I was born cursed. Whatever terrible thing I spoke aloud—it came true. To protect Cole, I spent three years in silence, swallowing every word that climbed up my throat. But he always came to me in the dead of night, pressing me to speak—begging me to curse him. “Just say I’ll get hit by a car,” he’d whisper. “Say the company’s going under.” And when I finally broke—when I screamed every ugly curse I had—he kissed the tears off my face with something that looked so much like love. I thought he was holding space for the darkest part of me. Until the words appeared, floating in the air above his head like closed captions scrolling across a screen: [Cole’s performance is FLAWLESS. Using the law of conservation, he transfers Zoe’s curses onto himself—only for the disaster to rebound entirely onto Zoe, canceling out Iris’s death flag!] [Poor stand-in. She’s about to take the hit for the multi-car pileup that was meant for the female lead!] The love in my throat curdled into something iron and sweet. No wonder every curse I spoke landed on me instead of him. The system prompt appeared in my peripheral vision: Death flag countdown: 3 days. To survive: strike back. Now. Cole was watching me, expectant and soft-eyed. “Come on. One more. Tell me you wish I were dead.” I smiled. My eyes went cold. “Cole.” I said his name like a door clicking shut. “Since you want to hear it so badly.” “Then I wish you a long life. And the loneliness to match.” … He blinked. Then he laughed—fond and exasperated—and dragged his thumb across the tip of my nose. “Zoe. What kind of curse is that?” “Long life is a gift. And lonely?” He pulled me against his chest, his chin resting on my forehead. “As long as you’re here, how could I ever be lonely?” The gesture was so practiced it made my ribs ache. I almost believed him again—until the next line appeared, bold and blood-red: [LMAO, he thinks that was a joke. She meant every word. He’s reading sincerity as flirting!] [MOVE IT. The female lead’s death flag just spiked! We need a nastier curse—NOW!] [Hold steady, Cole! One more round. Get her to curse a car accident tonight, and Iris’s flight lands safe tomorrow!] I went rigid. My fingernails pressed crescents into my palms. So that’s what it was. Three years of silence—and to him, I was just a battery. Something to charge. Every late-night coaxing. Every “just say it, baby.” All of it was fuel he was feeding to another woman’s fire. “You’re shaking,” he said. His hand moved to my back, slow and warm. “Did I scare you?” “Don’t be scared, Zoe.” He kissed the top of my head. “Just say the words. The bad energy leaves with them. I stay safe. That’s all.” “Just one more sentence.” “Say I’ll get in a wreck. Say I won’t make it out.” He cupped my face. His eyes were full of something that should have been love. But underneath—urgency. A clock ticking. He was waiting for me to load Iris Langford’s death onto my own back. The iron taste in my throat got worse. The system’s countdown detonated somewhere behind my eyes: Death flag countdown: 2 days, 23 hours, 59 minutes. Host’s vitals in critical decline. Strike back immediately. Strike back? I looked at the face I had loved for five years. God, it was disgusting. I opened my mouth. My voice came out raw. “Cole.” He lit up. “Yeah?” “Since you want it so much—” I pulled my lips into something that wasn’t quite a smile. “I wish you a love that lives across an ocean. One that can never close the distance.” “I wish you betrayal. Ruin. A name no one respects.” “I wish you the permanent loss of everything you love.” Cole’s smile froze. The script overhead went berserk: [What the—why is she going off-script?] [That curse… something’s wrong with it.] [Whatever, bad words are bad words! Law of conservation: ACTIVATED!] The air thickened. Cole’s expression flickered—irritation, then the mask slipping back into place. He exhaled like someone tolerating a difficult child. “Zoe. Stop messing around.” “That kind of curse doesn’t work. It’s too vague.” “I need specifics.” He gripped my shoulders hard. “Say I’ll bleed. Say I’ll break a leg. Say it.” I wanted to. But I was already paying. The moment those curses left my mouth, the rebound hit—a fist closing around my heart, darkness crowding the edges of my vision. “Cole—” I folded into him, and a mouthful of blood bloomed red across his white shirt. Vivid. Impossible to look away from. Cole’s pupils blew wide. Not from grief. The script confirmed it: [YES! She’s bleeding! Rebound complete!] [Female lead’s flight hit turbulence—but she’s through it! The stand-in just bought her safe landing with a mouthful of blood!] Cole caught me, his voice tight with urgency. “Zoe! What happened—call an ambulance!” Panic written all over his face. But the arms holding me—steady as stone. Not a tremor. And his eyes kept drifting down to his watch. Calculating the minutes until Iris’s wheels touched ground.
