A heavy silence filled the room.
Once the ominous red glow and warped space had completely faded from the room, once the cold cursed pop-up on the monitor reverted back to her familiar desktop wallpaper, it was as if someone had pressed the mute button on the entire world.
Utaha stood there, rigid.
The wine-red pupils of her beautiful eyes had lost all focus. Her brain had just been hit with more than it could process, and now it had simply… crashed, blanked out entirely.
What… had just happened?
From the moment the curse descended, to the instant that godlike boy raised his finger, to the scene of that horrifying curse-spirit being violently dragged out of the virtual world and then casually crushed to nothing…
The entire sequence had taken less than ten seconds.
The nightmare that had hounded her for days, that had driven her to the brink of death, had just… ended?
Ended this easily, this cleanly, this… absurdly?
The crushing fear that had weighed on her chest for two long nights, vanished in a single instant. Yet what followed was not the wild joy of a close escape, but an overwhelming emptiness, a boneless sense of collapse and delayed terror after her mind finally let go.
Her nerves, which had been stretched to their absolute limit, finally snapped.
"Ah…"
A tiny, unconscious whimper escaped her pale lips.
Her knees buckled. Strength drained completely from her limbs. Her whole body went limp and toppled forward.
And the direction she fell in was exactly toward the boy who had just performed a miracle and was now slowly lowering his hand, Natsume Yuu.
Natsume noticed the movement behind him. His brow lifted almost imperceptibly. He could have sidestepped her easily, but through his pale blue Six Eyes, he had clearly seen the lingering fear in Utaha's wine-red gaze, the remaining shock, and… a raw, desperate reliance, like a drowning person clutching a piece of driftwood.
In the end, he did not move.
The next moment, a soft, warm body that carried a faint fragrance collapsed firmly against his chest.
Utaha ended up draped over him entirely. Her slender arms wrapped instinctively, tightly around his waist, and she buried her face deep against his chest, as if only like this could she draw enough warmth and strength to be sure she was still alive. Her body, chilled by fear, was trembling uncontrollably, like a cat that had been battered by a storm and finally found shelter.
"It is over."
Natsume's voice sounded above her head, quiet and steady.
Those three simple words finally broke the tension inside her. They broke the last of Utaha's emotional restraint, that last fragile wall she had put up called "being strong."
"Mm… ngh…"
A stifled sob escaped the crook of his chest, thick with tears. Warm drops quickly seeped through the front of his shirt.
Natsume did not say anything else and did not push her away. He simply stood there, letting this usually proud, sharp-tongued upperclassman pour out all the terror and vulnerability she had bottled up in the wake of her brush with death.
Only after a long while did Utaha's sobs gradually quiet down.
She finally seemed to realise how bold and improper her current posture was. Her cheeks flared with intense heat all at once. She hurriedly loosened her arms and stepped back from Natsume as if she had been burnt.
"S… sorry… I lost control," she muttered, head bowed, voice barely above a whisper.
"The commission has been completed. The curse is fully dispelled and will not reappear," Natsume said. He did not seem to care about her momentary loss of composure. He merely stated the facts with his usual calm. "If there is nothing else, I will take my leave."
With that, he turned to go. To him, the job was finished, and it was time to return to his everyday life.
However, just as he turned away, his sleeve was caught by a cool, slightly trembling hand.
"Wait!"
Utaha's voice carried a thread of panic and pleading that even she herself did not notice.
Natsume halted and glanced back.
The beautiful senior stood there, looking up at him with eyes that were almost imploring. In those wine-red irises, fear still lingered, stubborn and hard to erase.
"C… could you… stay with me a little longer?" She bit her lower lip, and her voice was fragile. "Just for a bit… I am… a little scared of being alone…"
She was terrified that after this godlike boy left, the apartment would be filled with nothing but herself and the echo of her memories. Even though her rational mind told her the curse had been erased, that bone-deep dread still hung over her like a shadow. She feared that if she were left alone, she would tumble back into that endless nightmare.
Natsume looked at her helpless expression and was quiet for a moment.
He remembered the reason he had transferred to Sobu High in the first place, to experience and protect this rare, peaceful daily life. And this upperclassman in front of him was also a part of that "everyday."
"All right."
In the end, he nodded and agreed to her request, sitting back down on the sofa in the living room.
Seeing him stay, the tension in Utaha's chest finally began to settle. She let out a long breath of relief and, somewhat stiffly, took a seat at the opposite end of the sofa.
For a while, the room fell quiet again. The atmosphere turned a little delicate.
It was Utaha who broke the silence first. In her eyes, the curiosity that belonged to a novelist, and the urge to explore that unknown world, were too strong to ignore.
"Natsume-kun… what exactly are you?" she asked carefully. "Just now, that… that red thing, was that what people call a ghost?"
"You can think of it that way," Natsume replied lightly. He did not feel like explaining the complex taxonomy of curse-spirits in detail.
"Then… are there many things like it in this world?" Utaha pressed. Her instincts as a writer had already sniffed out a vast, fresh new setting.
"The world is undergoing some changes that ordinary people are not aware of," Natsume answered, his tone still vague yet heavy with implication. "The strange is reviving, and urban legends are becoming real. What you encountered is only the tip of the iceberg."
His words sent her heart jumping up into her throat again.
"Then what are we supposed to do, people like us?"
"For ordinary people," Natsume said, giving her a look, "ignorance is a blessing. Knowing too much will not make your life better. It will only drag you into endless trouble."
"So forget everything you saw tonight. Live the same way you always have. That is the best protection you can give yourself."
Those words dampened her curiosity immediately. Yet in them, she could sense a different sort of gentleness.
In his own way, he was protecting the "everyday" world she belonged to.
Only now did Utaha belatedly realise that her back was soaked with the cold sweat that the terror had wrung out of her. Her clothes clung uncomfortably to her skin.
A faint scent of sweat reached her nose. For a perfectionist who cared about her image as much as she did, her face flushed scarlet in an instant.
"Um, well…" She got to her feet, fidgeting with the hem of her shirt and keeping her head down. "I… I am all sweaty, I want to… take a shower…"
Without waiting for his response, as if it had taken all her remaining strength to squeeze out that sentence, she bolted toward the bathroom like she was fleeing.
Soon after, the sound of running water drifted from the bathroom.
Left alone in the quiet living room, Natsume listened to the faint murmur of the shower. His expression remained calm, but deep in his pale blue eyes, a faint, long-absent ripple stirred.
Once upon a time, he had been treated as the heir to "the strongest."
The same Six Eyes as Gojo Satoru, the same Limitless technique, had set Natsume and Gojo on a shared path. It also meant that, within the jujutsu world, he had always stood opposite its rotten, decaying higher-ups.
His past was full of ceaseless battles, intricate schemes and all the distrust, fear and assassination attempts bred by those corrupt elites. He had seen the darkest depths of human malice and the foulest forms curses could take. For him, something as simple as "everyday life" had been a distant luxury.
Until he came to this world and enrolled at Sobu High.
He deliberately hid his strength, attending classes like any ordinary boy, going home, joining a club. He basked in the sunlight, listened to the droning of lectures and enjoyed that calm, almost boring peace.
He liked this feeling.
And now, this quiet apartment, the sound of water in the bathroom, and the girl who had just stared death in the face and had come to rely on him completely, all of this came together into a scene that was full of quiet domestic warmth.
Was this not exactly what he had always wanted, the gentle, ordinary life that the strongest version of himself hoped to protect?
Natsume slowly leaned back against the sofa, closed his eyes and let a faint, unreadable smile curve his lips, a smile no one else was there to see.
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