Chapter Text
Lacie is cursed with something. She doesn't exactly remember how or when it started, although she remembered a brief point in her early life when her life was normal, when she was having fun with friends, celebrating birthdays with her family, until at some point her life turned 180 degrees, a total reversal.
Her parents don't seem to want to look her in the eyes. On the few occasions when they actually do, their stares seem to be filled with hatred and fear.
Her friends would ignore her and start bullying her. She remembers one time in middle school a black crow crashed into her class window and broke it, then landed on her table. The crow died due to the impact of the crash, and everyone thinks that it's her fault that the crow died, and they made her eat the crow while shouting "MURDERER! MURDERER! MURDERER!"
The only person who seems to care about her and treat her as normal is her older brother, Hiro. He's a doting person, he spoils her and gives her affection when no one else even looks at her despite her curse.
Lacie is invested in the occult and spends a good portion of her time in ritual forums and doing rituals herself. She never really does rituals, but after she stopped going outside a couple of months ago, she began to actually do stuff she read in those forums, mainly curse-cleansing rituals. The first ritual she did was with a hand mirror, explaining her curse to the mirror, and then saying 'I return the curse to the one who sent it to me.' Of course, it didn't work. She started doing even more rituals.
Fast forward a few months, and she finds a ritual named 'The Bus Ritual'. It involves calling a bus in the middle of the night with some simple preparations, and it's said that the ritual can actually cleanse curses, although the forum said the process may take days, even weeks to finish. Of course, Lacie who is already fed up with how the curse impacted her life, she decides to do the ritual, ordering a 'mail' that contains the ritual instructions and an additional 'return doorknob' (the forum said that you need this doorknob to go back to the real world).
A few days later, the letter arrived with the return doorknob that she ordered. She proceeds to start the ritual and actually managed to pull it off. The ritual took her to a forest that seemed like it belonged to a different world. There, she learns that:
- Her curse might be inflicted by a demon who is currently deceased, since demons can only inflict curses on their dying breath.
- Her curse is curable, and there's one person who might be able to remove it, named Red and she might find her answers if she manages to meet him.
- The demon who cursed her is possibly a demon named 'Lilith', due to another demon she met there that said her scent is similar to 'Lilith'.
Her time there was good despite being scary at times. She met another person who treats her indifferently, Sai. Sai doesn't treat her like her family and 'friends', he doesn't seem to care about her curse one bit. Granted, she needs to be wary of strangers, especially people like him who do rituals casually, but maybe she can keep him around for a bit, because she might need him for something.
Fast forward. After Lacie and Sai broke Miss Knives' illusion and defeated her in a fight, they found a cursed door with empty doorknobs similar to the one Lacie used to get into the facility. Lacie puts her return doorknob she bought in there, and then she gets in with Sai.
When she gets in the door, she's met with a singular door and a vase of white lily with a garden, or maybe more accurately a patch of grass surrounding it.
"It must be the exit garden. I just need to make a lily and place it there, right?" One of the reputable forum members suggested that she learn how to make paper lilies from origami paper, so she printed out and brought the folding instructions with her. She took the folding instruction and started folding it.
"Hey um… about that list." Sai started the conversation.
"What list?"
"Your to-do list before you die?" Oh… that depressing list.
"Why don't you make a new list? Instead of a list of things to do before you die, why don't you make a list of things to do once you get fixed? Starting with treating me to an eclair maybe?" He continued. Lacie didn't reply, she just folds her lily in silence.
"... I'm not sure what to say in a situation like this." Lacie finally spoke up.
"You don't need to say anything. But, I think it'd be a shame if you give up."
"I see."
Lacie finished folding her paper lily, and she walked up to the door, ready to replace the lily, when Sai interrupted her once again.
"Thank you, I had fun today." He said. Are these kinds of days supposed to be fun?
"F-fun?"
"Yeah!, this was really exciting, don't you think?"
"We almost died many times…" Maybe, idiots really don't die.
