Yurui The Cursed One

I stare at her. Then at Mom. Mom still does not look up at me.

“Required where?”

The woman’s expression does not change. “Containment facility first. After that, you will be transferred to the research institute.”

“Facility? Institute? Nuh uh.”

“Do not make this difficult.”

I can barely contain a laugh. Difficult. She talks like I’m the one who’s being unreasonable here.

“Right,” I say sarcastically. “I will try to be more considerate to the people who are trying to kidnap me.”

She gives me a frustrated look. The kind people reserve for things that annoy them. “Your mother has signed the necessary documents,” she says. “Miracle Inc. has temporary guardianship until your evaluation is complete.”

I stand there, staring at her like an idiot, letting the words sink in. Temporary. Guardianship. Evaluation. Documents. The words repeat over and over in my head.

“No,” I say, so abruptly that I surprise myself.

The blonde woman looks mildly annoyed. “Yes.”

“No, she didn’t.”

“She did.”

I turn to Mom. This time, she finally looks up at me. Only for a second, though. Her eyes meet mine, then drop away almost immediately.

“Mom.”

She flinches like I had just slapped her.

“Yurui,” she says quietly. “Don’t start.”

Don’t start. Seriously ?

My eyes start to burn.

“Don’t start what?”

The blonde woman checks her watch. Actually checks it. Like my life has already been scheduled into a slot, and I am making us late.

“Gather only essential items. You have two minutes,” she says, her voice flat and procedural.

I do not move. Mom shifts uncomfortably behind her. “Yurui,” she whispers quietly, “Just do what she says.”

I stare at her blouse. It really is nice. Soft cream fabric. Clean buttons. A collar that lies perfectly flat.

“Did they buy you that?”

Her mouth opens. Closes. There it is. The truth, dragged out into the open. I could feel it before I understood what was happening.

“Yurui,” she says again, sharper now.

“How much?”

The blonde woman shifts a little to the side, not quite placing herself between us, but close enough to remind me that this is not a private conversation.

Mom’s face tightens little by little, like she has just smelt something unpleasant.

“It is not like that.”

My laugh comes out small and cracked.

“That means it is exactly like that.”

“You do not know what you are talking about.”

“Then explain it.”

She looks toward the stairwell. Toward the city. Anywhere but me.

“They will take care of you.”

“Mom.”

“You will have food. Clothes. Proper doctors.”

“Mom!”

“And maybe, if you stop fighting everyone for five seconds, this could become something good for you.”

The balcony goes quiet around us. Even the pipes shut up.

Something good. For me. Sure. For some mysterious reason, I’m not the one wearing fancy clothes right now. Heck, I’m still rocking my tattered uniform under the jacket.

I look at the woman from Miracle Inc. again. At the clean black gloves. The expensive watch. The car keys hooked around one finger. She came prepared. Of course, she did. Wouldn’t expect anything less out of Miracle Inc.

Then I look back at Mom.

“You sold me.”

Mom squirms. Good. For one tiny second, seeing her uncomfortable actually makes me happy. You made this bed. Now lie in it.

But no. She cannot let me have even that tiny little victory.

“I’ve done what I had to.”

My mouth tastes like metal. “No,” I interject. “You don’t get to hide behind that. Say what you did.”

“Yurui, enough.”

“You sold me out! Your own daughter! Say it!”

Her eyes snap to mine. There she is. Not the frightened woman in the nice blouse. Not the tired mother pretending this was forced on her. Not the sad little martyr doing what she had to do. Anger glimmers in her eyes.

Finally, some honesty.

“You think I wanted this?” she hisses. “You think I woke up one day and dreamed of dragging you off somewhere?”

“I don’t know what you dream about. You never tell me anything.”

“Because I have not had time to dream in years.”

The words land harder than she meant them to. I see it in her face the moment they leave her mouth. She did not intend to share that much. And I hate that part of me understands what she means.

The blonde woman says nothing. Her silence is professional, measured, almost polite. Mom draws a slow breath through her nose.

“I was supposed to get out,” she says. “I had plans. Real ones. But then I got stuck paying rent for a crappy apartment I never wanted.”

Her eyes flicker.

“As I had to take care of a child I never wanted, from the man I never loved.”

It stung hard. I can feel tears streaking down my face. I do not want to hear her sad villain backstory. I do not want to understand her. Understanding is just another thing being forced into my hands when I already have nowhere to put all the hurt.

She can be broken. She can be tired. It does not matter. She is still the traitor who signed me away.

Yet, my stupid mouth opens on its own.

“What happened?”

“You and your father happened,” she says, through gritted teeth, her voice full of pent-up resentment. “Then he left, because of course he did. And I stayed. I stayed for years. I worked. I cleaned. I begged. I patched everything together while you sat in your room looking at me like I was part of the furniture.”

My throat tightens.

“I never—”

“You did.” Her voice breaks, and for half a second I see something ugly and wounded under the makeup. “You all did. Everyone did.”

The blonde woman checks her watch again. Mom sees it. Her mouth tightens.

“Point is,” she says, quieter, colder, “I am done.”

Done.

One small word. And yet, it was big enough to kill all the hope that I had left.

“I am allowed to have a life too, Yurui.”

I blink, and the tears spill before I can stop them.

I hate that.

I hate that I’m crying in front of her, in front of the Miracle Inc. woman sent here to kidnap me. It makes me feel even more like a victim than I already am.

I hate that some part of me still hopes she will look at me crying and something in her will break. That she will change her mind. That she will tell the blonde woman to pound sand, take my wrist, and give me that tired mom look she always does when I make her life difficult and announce that we are both going home and eating stale bread in front of the silent TV like the ordinary, miserable slum residents that we are.

