“Nah, not necessary.” Kian ran his fingers through his hair, gaze dropping. “He’s probably locked up in his room.”
Before she could respond, Kian waved her forward. “Come on.”
She cast one last glance at the photo before following.
As they settled into the living room, Riya didn’t waste any time opening her backpack.
“I brought something,” she said, pulling out a stack of handwritten pages and a thin spiral-bound notebook annotated into oblivion.
“A love letter for me?” Kian asked hopefully.
“A newstrategy.” Her fingers rested on the edge of her notebook.
With the right touch of magic, her khala had said,we canhelp someone recognize what’s already in their heart.
But this wasn’t that. This was a curse. If it fed on anything in Kian, it certainly wasn’t love. No, whatever the curse was feeding on, it was something simpler: loneliness.
Being near her brought relief, a kind of counterfeit warmth of being wanted. So he fixated, felt better, and the curse rewarded him. It was a loop: lonelinessàfixationàrewardàrepeat.
Her job was to break it by cutting off the reward.
“I’ve come up with a diagnostic protocol,” she said. “We’ll test the curse’s intensity under different emotional conditions—neutrality, irritation, discomfort—and look for patterns. What makes it stronger. More importantly, what makes it glitch.”
Kian smiled. “Nerd.”
“I—” Riya’s cheeks flushed. “I’m just beingthorough.”
“Exactly what a nerd would say. So? I’m assuming you have some kind of theory?”
“I do.” Riya’s pen hovered over the notebook, tapping a steady rhythm. “The more distance I try to put between us, the worse your behavior becomes.”
Kian tilted his head. “Worse how?”
“Your poem. Dodgeball. The soccer game. You escalated the second I stepped back. So maybe the curse isn’t growing stronger on its own—it’s reacting to resistance. Like it’s trying to satisfy a craving, almost.”
“I do crave you, it’s true.”
“But a craving escalates when you deny it,” she said,ignoring him, “unlessyou interrupt the loop.”
She paused. “On that note, you wouldn’t happen to have a heart rate monitor, would you?”
Within minutes, they had it set up.
The first test was what Riya called a Controlled Rejection Test.
“This first test tracks the curse’s reward response,” she explained, flipping to a new page. “We know that distance hasn’t weakened the curse. Now I want to test whether rejection triggers emotional withdrawal.” She glanced at the heart rate monitor on his finger. “I’ll say a few statements. Be honest about how you feel, even if it’s embarrassing.”
“Especiallyif it’s embarrassing,” he said.
“Statement one: I don’t think about you when we’re apart.”
Kian’s brow twitched, but he stayed silent.
“Statement two: I don’t enjoy spending time with you.”
This time, Kian flinched—barely.
“Statement three: If this curse ended tomorrow, I wouldn’t miss you.”