She replaced the white lily in the vase beside the door and replaces it with her paper-made lily, and the door opens, white light coming from it.
"Uhh, see you on the other side?" Lacie bids her 'goodbye' to which Sai just responded by saying 'Yeah.' Lacie proceeds to walk into the door, which by doing so made her vision full of white light for a good thirty seconds. Her heart is beating so fast she could die right now.
And now she's on her knees in front of her house's front gate, out of breath and coughing. She musters up her strength to stand up and open the gate. Fortunately, she gets in without trouble as the gate is not locked by any means. It's dark outside, but for some reason her pet crow is still awake, still being at the same place it was the day when she tried to go outside.
She pressed the doorbell. Not long after, she can hear Hiro saying "Coming!" and his footsteps. The door opens, and Hiro's face greets her at the front door.
"LACIE, you're back!" Hiro pulled her into a hug, squeezing Lacie tight. This is actually the first time she hugged anyone after a couple of years and actually the best hug. After a minute of hugging, Hiro pulled away and both of them gets inside the house. The time on the analog clock placed on the wall shows… Exactly 12 PM? The same time she started the ritual. It starts to bug her mind on why the exact time she started the ritual and the time she gets back from her ritual is the same, but she no longer has the energy to think about it now. She's hungry, dehydrated, and exhausted. Hiro seems to take notice of this.
"Lacie! Are you hungry? Your legs are trembling like that! Let's go to the dining room and I'll make you something, okay?" Ah, her legs are shaking, probably because she's physically exhausted from all that walking in the forest.
"A cup of ramen noodles, please." She replied.
"No way, Lacie. Your body needs nutrition. I have some leftover Japanese curry, I'll reheat it for you." Hiro scolded her. Seems like she can never win an argument against Hiro about stuff like this.
Hiro reheats the curry, and her plate of rice and curry is ready to eat. She gobbled it all really fast and finished everything up in just 10 minutes. And of course, she also drank a few glass of water before eating to cure her dry throat (She hadn't drank anything during her time in the ritual).
As she finishes eating her meal, Hiro starts a new conversation with her.
"So… did you find the cure or at least some clues during your time there? Did you get yourself into any troubles?"
"Hmm… oh." She came to the realization that she doesn't fully know if her curse is gone or not. Heck, she didn't even get to meet Red, which was supposed to be the goal of her trip there.
"Umm… You don't need to talk about it if you don't want to, Lacie."
"Wait no, I actually… I don't know if I'm still cursed or not. I learned a couple of things about my curse and who the person behind it might be, but I still don't know…" She said with a dejected face while making her way into the sink to wash the plate
"I see. Well, if you need anything else, I'll be in my bedroom! I'm sleepy already~" He yawned. Lacie responded with a nod and then proceeds to wash her plate, afterward she goes up into her bedroom. Her bedroom is surprisingly clean and tidy. She sleeps peacefully that night with neither nightmares nor interruptions, and only realizes the next day that she hasn't taken a shower the night before.
'Maybe, I will be able to become normal again after this…'
The next day
She woke up at 10 AM, regrettably. Good thing it's currently Saturday. A new day, and hopefully a good one. Lacie decides that she should try going outside again. Maybe, to get back the chocolate eclair and a cup of water she paid for but didn't even get to eat. She talked to Hiro about planning to go to the cafe again, in which he even offered to go with her in case her anxiety kicks in, but she refused.
Now she's at the front door of the cafe, her heart beating a little bit faster a little bit usual.
'You can do it, Lacie, I know you can.' Lacie comforts herself.
She finally opens the door and gets inside. The moment she steps in, she can already feel a few people staring at her, but whatever. She walks into the building, and to the cashier to order.
"H-hello! Can I take your order?" Lacie can tell the cashier is nervous with all his stutters. The cashier is probably scared of Lacie, but she can tell he's trying his best not to let Lacie's 'aura' get into him.
