"I'll fucking kill you."
The words don't sound like Yuta's, not truly. There's nothing gentle or apologetic in them — just raw, unfiltered rage. The kind of hatred that distorts the air, that drips like blood from sharpened teeth. Lower, primal. Something like an ancient curse, stained with blood, and Mikina barely has time to scream before Rika crashes through the veil like a living apocalypse, tearing apart cursed barriers like wet paper.
He doesn't hesitate.
There's no hesitation as Yuta lunges at Mikina, blade flashing like a white-hot arc of rage. He doesn't speak again. Doesn't even scream. He just moves — too fast, too sharp — a storm of blade, sorrow, and holy fury. Mikina fights back with panic-thin speed, summoning more vipers from the shadows, but their venomous hissing doesn't even slow Yuta.
One by one, her summoned snakes are slashed out of existence.
When Mikina tries to bolt, Rika catches her mid-air and slams her into the ground hard enough to crack the pavement.
Bones breaking. The wet crunch of impact. Rika's shriek — jubilant, furious, unbound. Mikina screams once, twice. Then nothing.
But you don't see — or hear — any of that.
Shoko doesn't watch.
She can't afford to, not when you're lying on the ground, a crumpled marionette with its strings cut.
Instead, Shoko kneels beside your body, taking in your condition with a grim expression and steely eyes. Your breathing is shallow. Laboured. Blood bubbles at your lips. Shoko's hands are slick with it as she works frantically, trying to reverse the trauma — reset shattered ribs, knit ruptured organs, anything, anything to pull you back from the brink.
But it's like trying to mop up an ocean with a single paper towel.
The hole in your head is bad.
The poison is worse.
Mikina's cursed energy has shredded your tissues like damp paper, and Shoko doesn't need to be a poison specialist to know something is very, very wrong.
"Shit," she mutters, eyes narrowed. "This much blood shouldn't be pouring out — you're not regenerating properly. Why aren't you — "
You're still conscious, barely — your lips move, cracked and bleeding, and Shoko leans in to hear you over the distant, wet cracks of Mikina's bones breaking.
"Poison," you whisper.
Shoko freezes. "What?"
You swallow thickly, mouth working around words like they're foreign. "Poison. B . . Binding — Vow." You cough, and something thick and black dribbles from your lips. "Die . . . Curse."
There's a silence — a beat where Shoko's whole body locks up. Then her eyes flare with disbelief and fury. "You idiot. You absolute — fuck — YUTA!"
He doesn't hear her at first. Too far gone, too deep in the blinding haze of vengeance. Mikina's screams are fading now, replaced by the wet, animalistic noise of something being torn apart.
"YUTA!" Shoko screams, louder, sharper.
There's a lull. A sudden silence. Then heavy footsteps, fast. Too fast. And then he's there, eyes wide and bloodshot as he stumbles forward, sloshing through the sticky puddle that used to be you. He's still panting, blood dripping from his hands, his face, his blade. Rika lingers behind him, shimmering and trembling with lingering fury.
"Where?"
Shoko doesn't even look up, still knee-deep in your blood and organs. "Check her coat. Pockets. Boots. Everywhere."
Yuta tears through Mikina's clothes, belts, and pouches — glass shards glitter in the red-stained moonlight. All broken. All useless. Crushed under Rika's claws or shattered by Mikina's impact.
"There's nothing whole," he says, frantic. "The vials — she had glass vials, but they're — they're crushed — Shoko —!"
"Then get over here and help me!" she screams.
He obeys.
But when he sees you — really sees you, limp in Shoko's lap, your body crumpled and your eyes glassy — he stumbles.
There's so much blood. Too much. The blood from your chest has seeped through your shirt, skirt, and sweater, and is now pooling like paint drops on a sea of grass. His eyes flick over the gore. The bullet hole gaping in your forehead, like a grotesque third eye, still seeping. Your scalp, torn in places, bits of flesh and hair and brain splattered around you like red confetti.
But worse than that is your face — slack and silent, and for the first time since you've met, you don't look at him like he's safety.
You look like you're gone.
And something inside him lurches.
"Oh my god," he whispers. "What — what did she do to you?"
"She's been poisoned," Shoko snaps, fingers glowing bright green as she struggles to keep you from slipping through her grasp. "She said something —something about a binding vow. This idiot's going to curse that other idiot if she dies. Of all the idiotic, brainless things to do —"
You can feel his cursed energy wrap around you clumsily, the way a child might try to tape together a broken vase. It's not precise. It's desperate.
"Why didn't you wait for help? Why didn't you call me?"
You can't look at him. You can't.
You still feel the venom in your blood, your brain leaking through your shattered skull, your fingers twitching like they're already dead. But that's not what hurts most.
He's trembling, shoulders hunched forward, like he's trying to make himself small. "I would've come. I would've protected you."
You blink slowly, trying to speak — but the words don't come fast enough, and your mouth tastes like iron and acid and smoke.
Yuta's voice cracks. "You might heal fast, but you still feel pain . . . And I hate it. I hate it when you get hurt."
That pulls something ugly and tired out of you. With what little strength you have left, you lift a weak, bloody hand and shove at his chest.
"Going . . . Africa." Your voice cracks, every syllable an effort, the poison crawling faster.
You try to scramble away from him — a useless twitch of limbs too exhausted to move. You kick once. Twice. Your hand flails, weakly slapping against his chest, and you're crying now, not from pain but from something deeper and more drained than that.
"Don't . . . Need —"
He doesn't say anything.
You can't see the look on his face clearly, but you feel the shift in his silence — not anger, not pity, just hurt. Real, soft, raw hurt, like you just carved open his chest and tore out the beating thing inside.
The last thing you see before the blackness swallows you again is Yuta's expression.
And God, he looks like you've broken his heart.
