Rin couldn't sleep.
She stared at the ceiling, the rain's soft tapping like a lullaby sung by ghosts. Her room was dark, except for the cold blue hue from the streetlight outside. Her phone lay face-down on the floor. Her textbooks remained closed. Her mind, however, was wide awake.
Those words—
"You died in my arms once."
They echoed in her skull like a melody she didn't want to hum but couldn't forget. There was something terrifying in how he said it—not dramatic, not unhinged. Just… certain. As if it was a fact as natural as her name.
She pulled the blanket tighter around herself, though the chill came from within.
At some point in the early hours, just before the line between night and morning blurred, she dozed off.
And that's when the dream came.
She was standing in a field. It was twilight—the air thick with gold and blood. In front of her, the world was burning. Black feathers fell like snow. She was screaming, her throat raw, her eyes wet. But no sound came out. And there was someone there—someone bleeding, crumpled at her feet. His face was shadowed, but she knew that silhouette.
Akira.
She touched her chest.
There was a hole.
And then she was falling.
When she woke, she was gasping. Her fingers gripped the bedsheet like she was trying to claw her way back from something.
School was a blur that morning. She didn't remember walking there. Didn't remember slipping her shoes off at the entrance or bowing to the teacher. Everything passed like it was underwater.
But she noticed him.
Akira sat beside her, exactly like yesterday. No bag. No books. Just him. Staring forward. Silent. He hadn't even taken off his coat. Rain still clung to his sleeves.
She kept stealing glances at him.
At one point, he turned his head—slow, deliberate—and looked straight at her.
"You dreamed it too," he whispered, so softly only she could hear.
Rin flinched.
Her hand curled into a fist beneath her desk. "How do you know that?" she muttered.
"I always know when it starts again."
She turned away, pretending to focus on the teacher's notes on the board. But the chalk screeching against the green surface barely masked the thudding in her chest.
Again?
During break, she stood near the vending machines, sipping canned coffee she didn't really want. She watched him from across the hall. He leaned against the window, staring out at the drizzle. People avoided him without realizing it. Like their bodies knew something they didn't.
A group of girls walked past, giggling too loudly, throwing side glances at Akira. One whispered, "He's kind of hot in a 'don't-touch-me-or-I'll-curse-you' way."
Another added, "I heard he put someone in the hospital last year."
Rin hated that her stomach twisted when she heard that.
She didn't know what was worse—the thought that it was true, or the fact that she wanted to ask him herself.
Later, after the final bell, she lingered behind. She waited for everyone else to leave the class, packing her bag slower than usual.
Akira hadn't moved.
When she finally looked at him, he was already looking at her.
"I don't believe you," she said.
He tilted his head slightly, not surprised. "That's good."
"You say weird things, make cryptic comments, act like you know me."
"I do."
"You don't. You can't."
He stood slowly, his chair legs scraping softly. "Your scar—it burns when you lie to yourself, doesn't it?"
She froze.
He walked past her, brushing just close enough that she felt his coat graze her arm. His voice, barely above breath, slipped into her ear.
"You died with your eyes open. That's why you remember the rain."
She spun around to stop him, to demand answers.
But he was already gone.
That night, she found herself staring at her scar again.
She ran her thumb over it. It didn't hurt. Not physically. But there was something buried beneath it, something clawing to get out the more she thought of him.
She opened the bottom drawer of her desk.
Inside was a box—dusty, taped shut, unopened for over a year.
She hesitated.
Then peeled the tape off.
Old photographs. Torn letters. A hospital ID tag. A broken pendant.
She didn't remember keeping these.
She didn't even remember how they got there.
But when she lifted the pendant into her palm, something hit her chest like a wave.
It was cold.
Dark.
Like falling into water with your lungs full of air.
And then—
She heard a voice.
Akira's voice.
Inside her head.
Screaming her name.
"Rin!"
She dropped the pendant.
It clattered to the floor and shattered.
The rain outside stopped mid-pour. The wind halted. The streetlight flickered once, then died.
And somewhere in the silence that followed, she felt it:
Something had awakened.
Not just in her.
In the world.
In the curse.
She didn't know how, or why.
But she was certain of one thing—
She wasn't dreaming anymore.