12. A Curse To Someone (5)

A barrel spitting flame. A metal bullet, fired.

Bright red flesh, shredded as if detonated all at once.

Blood burst like a firecracker, spattering across a white school uniform and pale cheeks.

Thud—. Maeve's body crumpled lifelessly to the floor, a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.

Blood poured freely from the ownerless corpse, pooling in a small, dark puddle.

As if demanding I accept a reality I couldn't begin to comprehend, Maeve's black eye rolled to a stop at my feet.

She had asked me to kill her—then shot herself in the head first.

"…Is she out of her mind?"

I muttered to myself, cataloguing her as the most unhinged person I'd encountered so far. I reached for the musket, thinking I might as well take her gear—

—and the eye on the floor rolled back toward its owner.

"…?!"

The moment it slid back into place, every scattered scrap of flesh and every drop of pooled blood began flowing back to Maeve's body in unison.

Blood seeped back into severed vessels. Torn flesh and bone fragments snapped together with brutal precision, reclaiming their shape.

A different kind of resurrection than mine—she didn't need to die first.

Maeve was… immortal.

Was that why she'd asked me to kill her, the same way she had in my first run?

But how?

If an immortal with abilities like hers had appeared in the game, I would have remembered her clearly. I didn't know her at all—and I had no idea how to break her immortality.

Once Maeve's shattered face had fully reconstructed itself, she slowly pushed herself upright and looked at me again with an expression utterly devoid of feeling.

"You saw it, right? I can't die by my own hand."

She wore a strange expression—mouth curved upward, eyes unsmiling, as though the smile were a gesture of familiarity rather than warmth.

"If you kill me… I'll give you whatever you want."

She tucked the musket back at her hip and stepped toward me, leaning her face close to mine.

Through the faint, soft scent of skin, something foul cut through—the stench of blood.

That same terrible smell that had always found me at the moment of my own deaths. It clung to every inch of Maeve.

"…Ugh."

"My."

A hallucination swept over me—the world bleeding to black—and bile surged up my throat. I collapsed to the floor as if seized by a fit, pressed my face down, and retched up pale stomach acid.

"You… what the hell are you?"

"I'm Maeve."

She crouched beside me naturally and patted my back, answering without inflection.

The revolting smell of blood coming off Maeve wasn't a real smell—not one anyone could detect.

It was a kind of pull that death carried, something only a person who had died many times over could perceive.

"Is my smell really that strong? I bathed before coming."

Once the nausea had settled somewhat, Maeve sniffed at her own clothes. The look on her face suggested she found nothing wrong with them—which confirmed it. This blood-stench was mine alone to sense.

"Sorry. I made a poor first impression."

Her words and manner were detached, but her nature was, strangely, gentle.

She rose first and extended a hand to me. I reached for it—then flinched at the smell and stood on my own.

"……."

Her outstretched hand hung there, awkward and unclaimed. Maeve quietly slipped it into her pocket.

"You said… you want me to kill you?"

I spoke through the burning in my throat where the stomach acid had scorched it.