A Curse Was Born in the Rain
The rain had been falling for hours.
It drummed steadily on the rusted roof of the hospital morgue — a slow, relentless rhythm like the ticking of a broken clock. Inside, the silence was unnerving. Not the calm of rest, but the absence of life. Hollow. Sacred. Shattered.
Namin Kyotosawa stood barefoot on the cold, stained tiles. His soaked school uniform clung tightly to his skin, heavy with rain and grief. He wrapped his arms around himself, not for warmth — that had long since left him — but to keep from falling apart entirely.
His eyes were fixed on a single door.
The one they had taken her through.
The one that led to Claria Tsukihara.
They said it was an accident.
A truck skidding on a wet road.
A girl's body flung like debris.
A boy, untouched — spared by luck.
But Namin no longer believed in luck. Not after what he saw.
He remembered the way her hand reached for his.
Her eyes — filled with light, with the future.
Her lips forming the last words she would ever say:
> "Let's get married someday, okay?"
Then — screeching brakes.
Twisted metal.
And blood that didn't stop.
---
They let him see her afterward. They called it "closure." A kindness. But there was no kindness in what he saw. Just a body, pale and still, behind a frosted window.
It wasn't Claria anymore.
She had been alive — fiercely so. Loud when it mattered. Gentle when it counted. She stood between him and the world that mocked him, protected him when no one else would. In a life that often felt like a long shadow, she had been the sun.
Now, she was just a name on a death certificate.
Another casualty.
Another rainy-day statistic.
And yet… something lingered.
Something that shouldn't.
---
The first time Namin heard her voice again, it wasn't in a dream.
It was real.
A whisper in the corners of his room.
Then again. Closer.
And then—her voice, unmistakable, brushing against his ear like a ghost of breath:
> "I'm not gone."
---
He collapsed three days later, in an alley behind his middle school, screaming as black tendrils clawed their way out of the pavement — coiling around him like they belonged.
Claria's curse had awakened.
And it loved him far too much to let go.
---
The doctors had no answers.
The exorcist they summoned passed out after one look at the sigils scorched into Namin's skin.
His parents — never warm to begin with — signed his school withdrawal forms without a word.
Neighbors stopped looking him in the eye.
Even dogs fled when he passed by.
At night, she would sing lullabies that made the walls pulse.
During the day, her presence warped space itself — windows trembled when he spoke her name.
He wasn't haunted.
He was claimed.
A boy cursed by love too strong to die.
---
Then one rainy afternoon, someone knocked at the door.
A man in a white coat stood on the porch, hands in his pockets, rain trickling from the brim of his blindfold. He smiled, far too casually for someone in the presence of a walking curse.
> "Yo," he said, lifting a lazy hand. "You must be Namin Kyotosawa."
> "I'm Gyuto Satomu. I'm here to take you to Metropolitan Curse High."
> "You've got a girlfriend problem. And I think we can help."