I woke up alone in a hospital room. The only company was the system panel hovering at eye level: Strike back progress: 5%. Death flag countdown: 2 days, 20 hours. I stared at the ceiling and let myself remember how it started. Three years ago, I first understood what I was. I’d muttered “that project of Cole’s is going to tank”—and the next morning his firm was raided and shuttered. I’d said “that streetlight looks like it’s about to fall”—and a second later it collapsed on top of him, putting him in the ICU. So I went quiet. For him. Three years of swallowing every word. He held me and said, “It’s okay, Zoe. I don’t blame you.” I thought it was grace. It was grooming. He was fattening the lamb. The door opened. Cole walked in carrying a thermos, looking hollow-eyed and raw. “You’re up.” He crossed to the bed fast, shadows under his eyes, voice scraped thin. “You scared me. Doctor says it was acute stress—sudden hemorrhage.” “Why did you just start bleeding like that?” He filled a small bowl from the thermos and held it to my lips. “Here. Eat something.” I turned my head away. “Still upset with me?” He set the bowl down, patient as ever, and took my hand—the one without the IV. His voice turned careful, sincere. “Zoe. This was therapy. The doctor said the only way to break a psychological block is to face it—say the thing you’re afraid of saying.” “I was doing this for you.” Right. For me. If I hadn’t seen the script, I’d already be crying. [This man deserves an Oscar and a restraining order.] [“Therapy.” Sure. It’s called energy transfer, but okay!] [Something just went wrong on the female lead’s end—Cole’s here to refuel. Classic move.] His phone buzzed. One glance at the screen and something shifted in his face. His grip on my hand tightened. Eyes sharpening. “Zoe—can you do one more thing for me?” I said nothing. “The new development site. There might be an issue.” He frowned like a man carrying a great weight. “If something goes wrong, I’m finished. Everything gone.” “Just say the building’s going to collapse. Say it, and it won’t. Negative times negative.” He watched me hopefully. I almost laughed. When had I never noticed how full of holes his logic was? If negatives cancelled out, why did every curse I spoke land on me? “Cole.” I pulled my hand back. My voice came out flat and dry. “I’m tired.” “I’m done talking.” He went still. Like the version of me that had always said yes was a person he hadn’t prepared for losing. “Zoe.” The warmth drained from his tone. “Don’t be difficult.” “Think about the workers. Dozens of them. Their families.” “Could you really live with yourself if something happened to them?” There it was. The move he always fell back on. Old me would have caved—stammered a curse through the guilt, bled for it, called it love. But I had seen the script: [Iris just arrived at the construction site! CURSE IT NOW—a steel beam is about to go!] Right. Not workers. Not lives at stake. Iris Langford had decided to take a site visit. I leaned back against the pillow and closed my eyes. “If it’s going to fall, stop building it.” “You—” Cole shot to his feet. The chair scraped back like a slap. “You’ve changed, Zoe.” He looked down at me from above, and all the patience had gone out of his voice. “You used to be reasonable.” You used to be easy to manipulate, he meant. “My throat hurts,” I said. “I can’t talk.” Cole breathed in sharply, reining himself in. Then the script flashed red: [DANGER. Beam’s loose! Ten seconds!] [Male lead—FORCE IT. Now!] He lunged forward and grabbed my jaw. His fingers bit in hard enough to bruise. “Say it.” His eyes had gone somewhere far and wild. “Say the building falls! Say it right now!” “Zoe. Don’t make me hate you.”
My jaw felt like it was being crushed. I stared up at the stranger wearing Cole’s face. Five years. This is who I loved for five years. For another woman, he didn’t hesitate for a second. “…” A sound clawed its way out of me. Cole eased his grip slightly, a flicker of hope crossing his face. “Good. Say it. Once you do, it’s over. We’re both fine.” I looked at him. At the countdown flickering above his head. [5. 4. 3…] “Cole.” I exhaled. “I wish your building…” Cole held his breath. “…stands forever. Strong as bedrock. Never falls.” His face collapsed. The script erupted: [WHAT?! A reverse blessing?!] [Wait—she’s cursed, not blessed. Good words from her mouth mean NOTHING—] [Oh no. Oh no no no. The female lead has no buffer now. The beam is actually dropping!] Cole let go of me and scrambled for his phone. It was already ringing before he got it out. His hands shook as he answered. “Iris? You okay?! Are you hurt—” From the speaker: chaos. Shouting. A siren starting up somewhere. “Cole…” Her voice was small and trembling, the voice of someone who had just been grazed by something enormous. “I’m so scared… a beam just came down… it missed me by inches…” Cole’s knees nearly buckled. “You’re okay. You’re okay, you’re okay—” He kept repeating it, half prayer, half unraveling. I watched him from the bed with cold clarity. My reverse blessing hadn’t shielded her. But it had disrupted the equation. Without a genuine curse to feed the transfer, Iris’s plot armor couldn’t hold. She’d gotten lucky. Just lucky. Cole ended the call and turned to me. The look on his face was terrifying. “You did that on purpose.” He moved toward the bed slowly. “Do you have any idea how close she came? One centimeter, Zoe. One centimeter and her face—” “That was an accident,” I said. “Accident?” He laughed—a short, ugly sound—and reached out and ripped the IV from my arm. Blood welled at the needle site. I winced but kept my expression flat. “Since you won’t curse anything,” he said, pulling me off the bed by the wrist, “you’re coming to the site. You can look those workers in the eye.” “You can watch what your silence almost cost.” “Cole. I’m still a patient—” “You’ll live.” He cut me off, already dragging me toward the door. “Compared to what Iris went through, you’re fine.” The script drifted past in a stream: [Is he serious? She literally vomited blood an hour ago!] [Poor female lead, that must have been terrifying. The stand-in is so cruel, refusing to help.] [Excuse me?? No one OWES the female lead their body—] [The last one needs to sit down. The stand-in is literally a tool. Tools don’t get opinions.] I was shoved into the car. Cole put his foot down. The speedometer climbed. My stomach rolled. I pressed my hand to my mouth and held on. The system’s voice came through thin and fraying: Vitals at 30%. Host. If you don’t fight back, you will die in this car. I looked at Cole’s white-knuckled grip on the wheel. Then I looked out the window at the blur of traffic beside us. Fine. “Cole,” I said quietly. “Slow down.” “Or—” I caught his eyes in the rearview mirror. “We’re going to crash.”
Watch👉 https://cps-front.novelix.live/app-api/ext/new/20260701H3N5gX1F8C 🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “Novelix” app 🔍 search for “ni308670”, and watch the full series ✨! #Novelix
Leave a Reply