"See it now? This is Sadako's curse."
Natsume's calm voice echoed through Yumiko's bedroom and the panic in the room surged at once.
Under the effect of Cursed Spirit Eye, that hellish tableau of writhing black hair and space eaten through by curses shattered the last threads of Yumiko and Hina's sanity. Their minds snapped, and they fell headfirst into bottomless terror.
"Okay. That is enough for now."
Natsume snapped his fingers.
The cursed power wrapped around their eyes dissolved at once. The world snapped back to normal. The cute princess room looked exactly as it always had, as if the nightmare from a second ago had been a hallucination.
But the cold that had sunk into their bones, and the phantom sensation of something crawling over their skin, would not disappear so easily. No matter how wide they opened their eyes, they could not force their hearts to believe everything was fine again.
"Sadako's curse only truly manifests on the seventh day," Natsume said, looking down at the two girls sitting limp on the floor and shaking. His tone was completely steady. "Before that, even I cannot forcefully rip it out of its medium. So you will have to endure it for three more days."
"Th... three days?!"
The color drained from both faces again. The thought of living with this on them for three more days made their stomachs twist.
"Do not worry. As long as I am here, it will not be able to hurt you."
There was no room for doubt in Natsume's voice.
"Three days from now, at eight in the evening, the curse will reach its final deadline. Come to the Occult Research Club room at Soubu High at that time. I will deal with everything in one go."
They had seen the true face of the curse with their own eyes and heard Natsume speak in a tone that left no room for doubt.
The quiet transfer student who had never stood out before now appeared to them as the only straw to cling to at the edge of a bottomless pit.
Hope, thin but stubborn, rekindled in their eyes. They seized that last chance with everything they had and nodded hard.
...
Over the next three days, something subtle shifted in the daily life of Class 2F at Soubu High.
The biggest change was in the core of the popular crowd: Yumiko and Hina. The way they treated that always solitary transfer student, Natsume, changed completely.
They no longer ignored him. Instead, they began approaching him on their own. They greeted him warmly, their voices tinged with reverence, flattery, and quiet dependence. At lunch, they would just so happen to show up on the rooftop where Natsume liked to eat, bringing carefully prepared snacks and drinks, fussing over him.
That sudden shift caused a stir in the group.
"Hey, Hayato, look."
A boy with bleached blond hair styled into a ridiculous airplane head, Tobe, jabbed his elbow into Hayama Hayato's side, face twisted with irritation and confusion.
"What is up with Yumiko and Hina lately? Why are they hanging around that gloomy transfer student?"
Hayama adjusted his glasses. Even behind his bright, friendly smile, a trace of doubt shimmered in his eyes. He looked toward Natsume, surrounded by two school-idol level beauties yet still wearing that same indifferent expression, and for the first time felt like his position in the center of the group might be threatened.
For Tobe, who harbored a crush on Hina, it was even worse. Jealousy burned in him every time he saw them. He tried to march up to Natsume more than once, but each time Yumiko shut him down with queenly pressure and a single line.
"Our business is none of yours."
With Natsume as the new axis, faint cracks spread through what had once been a perfectly solid clique.
Natsume himself could not have cared less.
He lived his school life as calmly as ever, as if what was coming was not a confrontation with a legendary cursed spirit, but just another ordinary club activity.
Three days passed quietly, felt unbearably long for the two girls trapped between fear and hope.
The night of the showdown finally arrived.
...
At seven thirty in the evening, the Occult Research Club room was already crowded.
Yumiko and Ebina had arrived long before that. They were still nervous, but the moment they stepped into this "safe house" protected by Natsume's cursed energy, the weight on their hearts that was there for three days seemed to fall halfway off.
Yui stayed firmly by their side as their best friend. She kept cheering them on, her every word full of simple, pure faith in her president.
Unexpectedly, Yashiro, driven by the curiosity of a born researcher, had stayed as well after hearing the story of Sadako. Hugging the rabbit plush that housed a low-level curse, she sat quietly in a corner. Her dark double pupils were fixed on the old TV in the corner, unblinking, as if she could not wait to see how this legendary cursed spirit compared to the "evil spirits" she knew.
Time ticked by, slow and heavy.
No one spoke. The air in the room was thick with tension and anticipation. Only the ticking of the clock on the wall broke the silence, each "tick, tock" like a countdown ticking in their ears.
Natsume, as always, looked completely at ease.
He brewed a pot of black tea and poured a cup for everyone present.
"Do not be so tense," he said, lifting his own cup and blowing gently on the surface. "Just think of it as a 4D immersive screening of The Ring."
The joke was so badly timed that it had the opposite of its intended effect. Yumiko and Hina went even paler.
Finally, the hour, minute, and second hands on the wall clock overlapped on the number 8.
Eight in the evening. The agreed time had come.
At that exact instant...
Static shrieking.
The lights in the clubroom flickered violently, emitting the harsh buzz of surging electricity, then went out with a sharp pop.
Darkness swallowed the room. Pitch black. They could not even see their own hands.
A freezing cold spread in from every direction,spreading through the room in an instant. The temperature dropped by more than ten degrees in a heartbeat. Yui could clearly see her breath whiten in front of her.
"Ah!"
The sudden change wrung screams out of every girl at once.
In the dark, a single point of light flared to life.
The old television in the corner, which should have been completely without power, turned on by itself.
Static snow filled the screen, then shifted.
The black and white footage began to play again, that familiar string of ominous and cursed images they never wanted to see again.
The woman combing her hair. The crawling figure. The character "Sad" reflected in an eye.
Natsume activated Cursed Spirit Eye for the others again. This time, they saw far more than before.
As the images played, countless black lines, thin and inky like strands of hair, began pouring out of the TV.
Like living snakes, they slithered across the walls, the floor, the ceiling, in the blink of an eye covering every surface of the room.
The curse's stench was so thick and venomous that it felt like it was crushing their hearts from the inside.
The tape reached its final scene.
The dark, yawning well that looked like a bottomless mouth of darkness.
From the ancient stone ring in the frame, a woman in a white dress slowly clawed her way out, her bones creaking audibly. Her long black hair clung to her face, hiding it completely. She began walking toward the camera.
Toward them.
Closer. And closer. And closer...
Until the hair-covered face filled the entire screen.
Then the most impossible scene, the one that broke the boundary between fiction and reality, unfolded.
Sadako moved.
It was as if she pierced the thin veil between two and three dimensions.
A pale, swollen hand pushed forward through the snow-flecked screen. The nails were packed with dirt and mud, and there was nothing human in that movement.
The hand kept coming.
With a soft tap, the fingers hooked over the edge of the television's frame and gripped it hard, knuckles bending as she hauled herself out.
She was coming through.
That final, the moment that broke the boundary between fiction and reality, completely snapped the last fragile string of rationality in Yumiko's mind.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!"
A scream sharp enough to tear the night open exploded from deep in her throat.
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