Being ignorantly unaware of the interactions between beings that could singlehandedly change the fate of countless people with mere thoughts, Theo continued on his journey. He executed a lifting motion with his right foot, then moved it forward and placed it back down, then, he repeated the same with his left, doing an action called walking, a common practice among the homo sapiens sapiens residing on earth.

While scraping the soles of his shoes on the ground, his mind wandered to the latest novel he started reading yesterday. At first, he was excited, as it was uncommon to find a piece of literature that he had no previous recollection of and didn’t bring him any sense of déjà vu, but later, he got a little annoyed. The author of that novel used a lot of filler words and unnecessary descriptions of actions considered to be common sense, just to increase the word count.

Normally he would just stop reading and forget about it the next day, but he felt really irritable and itchy for some reason. The itchiness was very subtle, yet it also felt strange, scratching didn’t help, and it felt more like he was itching on the inside or under his skin, rather than on the surface. Could it even be called itching if it's not external? He had no idea.

The more he walked, the more uncomfortable he felt, and the more uncomfortable he felt, the more irritable he became, and the more irritable he became, the more his whole life started to piss him off.

Why did he of all people have to be the cursed one, living in an endless cycle of suffering and not even having the ability to end it? Repeating the same life with a different twist over and over again, yet at the same time not having a proper life at all?

Having a perpetual bad starting point. That didn’t bother him, well, it did, but he got used to it.

Working your ass off to get half the result just because the world itself hates you. Annoying, but that just meant he had to do a lot more work.

Not being able to touch, or even properly interact with people, thus being destined to be alone for the rest of his eternal life. Yes, that was a proper curse, but on the bright or rather dimly lit side, he can at least still work on himself, right?

Wrong.

The excitement of learning something new? Not possible.

Reading a science book, just to realize that every sentence just brings you a sense of déjà vu. Instead of excitement for new knowledge, or even annoyance of having to learn it for a passing grade, you just feel a sense of loss for what you never knew you had before. A sense of loss for all the knowledge unknowingly taken away from you, without you even being aware until you stumble upon it again.

Every cycle a repeat of one of the many roads walked before, just blurred out and getting a little clearer as time passes.

But it's not all bad, at least he has the special talent of describing the intricate specialties of every possible way to commit suicide as well as their pros and cons.

While trapped in the labyrinth of his own mind, walking to school on pure instinct…

“Bam!”

“Ahh!” “Mgh!”

He collided shoulder to shoulder with another pedestrian. The high-pitched voice of surprise and a muffled grunt of pure agony accompanying the collision.

Turning his head backwards over his left shoulder, what came into his view was a face of a stunning woman in her mid-twenties in a regular office attire, knocked to the ground and supporting herself with her hands.

Instead of being infatuated with her looks or helping the woman up, a slight surprise flashed across his face, immediately replaced by an expression of half-shock and half fear.

Turning away, he started running, searching for a deserted location nearby, preferably some kind of alleyway.

Locating his target after approximately half a minute, he charged in, went behind the cover of dozens of stacked boxes, and slumped to the ground.

“Ahhh, ahh, ahh, ahh, …” although the pain of the initial impact subsided, the stinging in his left shoulder got only more intense by the second. Taking off his jacket and then unbuttoning the shirt, he exposed his shoulder and applied pressure.

“Mghhhhh!” the heavy breathing soon turned into muffled screams. Retracting the right hand from his left shoulder, what greeted his eyes was skin with a slight purplish tone and numerous protruding veins that seemed to contain dark purple, almost black blood, pulsating at fast speed, their movements almost making them seem alive.

He truly was cursed. It is not one of those ‘Immortality is a curse because you get bored of life.’ kind of curse. What he is afflicted with is a true curse, something made specifically to make the one who possesses it suffer and not a superpower gone wrong.

This affliction is just one of the components that build the living hell he is imprisoned with. It’s not even like it's some kind of supernatural disease, causing one pain upon contact with another person. I mean, there are already many diseases and allergies that could do the same thing and still be perfectly explainable with the help of science. No, this is a true curse.

A curse that causes pain upon contact with a person. A curse whose strength grows with his age. A curse that increases in power if the person he touches is beautiful. It almost sounds like a plot of a shitty novel. He didn’t know if he should be happy that the curse started mild and grew over time, or angry that its strength continued to increase. If you look at it from another perspective, giving him the full power curse as a baby would probably just kill him, so making its strength grow with time is even more sinister.

The creator of this curse, god, or whoever it may be, must have a really twisted sense of humor. To cause one pain on a scale of attraction they might have towards the other person is just pure evil no matter what angle you look at it from.

While throwing a number of profane curses at the higher being who condemned him to eternal suffering, just to ease the pain somewhat, the stinging stopped growing in intensity and finally started to gradually reduce.

The swelling of his shoulder calmed down, the pulsating of the protruded veins slowed as they gradually started shrinking and returning to their rightful place in the interior of his body.

“Well, well, well, who do we have here?” just as he finished putting his clothes back on, a familiar voice entered his ears. Turning towards the source of it, his eyes landed on a tall blond boy, stating cliché dumb-antagonist lines followed by 4 boys wearing the same uniform as Theo, clearly his lackeys.

‘That’s strange, what is this guy doing here? Is it because I got sidetracked on my way? No, it’s the first day of school and this is nowhere near his route, even if I deviated from my normal path, there should be no reason to meet him here.’ Theo’s surprise could be justified. Although every life is a little different, as sometimes a different football team would win a certain game, or an author would write a different book than the previous cycle, encountering a new situation was quite rare for him. Granted, the older the cycle, the more likely he is to forget it, but there should still be that annoying sense of déjà vu that never constantly assaulted him.

“What are you doing in an alleyway, scavenging for lunch?”