Yurui The Cursed One

I woke with cold air brushing my face.

No alarm. No school bell in my head. All I hear is the wind brushing past the buildings and the distant, insect-like buzz of cars somewhere deep in the city. For a few seconds, I do not move. I keep my eyes closed and listen.

Somewhere below, a pipe coughs itself awake inside the wall. Water shudders through the building in thin, angry bursts. Farther off, metal scrapes over concrete, slow and harsh, like someone is dragging something too heavy to lift. A door slams loudly. Beyond all of it, the city begins to stir-engines turning over, tires hissing through dirty puddles, voices rising and falling in the gray morning air.

I open my eyes. The sky above the balcony is pale blue, washed thin by morning. A few clouds hang over the apartment blocks like smears someone forgot to wipe away. The moon is still there too, faint but stubborn, refusing to leave just because the sun has started climbing. For a moment, everything looks almost gentle. That is how I know I must still be half asleep.

I sit up slowly inside the sleeping bag. My back complains. My shoulders are stiff from the concrete. One of the pizza boxes under me has collapsed in the night and left a sharp crease digging into my hip. My mouth tastes like old bread and stale morning breath.

At least I don't have to go to school today.

That thought comes so easily, I almost laugh. It still hasn’t fully sunk in to me yet. That’s right, I do not have to go. I do not have to put on the uniform. I do not have to scrub dirt from the cuffs and pretend the fabric is not starting to fray. I do not have to stand in front of a mirror and make my face look empty enough to survive the day. I do not have to let rich girls touch me. I do not have to be grateful for the opportunity to be humiliated.

I stay there for a long time, wrapped in the sleeping bag like a corpse somebody forgot to bury. The morning wind slips through the railing and brushes my cheeks. It smells like dust, cold metal, and the old damp stink of the building. All familiar scent of home.

Not the apartment. That has never felt like mine. Not Mom’s couch. Not the hallway with the flickering light and the mold blooming through the paint, no matter how much she bleaches it. Not the room where the walls are thin enough to hear every neighbor’s cough.

This. This is my true home.

A stolen piece of balcony nobody has cared about in years. Mine, solely because nobody else wanted it. That is the only kind of ownership I can afford.

Eventually, I force myself out of the sleeping bag before the sun gets high enough to make the metal railing hot. I fold it carefully. Not properly, because I have never been good at making things neat, but I try my best to make it as good as I can. I tuck it into the far corner beneath the big cracked plastic bowl, where the rain will have a harder time getting in.

The sleeping bag is very important. Probably even more than my uniform. The uniform is more expensive, but there are workarounds if I lose it. The sleeping bag? Lose that, and I am done. No way in hell is my mom buying me a new one under any circumstances. Without the sleeping bag, the balcony is gone too. That would be the real nightmare. Not just because it would be cold and uncomfortable as hell, but because there is no way my mom would let me drag a blanket out here and freeze myself on concrete.

I press the bowl down over it and adjust the edge until I am satisfied.

There. Hidden. Safe.

I stand there staring at the corner longer than I need to. It is stupid, but the sight of it tucked away makes something loosen inside me. It’s as if I were some wild animal trying to protect their fawn. To be fair, I have treated this sleeping bag with more tenderness than most animals reserve for their young. It was the one thing I did not ruin, lose, stain, break, or let someone take from me.

As I look at my sleeping bag safely tucked in the corner, the cozy feeling inside me intensifies. Is that what a true home feels like? No. Not a home. I am not that delusional. But maybe this place can be something a tad smaller than that. A corner. A shelter. A few square meters of concrete where I’m safe. My own personal safe space.

I walk to the railing and lean my elbows on it.

The apartment blocks ahead catch the morning sun unevenly. Some windows flare gold. Others stay black. Laundry hangs between balconies in limp strips. A man on the opposite building smokes with one arm through the railing, shirtless despite the chilly morning air. On the street below, two children kick a bottle cap back and forth like it is a football, which is either depressing or impressive depending on how you look at it.

There were no glittering towers. No Miracle Academy buses. No perfect lawns being watered by machines while people like us had to ration water by the cup. Just old concrete, dirty windows, and the kind of eerie quiet that comes in abandoned places.

It is beautiful.

Not the kind of beautiful rich people like. Nothing here shines. Nothing here has been polished, restored, blessed, advertised, or made safe for tourists with clean shoes. But at least it does not lie.

The concrete is cracked because it is old. The windows are dirty because no one has time to clean them, they'd be dirty again by morning anyway. The walls rot openly, for everyone to see, and nobody could be bothered to paint them over. There is comfort in that honesty, I think. A stupid kind of comfort, maybe. But still.

I rest my chin on my hands and stare until my fingers go numb. What am I supposed to do now? The question should scare me. It does scare me. But not as much as it should. Because beneath the fear, buried deep where I can almost pretend it is not there, something in me loosens.

There is no schedule. No bell. No classroom waiting to swallow me. No lunchroom where I sit very still and pretend hunger is a personality trait. No girls watching to see how badly I will get abused today.

