"Knock, knock."
At that mont, the doctor entered the room. Raven awkwardly stood up from the chair.
"Oh, you're Hastings' younger sibling," the doctor said, holding a chart and standing by lody's bed.
The doctor, with a serious look on his face, started explaining lody's condition.
"lody Hastings' condition is not looking good. Hmm, how should I put this...?"
The doctor's words trailed off, and Raven felt his heart drop with a sense of dread.
"Doctor, is my sister in serious condition? What's wrong with her? Is treatnt possible?" Raven asked in rapid succession.
The doctor seed taken aback by Raven's barrage of questions and hesitated for a mont.
He adjusted his glasses and, in a calm tone, continued.
"We need to continue the tests to get a clearer picture. Right now, we don't have an exact diagnosis. But her condition is not good. Just the fact that she keeps fainting and has frequent nosebleeds speaks volus."
Raven slumped back into the chair, the words echoing in his mind. The doctor hadn't given any definitive results yet, but the fact that lody's condition was dire weighed heavily on him.
"Please take good care of her. We don’t know what the final outco will be," the doctor added, noticing Raven's expression. He gave a reassuring pat on his shoulder, as if to comfort him.
The doctor’s voice softened ✪ Nоvеlіgһt ✪ (Official version) as he continued, “You never know how long soone precious will be by your side. It’s always best to cherish them while you can.”
Those words pierced deep into Raven's heart.
ow.
At that mont, a black cat owed. Raven looked down and saw the cat swishing its tail, looking at him with an inscrutable gaze.
‘This one is definitely human-like. It almost looks like it understands everything I say,’ Raven thought.
While pondering, the cat followed the doctor out of the room, trotting along behind him.
Raven turned his gaze back to lody’s pale face, still asleep on the bed.
He had a secret. A secret he couldn’t even share with his roommate, Eastern.
He was cursed.
He had dread. And in that dream, a man cursed him.
He was standing alone inside a cave.
In the cave, there was a giant cage, inside which was sothing surrounded by slimy mucus, resembling a dark, amorphous mass.
It was hard to tell whether it was human or so kind of creature. But after watching the mass slowly rise and fall, Raven realized it was alive.
Then, a voice that seed to reverberate throughout the entire cave spoke.
[It was supposed to be her, but it's not. Who are you? This place is forbidden to anyone but her.]
Raven shuddered at the chilling voice. The voice spoke again.
[So, it’s you.]
A sharp pain shot through Raven's arm. He looked down at his wrist, where lody had given him a bracelet. It was burning.
Surprised, he tore at the bracelet, but in its place, strange purple heatflowers began to bloom.
[In one year, if the heatflowers spread throughout your body, you will die. On that day, I will devour your soul and be freed to find her.]
With those cryptic words, Raven woke up. But the mont he awoke, he noticed sothing horrifying: the skin around his chest was necrotic.
The ugly purple heatflowers began to sprout. The blackened skin spread, swelling and decaying.
And it was only visible to Raven.
When he showed his body to the doctor, no treatnt could be offered. The curse was sothing only Raven could see.
The worst part was that it was contagious. Anyone who ca into contact with his skin began to exhibit the sa symptoms.
A brief touch didn’t cause much harm.
But prolonged contact led to the sa decay appearing on the other person's skin.
Fortunately, if Raven kept his distance from others, they seed to be fine.
It was said that if the heatflowers spread completely, he would die.
That’s why he couldn't get close to anyone. Especially not lody.
If it were lody, she would likely try to co closer and show affection.
And Raven knew that if he spoke to her, he would lose his resolve. So, he desperately avoided her.
‘I still have to stay away from her.’
But seeing lody's condition, avoiding her didn’t seem like the only answer anymore.
Raven thought he was the only one suffering, but lody's condition was even more severe.
“What on earth have you been doing? What’s with the cat, and what’s going on here? Why isn’t she panicking over this situation?” Raven muttered under his breath.
“I’ve been through this kind of thing before,” lody replied, panting. “You’ve been avoiding this whole ti, Raven.”
“So, you wanted to leave the school? I... I didn’t even know...” Raven stamred.
When Raven first saw lody arrive at school, he knew sothing was off. She was different from the lody he rembered.
She had grown dangerously frail and could now see ghosts. The lody he knew had always been healthy and had never seen spirits.
He needed to understand what had really happened to her.
Raven made a silent vow, staring at lody's sleeping face.
‘I’ll keep my distance, but I’ll make sure I don’t transmit this curse. That’s the only boundary I can maintain.’
After the courage test incident, the atmosphere in the school grew even more chaotic with the library incident.
Before the courage test, students had dismissed the F-class rumors as nothing more than that.
But during the library incident, multiple classes and grades were involved, and various eyewitness accounts ca forward.
So of them even complained to the headmaster, and several students threatened to drop out.
However, most of these students were forcibly hospitalized and, by the ti they were discharged, had cald down considerably.
“Hastings.”
Students whispered as they saw on my way to class. As usual, being a well-known person was unavoidable.
Their looks were full of both fear and curiosity, and so even seed to admire .
But none of that mattered to .
What was important to was only Raven’s survival. Whenever I felt my resolve weaken, I thought of him, almost as if brainwashing myself.
Raven had been deeply affected by the courage test ghost stories and the library incident.
I hadn’t had a proper conversation with him yet, but...
[Let’s talk after school. We have a lot to discuss.]
Raven had left a note when I was hospitalized.
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