Love Is The Most Twisted Curse | Suguru Geto

Chapter 42: The Cursed Child

"It’s a promise, Yuta."

The words echo in the chambers of his mind, soft yet suffocating, a whisper laced with something inescapable—something that clings to him like the weight of his own breath.

He sits curled on the cold wooden floor, fingers pressing tightly over his ears as if he could muffle the nightmare unraveling before him. But even through the trembling of his hands, the sound persists—the sickening squelch of flesh being torn apart, the brittle snap of bone surrendering to merciless force.

No matter how much he tries to drown it out, the noise swells, a tide of anguish rising higher, seeping into his lungs until he feels like he’s drowning in it.

"Rika-chan, please." His voice cracks, barely more than a breath, a plea swallowed by the chaos surrounding him. "I don’t want you to hurt anyone."

But she does not heed him. She never does.

And yet, she never leaves him either.

Yuta finally lifts his gaze toward the half-open wardrobe. The shadows stretch long and merciless, framing the grotesque scene within. Rika is there, hunched over, her form twisting and writhing as if sculpted by grief itself. Blood paints her small hands—no, not hands anymore. Claws. Dark, jagged things that gleam with the remnants of life she has just stolen.

The mangled remains of a student lie beneath her, unseeing eyes locked in an eternal gaze of terror. Around them, the others scream, their voices distant, distorted—as if the entire world has unraveled into a painting of horror, smeared by the trembling brush of Yuta’s helplessness.

"It’s a promise, Yuta."

The whisper is neither past nor present, but something in between, woven into his bones like a memory he cannot sever.

Light-headed, he stumbles into a past that greets him like an old friend. The playground stretches before him, bathed in the golden light of late afternoon, the laughter of two children ringing through the air. He sees her—Rika, untouched by curses, smiling with the radiance of something fleeting, something that should have lasted forever.

But forever was never theirs to have.

The golden light turns crimson. The warmth of laughter is replaced by the silence of death. She is lying there, her small body crumpled in the middle of the road, her lifeblood painting the asphalt in a deep, damning red.

"Come back to me, please."

The words slip past his lips like a prayer, quiet and desperate, as his world tilts and spins.

"Come back, Rika-chan."

Over and over, he repeats it, like a spell, like a curse.

And then—nothing.

Darkness swallows him whole, but before it takes him completely, he feels it. The familiar weight of a presence that never truly left. The sickly warmth of blood trailing down to meet him, binding him to the nightmare he can never wake from.

Within the confines of his cell, where the walls bore silent witness to his existence, Yuta sat unmoving. The dim light casts weary shadows upon his sunken face, and before him lay a tray of tasteless food—unappetizing, lifeless, much like the days that stretched ahead of him. The guard’s voice cut through the silence.

“Eat. Or you’ll die.”

Two days had passed since he had last let anything cross his lips, not out of defiance, but because the very act of eating churned his stomach with unbearable memories. Every time he lifted his hand, every time his fingers hovered over a morsel, his mind was flooded with grotesque images—the shattered remains of a boy, a boy whose body had been torn apart by Rika’s fury. Flesh, severed and scattered. The metallic scent of blood lingering in the air. A life snuffed out in an instant.