"Um.. a chocolate eclair and a… strawberry milkshake, please?" The cashier seems to check up on the shelves.
"I-I'm sorry, but we're… out of both, actually…" The cashier looked at Lacie with a little bit of fear on his face as if she was going to eat her.
"Ah…" Expression indicating sadness creeps upon Lacie's face.
"I'll take a… hazelnut eclair and perhaps a cup of chocolate milkshake… if you have that?" Lacie ordered the same thing she ordered last time, but now with a cup of chocolate milkshake instead of water. Consuming one and a half liters of water last night to cure her dehydration doesn't really help that. The cashier nods at her order, then she proceeds to pay for it.
"Okay, one hazelnut eclair and a cup of chocolate milkshake coming up! P-please take a seat and we will bring it to you." The cashier replied.
Lacie picks a seat in the corner of the cafe, trying to place herself as far away as possible from other people. But alas, she still feels like she's being watched, that other people are staring at her and talking about her. Actually, the two people seated on her right are talking about her currently.
"Hey, isn't that the cursed kid people are talking about?" One girl said.
"I don't really know since I have never even seen her set foot at school…" says another girl.
"But she has this kind of strange aura around, like… dark energy or something. Yikes, those rumors about her being cursed might be true after all."
"Shush, quiet. I just saw her sitting near us."
"Oh, sorry."
"You know, it might be a bad omen to talk about that person like that. What if she curses us?"
"Hey, what a hypocrite. You just scolded me for talking about her."
"Hehe, sorry."
The girls who are talking about her are students of the school she's going to, or at least, used to go to. She hasn't been going to school for several months now. Her tendency to skip classes started in middle school when people started ignoring her due to her 'curse'.
She stopped eavesdropping after that point. It's starting to sting on her heart. Is her curse really gone? Maybe everyone lives with the information that 'Lacie is a cursed child' marked as a fact in their subconscious, and they can't accept the fact that her curse is now gone just because they are so used to thinking that Lacie is cursed, like a placebo effect. Or, what if her curse is not actually gone, and she's still cursed and she thinks that she's already cleansed? The latter makes more sense to her. She didn't even meet Red, her journey in that world is probably not yet finished. Yet, why did she decide to leave?
Before she knew it, tears began to drop from her eyes down to her cheeks. What's more embarrassing is that the moment tears begin to roll down her face, the waitress brought her order of hazelnut eclair and chocolate milkshake. The face on the waiter shows frowned eyebrows, that of irritation and resentment. The waitress put her order on her table hurriedly, then stormed off.
'I know these kinds of things happen to me a lot… but why can't I seem to get used to it?'
She didn't even get to finish her food that day.
When she gets home, Hiro greets her with enthusiasm, asking her how the trip to the cafe went.
"Lacie! Did it go well? Did you talk and make another new friend?" Her brother asked, stars brimming in his eyes. However, Lacie's gloomy expression and her reluctance to answer made it clear enough for him to understand.
"Oh, w-well it's okay, you can always try again. Do you want to talk about it?" He asks his concerns. Lacie shakes her head.
"Okay, then!" He said. Lacie then walks up to her bedroom, quickly took off her jacket and buries her own face in her pillow.
'First day of trying to go outside after the ritual, and it turned out no differently from usual.' Lacie starts to think that maybe, whatever her curse is still there. People still treated her no differently than it was before.
Lacie remembered Miss Knives blabbering about 'Lilith' and how she mistook her as this 'Lilith' when they first met and how she smelled like 'Lilith'. Lacie is not the smartest girl out there, but she knows from this fact that whoever this Lilith demon is… there's a high chance that she's the one who cursed her.
"But…. why?" She tells herself, her voice muffled by her pillow. What problem does that goddamn demon have with her that she uses up her once in a lifetime ability to curse someone which demons are only able to do at their dying breath, to an ordinary child from an ordinary family? How did Lilith even know about her? So many new questions emerged and are likely to remain unanswered.