Mom only looks away.

That was the moment it truly sank in to me. She had fully made up her mind, and clearly I wasn’t a priority.

The blonde woman steps forward.

“Time.”

I wipe my face with my sleeve.

“I have rights.”

The woman tilts her head, and the smallest hint of a smirk pulls at her mouth.

Almost amused.

“So do we.”

“I’ll sue.”

The woman laughs under her breath.

“Miracle Inc. has legal departments larger than this building.”

I open my mouth, but she speaks up before I can get a word in.

“A lawsuit would take years,” she says. “Cost millions—lawyers. Court fees. Appeals. Public records. That is before we discuss the signed guardianship transfer.”

Her gloved fingers tap once against the keys in her hand.

“You have no case.”

No case. No money. No parent willing to stand beside me. Apparently, I don’t own myself either.

The anger rises so fast inside me that it almost makes me dizzy. I want to scream. I want to bite. I would love nothing more than to go wild and rip someone's throat out. Instead, I stand there with my head lowered, understanding that there is nothing I can do.

“You cannot just take me.”

My voice comes out thin and desperate.

“We are not taking you,” she says. “You are being transferred.”

The word slides over my skin. Transferred. She’s talking about me as if I were a crate of goods, not a person with my own thoughts and feelings. I could not describe how much I hated her in that moment.

I look at Mom. The last thin piece of hope still lingers somewhere deep within me. “Tell her you made a mistake.”

Please.

Mom’s mouth trembles. Only once. “Get your things,” she says.

I had only asked for one thing. For her to look at me and decide I was still worth keeping. Instead, she tells me to pack.

My anger boils over, and my mind goes completely blank. One second, I am at the door. Next, I shove past the blonde woman, both hands open, reaching for Mom’s throat.

She sees me coming. I see the fear flashing across her face before my hands reach her. Good. Be scared. I have been scared all my life. It’s your turn now.

I do not even see what happens next. There is only a blur from the direction of the blonde woman. Then the floor hits me.

My arm twists behind my back. My cheek smacks the concrete. Pain bursts white behind my eyes, and the breath tears out of me in one ugly sound. A knee presses into my spine. Not hard enough to break anything, but hard enough to make it very clear that she can snap me like a twig whenever she wants.

“Attempted assault on a legal guardian,” the woman kneeling on my back says. “Noted.”

I try to move. Nothing happens. Her weight does not shift. My arm does not loosen. The concrete stays pressed against my cheek. It is like being pinned under a building.

“Get off me.”

My voice comes out muffled against the floor.

“No.”

I twist again. Pain shoots through my shoulder and down my arm, and an anguished sound escapes my mouth.

The blonde woman leans closer. The overwhelming stench of her perfume fills my nostrils. I hold my breath. I refuse to be poisoned by whatever concoction of chemicals this lunatic has sprayed upon herself.

“Listen carefully,” she says quietly, her face close enough to me that I can feel her breathing on my skin. “Your cooperation is preferred, not required.”

My eyes find Mom’s shoes. New, fancy shoes she could never afford. She takes a step back as if she were trying to protect them from a piece of dog crap lying on the floor.

My eyes burn again. I try to hold it in. It does not work. Tears slide sideways across my face and soak into the concrete beneath my cheek.

“You can’t do this,” I stammer out through tears.

The silence answers for them.

The woman shifts her grip. My shoulder screams.

“We need to be through the desert before dark,” she says. “Trust me, you do not want to be on those roads after sundown.”

The desert.

A simple word that sends shivers down the spine of all citizens of Miracle City. The only place out there in the whole country that makes our slum look like a gated community.

Everyone knows what waits beyond Miracle City once the lights go out. Empty, desolate roads stretch as far as the eye can see. Occasionally, you might see remains of burned-out towers sticking from the sand like bones.

Convoys leave after sundown and vanish between checkpoints. Sometimes the vehicles are found in the morning, doors hanging open, headlights still burning. No drivers. No passengers. Sometimes there is blood dried into the seats. Most of the time, there is nothing at all.

As for what happened to them? Law enforcement has theories. So does everyone else. None of them bring people back.

The woman wrenches my wrist higher behind my back until I gasp.

“Do you understand why we are not wasting any daylight?”

I nod. Not because I agree with her, but I don’t have too many options with her knee pressed on my spine and my wrist wrenched behind my back.

She holds me there a moment longer, until my arm starts shaking. Then she stands and hauls me up with her. My arm feels loose in the socket. My cheek burns. My knees almost fold, but she keeps me upright by gripping my upper arm.

“Pack,” she says.

For one insane, pathetic second, relief flickers through me. My sleeping bag. At least I can take the sleeping bag.

I turn toward the corner. The woman follows my gaze.

“No, you are not taking that,” she says.

I stop.

“You said—”

“Personal effects are unnecessary. Anything you are permitted to have will be provided at the facility.”

“Do you have any prescription medicine or something of the sort?”

I shrug my shoulders.

“Good,” the woman says as she grabs me by the arm.

My mom has already started walking. I turn back and take one last look at what used to be my little paradise as the strange woman drags me away.

I stare at the plastic bowl. Under it, the sleeping bag sits, folded and safe. I want to laugh. I want to scream. I want to explain that it is mine. That it is one of the only things that is mine. That the approved items are not the same as something you kept dry through winter with your own hands.

Her grip tightens, and all explanations go poof in my head. Pain jolts through my entire body as the woman pulls me toward the door.

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