voice low, sinisterly calm.

Without another word, as though the two shared a single mind, Rokurokubi began stretching out her neck, further and further, the bones crackling and the skin straining, elongating, serpentine. She descended her head down the steps, and went further and further, coiling around the seemingly infinite staircase. 

Suguru shoved his hands into his pockets and started his ascent once more, taking light, airy steps, his tabi shoes clicking against the concrete.

The curse in charge of this incomplete domain was strong. Suguru could feel its immense cursed energy reserve keeping the structure sound and secure, the looping stairs stable and seemingly unending. But Suguru also knew that there was a limit to all things, and the more space the curse had to manifest in order to keep up its facade, the more cursed energy it needed to use.

After ascending several more flights of steps, Suguru began to feel a rumble underfoot. The metal skeleton of the building began to strain, moaning as the entire complex swayed and cracked. Suguru's eyes flashed, and then he broke into a run.

Almost immediately, the building began to crumble, the steps behind him tumbling and falling apart as though they were made of chalk. 

He sprinted up, his calves straining, until he saw a glimpse of the platform to the second floor. He leaped into the air, pushing off the final step with such force the concrete splintered against his feet, and he landed with no more than a tuck and roll.

Suguru knelt on one knee, a hand bracing himself against the floor, and he blew a breath to straighten out the lock of hair that had tumbled into his line of sight.

"Took you long enough," Satoru's voice said from behind him. Suguru flickered his eyes to the side, seeing his friend standing at the far end of the hallway, hands tucked into his pockets. "I was beginning to think you dipped."

Suguru rose, rolling his neck to the side and stretching out his arms. He started towards Satoru with unperturbed steps.

"You're a liar," he said, nonchalant. "I was trapped in a damn paradox, you prick."

Satoru only laughed.

"I tried telling you after getting up the first flight, but it seems my voice didn't carry. Which makes sense after all, since we each destroyed our own sets of stairs. Possibly some dimension manipulation at hand?"

Suguru only grunted as he reached Satoru at the end of the hallway, tilting his head to the side.

"I checked all of the units downstairs," he told him. "There's no one there."

Satoru smirked.

"Well lucky for you," the white-haired boy replied, jabbing his thumb at the door they were currently loitering in front of, labeled 206, "I tracked the down the motherfucker."

Suguru scoffed.

"Great. Let's get this over with."

"Agreed."

Satoru raised a hand towards the door, crushing it like a sheet of aluminum foil, and sending it flying back off its hinges. 

Suguru entered the unit first, ducking into the genkan. At the ledge that separated the apartment from the mudroom was a pair of chunky black shoes, tossed messily to the side. 

Suguru tightened his fist.

He could feel the power that emanated from the unit, but that wasn't the thing that frightened him. It was the silence that was jarring, the undisturbed quiet that hushed over the entirety of the apartment. Nothing reached his ears but the sound of his own footsteps on the wooden floors.

The boys passed the kitchen and peered into the living room, which was three tatami mats wide. On the far wall was a window, wide open, beckoning the breeze to drift into the dark room where they saw a mess of a scene.

There was blood everywhere. 

The walls were slick with it, the woven mats on the floor soaked in burgundy. And in the middle of it all was a creature that seemed to be made of sludge and viscera, bleeding more ooze that pooled onto the ground below, one of its black tendrils curled around the figure of an unconscious girl.

"Hina—" Suguru hissed.

"Visitors!" The curse wailed happily, the hundreds of eyes shoved into its mass of a body blinking at different intervals. "I'll kill you, too!"

Without warning, the curse shot an oily arm in their direction, slamming into the kitchenette counter as Suguru rolled forward and off to the side. Satoru leaped back into the genkan, letting out a laugh.

"That's all you, Suguru!"

Suguru cursed under his breath, pushing off the wall and launching himself towards the curse. He'll end this quickly, and seeing Hina's limp body in that monster's grasp was enough to drive him mad. 

