*Chapter 4: The First Burn*

Jin Yang Pov! - Age 7

I was seven the first time I thought someone could stay.

Before that, I knew I was different.

I knew the house was too big and too quiet.

I knew the doctors came every week and left with folders full of words I didn’t understand.

I knew my parents looked at me like I was made of glass.

But I didn’t know I was dangerous.

That changed on a Tuesday in March.

I remember because it was raining, and the rain made the big windows of Yang Estate look like they were crying.

### *THE GIRL WITH THE RED UMBRELLA*

Her name was Mei.

Mei Alvarez.

Daughter of our housekeeper. She was eight. One year older than me. She had two braids and a red umbrella with little white ducks on it.

I saw her every day in the garden. She would hang laundry while I watched from the second-floor window. My mother didn’t like me going outside without a nurse. “Just in case,” she would say.

One day the nurse was late.

Mei was in the garden, struggling with a fitted sheet. The wind kept pulling it out of her hands.

I watched for five minutes.

Then I did something I wasn’t supposed to do.

I went downstairs. Out the back door. Into the rain.

“Do you need help?” I asked.

She jumped. “Young master! You’re gonna get sick!”

“I’m already sick,” I said. It was the first honest thing I’d said to anyone. “Can I help?”

She looked at me. Really looked. Not like the nurses. Not like my parents.

She saw a kid in pajamas standing in the rain.

“Okay,” she said. “Hold this corner.”

So I did.

The sheet was heavy and wet and cold. We both got soaked. She laughed when the wind blew my hair in my face.

I laughed too.

It was the first time I laughed in months.

After that, she started waiting for me.

Every afternoon at 4 PM, by the garden gate. With her red duck umbrella.

“We can’t tell your mom,” she whispered on day three. “She’ll get mad.”

“I won’t,” I promised.

We talked. About school. About her little brother. About the ducks on her umbrella.

She taught me how to fold paper cranes. I taught her how to play chess, badly.

On day twelve, she said, “You’re not like what the other staff say.”

“What do they say?”

“That you’re... breakable.”

I looked down at my hands. “Am I?”

“No,” she said. “You’re just lonely.”

And she was right.

### *THE DAY IT HAPPENED*

It was day twenty-three.

April 14th. I remember the date because it’s carved into me.

It was sunny. The first sunny day in weeks.

Mei was waiting by the gate with two ice pops. Grape and mango.

“Race you to the tree?” she asked.

I nodded.

We ran.

I was faster. I always had been, even with the doctors saying I should rest.

I got to the big oak tree first and turned around, arms wide.

“I win!” I yelled.

She was laughing, running toward me, ice pops in both hands.

“Wait for me, slowpoke!”

And then she tripped.

It was a small root. Nothing.

She stumbled forward. The ice pops flew.

And she reached out to catch herself.

On me.

Her hands grabbed my shoulders.

Her skin touched my skin.

For half a second, nothing happened.

I thought, _Maybe it’s okay. Maybe I’m okay._

Then she screamed.

It wasn’t loud.

It was soft. Confused. Like she touched a hot stove but didn’t understand why.

She pulled back. Looked at her hands.

There were red marks on her palms. Like rope burns.

But I hadn’t touched her with rope.

“Jin?” she whispered. “That hurt.”

I stepped back. “I’m sorry. I didn’t—”

“It’s okay,” she said quickly. “Probably just the sun. I’m fine.”

But she wasn’t fine.

That night she had a fever.

By morning she was in the hospital.

By the third day, the doctors said “unknown cause.”

By the fifth day, she was gone.

Sepsis. They said.

But there was no cut. No infection. No reason.

Just red marks on her palms that looked like burns.

### *AFTER*

The funeral was small.

I wasn’t allowed to go. “It’s not safe,” my mother said.

I stood by my window and watched the black cars leave.

After that, everything changed.

The nurses wore gloves now.

My parents stopped hugging me.

The staff whispered when I walked by. _Cursed. Dangerous. Don’t touch him._

I tried to tell them it was an accident.

I tried to say I didn’t mean to.

But the look in my mother’s eyes when she saw Mei’s mother at the gate told me everything.

It was my fault.

I stopped going to the garden.

I stopped looking out the window.

I stopped talking.

At eight, they sent me to Sta. Maria Academy. The elementary branch.

“It will be good for you,” my father said. “To be around other children.”

But the children were told not to touch me.

And I was told not to touch them.

So I didn’t.

I sat alone at lunch.

I did group projects by email.

I raised my hand but never got called on, because teachers were scared too.

By ten, I understood the rule:

*If someone gets close to me, they die.*

So I stopped letting people get close.

### *THE MEMORY I CAN’T FORGET*

It’s not the funeral.

It’s not the hospital.

It’s the moment before she fell.

She was running toward me. Smiling.

Her hair was flying.

And for one second, I thought, _I have a friend._

Then her hands were on me.

Then the red marks.

Then the hospital.

That’s what plays in my head every night.

### *BACK TO NOW - AGE 17*

I’m sitting at my desk in Sta. Maria University.

It’s 2 AM.

Safina’s face is on my mind.

She stepped between me and Marco today.

I grabbed her arm.

Nothing happened.

Nothing.

I’ve touched a lot of people by accident in 10 years.

Waiters. Doctors. Guards.

They all got sick. Or hurt. Or worse.

But Safina didn’t.

Why?

I pull out an old box from under my bed.

Inside: a paper crane. Faded.

A photo of me and Mei. Taken secretly by one of the staff. We’re both holding the sheet, both soaked, both smiling.

And a red duck.

From her umbrella. It fell off the day she died. I picked it up from the grass.

I hold it in my hand.

For the first time in 10 years, I don’t feel cold.

I feel angry.

Because if Safina is immune, that means the curse isn’t absolute.

And if the curse isn’t absolute, that means Mei didn’t have to die.

Which means I killed her for nothing.

The thought hits me like a fist.

I slam the box shut.

I can’t do this again.

I can’t let myself hope.

Because hope is what makes it hurt more when they leave.

But then I remember Safina’s face today.

Red eyes. But not crying.

_“Kailangan kong lumakas,”_ she whispered in the CR.

She’s fighting.

Even with a death threat in her bag.

Even with the whole school against her.

She’s fighting.

And I’m just sitting here, scared of a memory.

### *THE PROMISE*

I stand up.

I walk to the mirror.

“You’re not seven anymore,” I tell my reflection.

“You’re not powerless anymore.”

The Yang family has shares. Money. Lawyers.

But what I have that I didn’t have at seven is choice.

At seven, I didn’t know what was happening.

At seventeen, I do.

And if Safina is the key, then I’m going to protect her long enough to find out why.

Because I owe Mei that.

I owe her a world where kids can hold sheets in the rain and not die for it.

I owe Safina a world where she can sit at a lunch table without getting a red envelope.

I walk to my window. The campus is dark.

Somewhere in the girls’ dorm, Safina is probably awake too.

Probably holding that red envelope.

Probably deciding to stay.

_I’m not letting them hurt you,_ I think.

_Not this time. Not again._

Because if I couldn’t save Mei,

I can save you.

And if that means fighting the whole school, the board, my own family, and whatever made this curse —

Then let them come.

I’m not seven anymore.

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