She can feel drops of tears running down from her eyes, staining her cheeks with the salty water. For what reason did Lilith inflict this cure on her, if her deduction is even correct in the first place. Just… why? Did Lilith just saw her and said 'fuck this kid in particular'?
After a while (she didn't keep track of time), her eyes are getting heavier, and it gets difficult to keep her eyelids open. Before long, her eyes finally shut and she fell asleep.
~~~~~~~~~
Everything around her is black, save for a bed which she is currently lying on, a weird rose-looking pattern with eyes around her bed, and the white platform with a door leading her to a memory that she probably would rather not relive.
'Huft, back to the Black Pass, I guess.' She gets up from the bed and started walking northward, to an open gateway with no doors. When she's sleeping, Lacie often finds herself in this place and she needs to go through one of the doors and relive a memory, which most of the time is painful just to go back to reality. There are two doors, one to her right side and one to her left side which are separated by a path in the middle to a monolith. The doors on the left side and the right side of the monolith's contents are the same, from what she had tried before.
'I tried opening it a few times before but… it never works.' She gets up from the bed and started walking northward, to an open gateway with no doors. When she's sleeping, Lacie often finds herself in this place and she needs to go through one of the doors and relive a memory, which most of the time is painful just to go back to reality. There are two doors, one to her right side and one to her left side which are separated by a path in the middle to a monolith.
'I tried opening it a few times before but… it never works.'
She decides to go to the door on her left. The doors on the left side and the right side of the monolith's contents are the same, from what she had tried before so it shouldn't really matter which ones she decided to go to. She takes a deep breath and then enters the door.
When she gets in, she looks back and finds that the door is now gone. It happened quite a few times before, but it never failed to give her a sense of fear and unease. She looks around, everything around her is straight up darkness. It's... kind of weird. Usually, she ends up in the classroom, her house, or somewhere else in the real world, but this is just straight up darkness, it's kind of disturbing.
She walks forward for one minute and found a drop of blood on the ground. Not far from it, another drop of blood that seems to be a trail guiding her somewhere. She follows the trail of blood and as expected, the frequency in which the blood appears gets more often. First, it's just a drop, then it's a few drops. After that, a pool of blood. After that, a few pools of blood. More and more blood everywhere. It feels so disgusting that Lacie feels she could throw up right now.
She starts walking again, and it turns out that the pools of blood aren't the worst or scariest thing she's going to see in this dream. No, far from it. A little bit further, she sees a beheaded figure. It's hard to make out who the person is, but that person has blonde hair similar to hers. She steps closer, and closer, and closer, step by step. After what seemed like forever, The decapitated head is now right in front of her. She uses her hand to move the head that's currently facing downward up so she can see its face, and…
That is a face she's not supposed to see.
"W-what?" Lacie gasps, her voice trembling.
That is not a face of someone she's supposed to see beheaded. Definitely not a face she's supposed to see here. No, not that she's not supposed to see it, she doesn't want to see it. She instantly feels nauseous, her stomach hurts, and her vision gets blurry. Soon after, her legs get shaky and it gets harder to keep her balance.
She falls down.
She attempts to stand up again to no avail. Her head hurts so much that she can't see straight without her vision getting blurry. Not that it matters, as not long after that, her vision also gets darker. However this time, it feels like something is covering her eyes, not that her retina fails to work properly.
Lacie coughs, powerless against whatever force is doing this to her.
"Always finding new places to hide from the world. Did you ever stop hiding, Lacie?"
"U-ugh, what do you… m-mea-"
A powerful force chokes her neck, partly blocking the airflow to and from her lungs, making it hard to breathe. It's getting painful. Just as she tries to gather air into her lungs, the invisible hand puts more force into choking her.
"You have been hiding for too long, Lacie. You killed him. You killed the only person who loved you. You ruined everything."
As the creepy female voice echoes in her head, her eyes get heavy. Slowly, she passes out from syncope, the lack of oxygen, and blood flow to the brain.
'It… hurts…'