hey, sorry about that, it's a weird quirk of some decisions i made with the previous build.
hp bandages go up whenever suu dies and when she continues. visiting the hotspring will recover up to half of the amount she's had maximum, so there is some amount that can't be recovered. Taking a game over doesn't do a full reset of game progress, but does zero out score, which is one of the things that prompts the 'clear' version of the bonfire cleansing. using the bonfire in that state causes the special event. to avoid it, you can make sure to kill something on the way to have a sin to give up
however! i'm also right now putting up a new build that fixes these interactions, game overs properly reset the game state again, and hp bandages work differently, though slight; hp damage is incurred when suu suffers a killing blow, and it adds up to a maximum allowed by the current curse level, and can be recovered completely at a hotspring. after a game over initially though, the bandage value starts at the default curse level's maximum value.