Yurui The Cursed One

I find the entrance half-buried beneath a dune.

At first, it looks like nothing more than a dark hole punched into the sand. Even knowing what I am looking for, I nearly walk straight past it. I circle around and spot the concrete beneath- an enormous sloping passage driven straight into the earth, wide enough to swallow a truck.

My leg throbs as I start down.

I ignore it.

The knife missed the bone. Mostly. I wrapped the wound as tightly as I could with what was left of a shirt that I found lying on the ground. The bleeding has slowed from catastrophic to merely concerning. Good enough. I’ve been through worse.

Let’s just hope the wound doesn’t get infected. The middle of a fucking desert isn’t exactly the most sterile place to patch yourself up.

The tunnel swallows the desert behind me.

It is dark, damp, and freezing inside. Water beads along the ceiling before dripping onto the concrete with soft, irregular taps. The results of rushed construction, maybe.

Still, the fact that they managed to install plumbing and get running water all the way out here- in the middle of a desert dry enough to turn a corpse into leather, is genuinely impressive.

Money really can buy anything, apparently. Even a functioning concrete fortress buried beneath several million tons of sand, complete with electricity and running water.

By the time I reach the bottom, my injured leg is trembling so badly that I finally give up trying to hide the limp.

A massive steel door waits at the end of the tunnel, with EMBERS spray-painted across it in bright orange and pink letters.

So much for keeping a low profile.

And somehow, I’m the one who gets constantly bitched at for not being discreet enough.

I knock.

Nothing.

I knock again, harder.

“Nara is here!”

Silence.

I lean against the wall and breathe through another pulse of pain in my thigh.

“Open up already, you stupid faggots!”

A voice crackles through a speaker somewhere above the door.

“Code?”

I stare at it.

“What?”

“Code.”

“How am I supposed to know your stupid codes? Open the fucking door right now, or I’ll tear it down myself.”

The tunnel goes quiet.

I wait.

A few seconds pass.

Then—

Click.

I smile.

“Thought so.”

The door swings inward.

Warm orange light spills across the tunnel floor.

I hurry inside before my leg can give out beneath me.

The bunker looks like a nightclub designed by someone who has never been to one. