Between the unspoken words

Yuji caught me before I hit the ground.

Blood ran down my side—hot and terrifying—but I didn't scream. I had no strength left. My eyes were glassy yet fixed, as if staring at something that wasn't there.

"Rebecca! Rebecca, are you with me?!" Yuji shouted, holding my tightly in his arms, his voice cracked and desperate.

I tried to breathe. Every gulp of air was a struggle. The arm… was gone. But that was only the body.

Inside, something had changed.

The curse… hadn't disappeared.

If anything, it felt more present than ever.

Yuji lifted me effortlessly, pressing me to his chest. His heart pounded in his ribcage as if it wanted to escape. He sprinted toward the exit of the cursed school grounds—feet flying, mind screaming.

There was no time. Not to think. Not to cry.

Only to run.

I stayed conscious just barely. With my head resting against his chest, I could hear the rhythmic sound of Yuji's heart. A fleeting safety. A momentary refuge. My heavy eyelids began to droop, but before darkness claimed me completely, I felt a shiver.

Not my own. But inside me.

The curse.

It wasn't satisfied.

It had taken a part of me—flesh, blood, energy.

And now… it knew me.

I sensed the invisible bond stretching between them like a thread hooked to my soul. No longer an invasion. No longer an attack.

It was hunger.

Clear. Familiar. Fond.

An inner whisper, speaking in my own voice:

"Now I have you inside."

My fingers trembled. My breath grew shallow. But my final words, before surrendering to the dark, were only thoughts—raw, essential:

"I had given it a part of me. But it wasn't over. Now it knew me. It wanted all of me."

***

Silence.

There was no floor beneath me, no sky above—only a darkness that didn't frighten me but seemed to … embrace.

I walked—or perhaps floated—through that mute immensity. I felt no pain, no weight of a body, only a vague awareness of being. And a void. Thin yet alive, like a taut cord in my chest.

Then, a voice.

Soft. Too close.

"It hurts, doesn't it?"

I turned. No one.

Yet the words vibrated in the air like whispers inside a dream that tastes of truth.

"You've always had too much light. Too much love."

"I just wanted … a piece of you."

The voice was hers, but distorted—childlike.

Or maybe not.

Maybe it belonged to someone else who knew my language, my soul, my black holes.

I tried to speak, but my throat was sealed, as if my breath belonged to another.

"It's not your fault I love you this much."

"But … the way you love Toge—can't you love me too?"

The sound of that name struck my chest like a blow, and the voice grew gentler—yet more fractured.

"He hurt me. His voice … destroyed me. But you—you can rebuild me."

"I'm not like the others. I don't want your power. I want you. Every corner. Every crack."

Then she appeared.

A reflection.

A liquid image, floating in the dark:

Myself—younger, more fragile, hair loose, face streaked with tears.

And beside her … a shadow. Human, yet not entirely so—the creature from the mission with Yuji.

But here she seemed a wounded child, not an enemy.

A shattered mirror of my soul.

"You gave away an arm. But now … now I know where you are."

"I know how you enter. How you bleed. How you love."

The figure moved closer.

"If you reject me … you break me."

"But if you accept me … we become one. Whole. Invincible."

The darkness began to tighten around us. Warm. Too warm.

A faint echo spread—a sweet laugh, like the ones heard among forgotten porcelain dolls.

And at last, a sentence.

A promise. A threat. Or perhaps merely the truth.

"I will never leave again. Never."

***

The darkness cracked slowly, like thin glass struck from within.

I opened my eyes for only an instant—a flash of raw, white light, then mist.

The pain was muffled, distant, yet relentless. Like a cold blade driven deep, not slicing … but burrowing.

Voices around me came in broken, muffled fragments, drowned by a buzzing that throbbed like blood in my temples.

"She's losing too much blood! MOVE!"

"Hold her head—she mustn't pass out!"

"Stabilizer! Now!"

The world was sprinting.

A hallway slid away beneath a gurney.

Neon lights blinked on and off, like trembling stars about to die.

The air was heavy, tainted by the metallic smell of blood, of urgency, of terror.

Someone was shouting my name, yet my mind couldn't grasp it.

Only one face. Only one voice.

"Rebecca… can you hear me? Please… stay with me…"

Yuji.

He held me tight—too tight, maybe—but I didn't want him to let go.

I felt his erratic heartbeat against my chest.

His breath. His trembling. His anguish.

And then… the warmth of tears.

"Don't give up… please… stay… stay…"

That was when it happened.

Toge appeared, as if summoned by a pain that pierced his heart even from afar.

He stormed down the corridor like a silent tempest—eyes wide, gaze cleaved by panic. When he saw me—blood, missing arm, skin gone pale—his body seemed to empty out.

He froze.

One breath. Two.

Then he was there, kneeling beside me.

Yuji didn't look at him.

And he didn't look at Yuji.

There was no room for anger.

No time for jealousy.

Only pain.

Only the raw, naked knowledge that something had gone wrong, and that I—I—was slipping away.

Toge took my face in his shaking hands.

He didn't even reach for his phone. No written words.

He spoke with his eyes, with his skin, with a heart beating hollow against mine.

A barely formed mouthing of words:

"I love you."

That was all.

Yuji, a few steps away, stayed silent—dried blood on his hands, breath in tatters.

He didn't move. He didn't speak.

He only lowered his gaze, like someone who knows there is nothing more to be done.

"Get her in NOW!" an orderly shouted, bursting in.

"Clear the hall—she's critical!"

The gurney rolled on.

Toge followed without asking for permission.

Yuji stayed behind, motionless, in that cold, mute shadow that remains when you lose something that was never truly yours.

And I, between consciousness and darkness, still felt them.

Not the words, not the hands— but the presences.

Them.

Two voices. Two hearts.

One that cradled me.

One that called me.

And deeper still…

something else.

A hunger.

A whisper nested inside my bones.

I had tasted pain.

I had felt love break apart.

And now, I wanted more.

I understood that just before the world went dark for good.