I could stay here. The thought slips in quietly. Just for a few days. Maybe a bit longer. I could go back to the apartment when Mom is at work and get some clothes. Take some food if there is any. Maybe find a bucket. A better blanket. A chair. A chair would make the place feel more homely. Maybe a bigger box as a stand-in for a table.

I glance around the balcony, suddenly seeing it not as it is, but as to what it could become if I were to put in enough time and effort. One chair in the corner. Maybe two, even though I have no idea who the second one would be for. Maybe a closet of sorts? A box for a table. Something to keep the cardboard carpet dry. A plastic sheet, if I can steal one from the construction waste near the business district.

I could make my own rules. No school talk on the balcony. No crying unless it is raining hard enough to cover the sound. No thinking about Yashiro before noon.

My mouth twitches. The last one might need some work.

I lower myself onto the flattened pizza boxes and pull my knees to my chest. The concrete radiates cold through my skirt. I don’t care. For the first time in a long time, I have an entire morning all to myself.

A hard knock rattles the balcony door. My whole body freezes. Just like that, the beautiful morning shatters like a falling plate. I stare at the door.

No. Go away.

The knock comes again. Quieter this time. More patient. Like whoever is outside knows exactly how long it takes for fear to ripen.

Maevis?

No, it can’t be. I must be reading too much into things.

I do not dare to breathe. Maybe they will leave. If I sit quietly and pretend that no one's here, they won't have any choice. I mean, there is a giant sign saying "Access prohibited." Whoever's out there has no reason to stick around for more than a few minutes.

Another knock. Then a voice.

“Yurui. Open the door,” a woman says sternly.

She didn’t sound familiar. Which didn’t make things any better.

My fingers dig into my sleeves. My eyes start instinctively searching for a way out. Nothing. It did not matter where I looked. There was only one way out, and some woman I did not know was on the other side of it, trying to knock it off its hinges.

Jumping down was not an option either. I was on the seventh floor, and below me, the concrete awaited. I could climb down, maybe. If I were transformed. If the thing inside me listened. If I knew how to call out to it.

“Yurui,” the woman says again. “I know you are in there.”

My stomach turns cold. School? Building management? Miracle Academy security?

No. No, no, no.

Not yet. They should not have found me yet. I should have had more time. A day. Two days, at least. No way they sent someone the very next morning.

“Don’t be afraid,” the woman says.

People only say that when there is an excellent reason to be afraid.

“I’m here with your mother.”

The floor seems to tilt under me. For a second, I think I misheard her. Then another voice comes through the door, smaller and softer than the first, and to my dismay, I instantly recognize it.

“Yurui. Open up.”

Mom.

Relief comes over me.

Then the relief curdles. There is no version of events where this leads somewhere good.

I stand up. My legs feel heavy and useless, trembling under me as I move. I walk to the door and stop with my hand on the lock.

“Mom?”

“Open the door, Yurui.”

There is no please.

Reluctantly, I unlock it. The door sticks halfway, swollen in its frame from old rain. I pull harder. It gives with a loud scrape.

A woman I had never seen before stands in front of me, blocking the doorway. Tall. Blonde. Expensive clothes. That is what my eyes catch first. Her suit is dark and fitted, tailored so precisely that it looks like it was made around her. Her hair is pale gold, straight and smooth as silk, with two long front pieces falling over her chest. She wears thin black gloves, even though the morning is nowhere near cold enough for them.

She has the look of someone important, the kind where they don’t need a badge or uniform to look official. The kind of person you’d refer to as “ma’am” without thinking.

Right behind her, half hidden near the stairwell door, stands my mother. She looks so different that I barely recognize her. It is the exact same face I’ve grown accustomed to over the years. The same tired eyes. The same worn-down softness around them. Yet she looks like someone has breathed life into her.

Her hair is brushed. Her cheeks have color on them. She is wearing a cream blouse under a fitted jacket I have never seen before. The fabric catches the light softly. The fancy kind of fabric. She looks expensive.

No.

Worse.

She looks like someone has taken my mother and dressed her up like a fancy doll. The clothes, the makeup, even the way her hair has been brushed into place, none of it belongs to the woman I know.

My eyes drop to her shoes.

Clean. New.

My mother could never afford any of this. My whole body goes still.

“Are you Yurui?” the blonde woman asks.

I look at Mom. She does not meet my eyes.

That tells me everything that I wanted to know.

“Who are you?” I ask, staring at the mysterious woman.

My voice comes out hoarse from sleep.

She glances past me into the balcony. Her eyes move over the pizza boxes, the plastic bowl, the corner where I hid my sleeping bag. She doesn’t show any human emotion, as she observes the makeshift room with the blank precision of a camera.

“Miracle Inc,” she says as she finally turns my way, “Division classified.”

My hand tightens around the open lock. I knew they would come. Of course I knew. You do not get to transform into a monster in the middle of Miracle Academy, run across the city, and disappear into the slums without anyone coming after you. I just thought I would have more time.

That was unusually careless of me. I guess I was too tired to think straight. I cannot even blame myself for that. After the day I’d had, anyone would have been off their game.

“You are required to come with us,” the woman says. “Now.”

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