Based on the entrails and flesh that pulsated from the curse's body, Suguru realized instantly what had happened to the other residents in the complex, and perhaps keeping Hina out later than normal was what had ultimately delayed her the same fate. With eyes widened and lips downturned, the skin above his nose creasing in rage, Suguru reached out his hand towards the curse.

"Cursed Spirit Manipulation," he muttered, the deepness of his voice rumbling in his throat. 

He felt a surge of cursed energy erupt from his fingertips, latching onto the gory curse's rotten flesh and forcing it to contort and twist into itself. A fist-sized marble began to form at its core, and it continued to suck the monster into its hardened shell until Hina's body was released from its viscous grasp and tumbled onto the floor like a ragdoll. 

Suguru's hand flexed, accelerating the process now, and the curse condensed entirely into the black sphere. 

Suguru lifted the ball up to his mouth, unhinged his jaw, and swallowed it whole.

Pushing back the urge to gag and recoil at the taste, Suguru fell to the ground at Hina's side, lifting her up by the back of her neck. He examined her, tracing his hands across her body, and fell upon a warm, wet gash on her side.

"Hina-chan!" Suguru called out to her, hissing in desperation.

Hina moaned, sucking in a breath as his fingers grazed her wound.

"Ow..." she groaned.

"Satoru!" Suguru screamed. His crazed bronze eyes surveyed her intently, pressing his hand against the wound on her waist as an attempt to stop the bleeding. 

He couldn't let her die. 

He wouldn't. 

Not again.

Satoru entered through the threshold of the living room, leaning against the beam and crossing his arms over his chest.

"She's not gonna make it," he said.

Suguru seethed, flashing his wrathful gaze up to his friend.

"I won't let her die," he hissed. "Help me, Satoru."

A pair of glittering blue eyes peered at Suguru over black sunglasses.

"My reverse cursed technique isn't nearly developed enough," he stated. "That thing I did after Toji stabbed me in the head was more of a self-preservation—"

"You don't need to heal her completely," Suguru whispered, his tone shifting. "Just get her stable enough so I can bring her to Shoko."

Satoru raised an eyebrow.

"Suguru," he started.

"Just do it!" Suguru spat, his breathing labored, his hand pressed tight against the gash that was still spilling blood onto the floor. He stared at her, her eyes sunken into shadowy sockets, her face as white as snow, smeared with dark blood that could have been either hers or the others' who had already perished. 

Suguru swallowed, ignoring the taste of shit and piss that lingered upon his lips, choking out a single word.

"Please."

Satoru pressed his lips into a tight line, hesitating for only a moment before he stepped over and knelt on the other side of the girl. Hina wheezed, scrunching up her eyes in pain as her panting grew more rapid.

"Move your hand." He commanded.

Suguru obeyed, releasing the pressure on her waist, and Satoru immediately replaced it with his own palm. 

His brow furrowed, and Suguru could only watch as he propped Hina up by the nape of her neck, cupping it tenderly in his palm as her head fell limp to the side. Her dark curtain of hair clumped and swept into the viscous pool of blood beneath them, her fingers twitching as Suguru felt the energy in the air shift into something...brighter.

Slowly, over the course of several minutes, Suguru watched as the bleeding in Hina's side ease until ultimately, it stopped completely. Satoru stared down at the wound with his brow creased, and Suguru could see a bead of sweat forming on his temple. 

Eventually, he reached the limit of his skill, and Satoru let out a sigh.

"That's as much as I can do right now," he said, releasing a bloody hand from Hina's side. "Shoko will take care of the rest."

Suguru pried his eyes away from Hina's limp body and met Satoru's.

"Thank you," he whispered.

Satoru chuckled.

"Don't get all sappy on me," he said, amused. He pushed off the ground and stood tall on his feet once more. "Besides. This is atonement therapy for me, too."

Suguru gazed up at him for a moment, and then nodded once.

"Help me get her onto my back. I'll carry her out."

