It occurs to me that this is actually in about every way a worse version of picrel where:
>There's actually a very good planned mystery plot about the curse of the village that is slowly revealed and really intricate
>Protagonist is actually gay, but it's interesting because it has zero romance in it and it barely comes up but it's the reason he was disowned by his parents and sent to the village they grew up in to live with another relative and then 'ts mentioned again in chapter 8 or something and then never again
>Protagonist has a sexy choker
>It actually commits purely to the body horror mystery and doesn't need to include half-hearted incredulous romance to sell and most of all the protagonist acts how anyone would act when seeing the weird things that happen in the village until he gets used to it but he still freaks out from time to time when it ups the ante with weird stuff.
>There is a cat