Convergence

Part 3 : Chapter 4

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Utahime and Agathe had been circling for nearly an hour. The corridors repeated themselves - identical, endless - bathed in a pallid light that buzzed faintly overhead. They had searched every corner of Urami Higashi High School - classrooms, hallways, the infirmary - without finding the slightest trace of a curse. And yet, something was wrong. The atmosphere was saturated with cursed energy, thick and viscous, as though it clung to their skin.

Too dense. Abnormally dense.

They moved on to the cafeteria. The stacked trays trembled faintly, as if stirred by an invisible breath. The gymnasium echoed hollowly, each footstep seeming to answer another, delayed by a fraction of a second. Even the garbage room, swallowed in heavy darkness, offered nothing but an oppressive silence.

No curses. Or rather - no visible curses.

"What kind of joke is this...?"

Agathe's voice cracked through the air, sharp with irritation.

Utahime didn't answer.

Something was off. For several minutes now, an unsettling sensation had taken hold of her. She could feel a presence. Not behind them. Not in front of them. Everywhere at once.

They were being watched.

She was certain of it.

As if... something was anticipating their movements. As if the curses were fleeing, scattering, vanishing the moment they drew near.

Impossible.

Curses don't think. They don't plan. They don't analyze. They attack. Always.

So why this silence?

A fleeting thought crossed Utahime's mind—what if this place didn't obey the rules they had been taught? After all, a high school... a place saturated with adolescent emotions—volatile, excessive, and novelty.

A perfect ground. A warped breeding place. Something unprecedented.

"Fine. If we don't find anything in the next twenty minutes, I'm out."

Agathe's tone was cutting. Impatience was beginning to crack her composure.

Utahime was about to respond—

A scream.

Shrill.

It tore through the air like a blade, so violently it seemed to make the walls themselves tremble. Outside, a flock of crows burst from the trees in a frenzy of beating wings. The sound came from the forest at the edge of the high school.

Without exchanging a word, the two women rushed toward it.

Their steps crushed dead leaves beneath their feet, their breaths mingling with the cold wind that slithered between the blackened trunks. The further they went, the heavier the air became—almost suffocating.

Then they saw it.

And their bodies froze.

Before them stood a mass.

Gigantic.

An abomination at least twenty meters tall, shapeless and shifting, like an amalgam of twisted flesh and faces frozen in silent screams. Limbs emerged and sank back into its surface, as if drawn into something deeper within. Eyes -too many - opened and closed in uneven, in desynchronized blinks.

A conglomeration of curses.

All of them. Gathered. Fused.

"...Disgusting..."