Satoru, despite being able to teleport back to Jujutsu High from Setagaya, decided to remain by Suguru's side. Time had gone rather quickly in the incomplete domain, and it was well past midnight by the time the two were able to get out. Satoru pulled out his phone and rang up a manager from the school.

 "Bring Shoko," Satoru added before hanging up without further explanation.

The two boys stood on the side of the road, Hina's body hanging from Suguru's broad back, her arms dangling from his shoulders. Her head hung to the side, her eyes closed, her breathing calmer now, though still a bit shaky.

"I'm surprised you called," Satoru said, breaking the silence. Suguru flickered his eyes up to him. "You haven't talked to me in weeks. And I'm assuming it's not just because of our schedules."

Suguru tucked his lips together, biting the inside of his cheek.

"I was worried about Hina-chan," he finally said. "I didn't know who else to call."

"So is that all I am to you now?" Satoru murmured, sticking his hands into his pockets. "Insurance?"

"Of course not," Suguru said. "It's just...things have been difficult lately."

Satoru forced a laugh, catching Suguru's attention once more.

"Yeah," he mused, tilting his head to the side, the moonlight gleaming against the dark shades of his glasses. He flicked a lock of white hair out of his face. "I know what you mean."

Suguru scoffed.

"Do you?" He hissed. 

Suguru caught his tone, but it was too late. Satoru had discerned the hostile shift, and he raised a single pale brow.

"You angry at me?"

Suguru clicked his tongue in annoyance.

"Not at you," he muttered. "Just...at everything. In general."

"Is it because of Amanai?"

Suguru froze. 

His mind went blank, his vision enveloped in white. His ears rang with the sound of applause, crisp like rain, growing louder and louder until it deafened him, causing his breath to catch and sputter.

"Suguru," Satoru's voice pierced through the clapping, silencing it in an instant. 

Suguru continued to stare down into the pavement with wide, bronze eyes, his ears ringing. 

"You know it wasn't your fault, right?"

Suguru clenched his teeth.

"How could it not be?" He spat. "How would you know? You weren't there."

"Because I was too busy trying not to die," Satoru responded blandly. He turned to Suguru and pointed a finger at his forehead, right above his left brow. "I got stabbed, remember?"

There was another stretch of silence between them, the cricketsong melding into the whispering of wind that caressed their ears.

"You did the best you could," Satoru continued after a while. "We both did. Toji was just better, and we can use that experience to our advantage."

Suguru's grip tightened around Hina's knees, feeling the suppleness of her skin against the calluses on his palms.

"I don't want to sacrifice any more lives for the sake of experience," he whispered. 

He could feel the heat of her breath against the side of his neck, the warmth of her body pressed up against his hardened back. 

Such a precious life of someone so innocent. 

He couldn't bear to see another one wasted.

Satoru paused for a moment, facing his friend and peering over the edge of his glasses. After a moment, he smirked, and shot a soft, playful punch to Suguru's arm. Suguru raised a brow.

"Then get stronger," Satoru said. "For their sake. Let's not let anyone else down from here on out."

Suguru blinked up at his friend, hesitating for a few seconds, and then cracked a tiny smirk.

"Yeah," he said, his eyes drifting back to his feet.

After a while, a shiny black sedan pulled up in front of the boys, a young man dressed in a suit sitting in the driver's seat. His expression widened in shock as he eyed the girl hanging limply on Suguru's back. Suguru tightened his grip on the underside of her legs.

"What's the meaning of this?" The manager exclaimed. 

A petite girl with short brown hair was in the passenger seat, her hooded eyes trailing from Satoru to Suguru and finally to the girl hanging from Suguru's shoulders. Without another moment's hesitation, she sprang into action.

"Get her in the car," Shoko said, opening the door to exit the vehicle. "Gojo, get in the passenger side. I'll sit in the back with Geto and the girl."

Everyone packed inside the car, with Suguru laying Hina across his and Shoko's lap. The manager started the car forward, and then made a U-turn onto a major highway that eventually led up into the mountains.

