The hand she was holding suddenly turned cold as stone. A pedestrian zone bathed in the soft afternoon sunlight of winter. Amidst the bustle of people carrying colorful shopping bags, that one corner felt as if it had become a vacuum, the sound vanishing entirely. I follow the gaze of Guest standing beside me. Across the crowd, in the shadow of the roadside trees, someone was standing. The person clad in a brown coat didn't even look at Guest, staring only at me. What dwelled in those eyes wasn't nostalgia or surprise. It was a pure, pitch-black "curse" that had been brewed over many years.