Shoko hovered a hand over Hina's body, which had now grown hot to the touch.

"She's developing a fever," Shoko said in her usual soft spoken tone. "I can stave it off until we get back to campus, but I'm going to need some supplies to work on everything else."

"Will she make it?" Suguru murmured. 

He realized his fingers had instinctively wrapped around one of her ankles, and so he released it, but ended up tucking a hand behind Hina's body and leaned on the seat towards Shoko. 

"Satoru stopped the bleeding, but she'd already lost a lot of blood before we could intervene."

Shoko blinked her hooded eyes, and then nodded curtly.

"She'll live," she said, eliciting a sigh of relief from Suguru. "But she's been poisoned by that curse's blood. I can sense an infection, so she's at high risk of developing sepsis right now." She raised her eyes to meet the driver's reflection in the rearview mirror. "Rei-san, if you could make haste back to campus, I'd greatly appreciate it."

The young manager named Rei stiffened, sitting up straighter in his chair, and gripped the steering wheel tighter in his grasp.

"Sure thing, Ieiri-san!" He said, stepping on the gas pedal.

The car pulled into the campus driveway shortly afterward, where Suguru quickly pulled Hina out of the car and rushed her into the medical unit, carrying her in his arms. 

Satoru followed Shoko inside, though he was left behind as his feet dragged against the tile. 

Shoko led Suguru into a room with a cot, where he pushed the curtain aside and set the girl down gently on the bed. Shoko began washing her hands, pulling on a pair of gloves as Suguru stood off to the side, not wanting to get in her way.

"Geto," Shoko's voice chimed from the other side of the bed, fiddling with various tools, needles, and tubes. "I need to get some solutions ready. Do you mind taking off her clothes for me?"

Suguru's face flushed.

"I don't think—"

"We need to clean up the wound before I can do anything else," Shoko interrupted him, her tone even and indifferent. She pulled out several rolls of gauze and a bottle of peroxide. "Unless you want the sepsis to advance."

Suguru tightened his jaw, and then nodded. He gently grabbed the hem of Hina's sweater and tugged it up over her head, careful to not disturb the scab that had dried and clotted beneath the fabric. 

The wound was unusual. It was jagged, like her skin had been shredded, and a dozen or so eyes blighted the inflamed purple flesh, their dilated pupils flickering around either in curiosity or panic. 

He ignored the creepy stares from the cursed wound, wiggling the girl's arms out of the sleeves and freed her head out of the collar. 

What caught his attention, however, were the small round scars that dappled the lower part of her chest, peeking out from under her black bra and creeping up to the apex of her shoulders. Accompanying them were several large bruises, all varying in colors and stages of healing, scattered over her torso, her ribs, her upper arms. 

His fingers gripped the damp sweater, confusion flooding his mind. 

He discarded the blood-soaked article to the side and moved onto her trousers, unbuttoning them before shifting them free from her hips. He dragged them down her legs, revealing dozens of shiny, raised slashes ripping across the top of her thighs. They gleamed under the low light, and Suguru's blood ran cold.

Shoko doused a mass of gauze in peroxide, handing it to Suguru, seemingly unfazed by the state of the girl's body.

"Don't drag or rub. Blot off the blood, the peroxide will do most of the work."

Suguru hesitated, gritting his teeth as he clutched the black blood-soaked trousers in his fists. After a moment, he dropped the pants on top of the discarded sweater and lifted a reluctant hand to take the gauze, once again approaching Hina on the bed, and then kneeling at her side.

"I'm sorry," he whispered to her, beginning to dab the gauze around the wound.

The gash itself was much larger than he initially thought it was. It looked as though her skin had split open from the inside, and the rip ran from the bottom of her navel up to the swell of her right breast. 

He pushed the thought of the circular scars and the slashes that marred her skin from his mind, the bruises that discolored pale flesh, only focusing on cleaning up the smears and clots of blood that adorned her like jewels and dried ink.

"Geto," Shoko mused, cleaning up Hina's forearm. 

She tossed the soiled gauze into the bin beside her, and prepared an IV, sinking the needle into the patient's skin. 

Suguru lifted his gaze to face her, and saw her hooded eyes do the briefest flicker towards the patient's scarred legs. 

"Who is this girl, anyway?"

Suguru was silent for a bit, and then took a breath.

"I met her today on the riverbank," he said simply. "She had a fly head wrapped around her, and she was crying. I was planning on exorcizing it and leaving before she could notice anything, but she caught me while I was climbing back up to the path."

"And you followed her home?" Satoru's playful voice rang from the entrance of the unit.

A vein in Suguru's forehead twitched.

"She offered to treat me out to some boba," Suguru continued, turning around to meet Satoru's eyes. "We talked for a bit, and then she insisted on going home alone. I had a bad feeling though, so I traced the residual cursed energy back to that complex."

"So you followed her home." Satoru stated again, a mocking twinkle brightening his eye.

"Fuck off," Suguru hissed, turning his attention back to cleaning up Hina's wound.

Satoru laughed.

"It's a good thing you did though," he called from the door. "She would've been consumed like the others if you didn't."

Suguru flickered his eyes up to Hina's face, who was still passed out, her breathing still labored. Sweat formed in little dewdrops upon her brow, glistening under the single strip of LED that illuminated the room in a haunting, ghostly glow.

Shoko attached a tube to Hina's IV, beginning a drip treatment of something out of Suguru's realm of knowledge.

"It's an antibiotic," Shoko explained, as though she could read his puzzled expression. "Administered straight into the bloodstream to handle the sepsis. I'll keep her on some fluids to keep her hydrated, as well."

Suguru blotted the remaining streaks of blood from the wound, careful about touching any of the surrounding bruises, and tossed the used gauze into the bin. 

He stepped aside, raising his attention to Shoko, who now stood beside him. She took off her gloves and disposed of them as well, reaching over to the table by the wall to squirt a dollop of hand sanitizer onto her palm. She rubbed her hands together and then placed them on top of the fresh wound, side by side, and a cloud of bright energy radiated throughout the room.

Suguru leaned on the end of the bed frame, grasping his fingers around the clunky plastic, squeezing so that his knuckles turned white. Loose black hairs stuck to his face, glued to his cheeks by dried blood, and he forced his bronze eyes to remain on Hina's sleeping face. 

Her labored breathing eased a bit now, her chest now rising and falling in a more relaxed manner.

"Stop staring at her," Satoru jeered. "You look like a creep."

Suguru snapped his glare to the boy.

"Shut up," he hissed.

Satoru sneered, and then raised his arms up into a stretch.

"I'm gonna shower now. Goodnight Shoko, Suguru." He waved a casual goodbye before turning on his heel and ambling back down the hallway. Suguru could hear the clicks of his steps echoing throughout the empty hall, until the sound of a door opening and slamming shut announced his departure.

"You should clean yourself up too, Geto," Shoko said, her narrowed eyes still concentrated on Hina. She flickered them over to Suguru through her chin-length bob, just for a moment. "You don't want her to see you all bloody and gross when she wakes, do you? It'll probably scare her, honestly."

Suguru opened his mouth to protest, but pressed his lips back together after a brief second.

"Yeah," he said, leaning back onto his heels and burying his hands into his pockets. "I need to talk to sensei, anyway. How long do you think it'll take for her to recover?"

Shoko cracked the smallest of smiles, the skin crinkling around her eyes ever so slightly.

"The sepsis hasn't advanced that much," she said. "Her body is young, strong. I'll also keep administering reverse cursed technique therapy to purge the curse's poison as well, so it shouldn't take more than a few days at most."

Suguru nodded, giving another quick glance at Hina, whose pale skin seemed to glow under the white LED. He loosened a few strands of hair that clung onto his cheek.

"I'll be back as soon as I can," he said, and then made his way out the door without another word.

. • ° ✰ ° • .

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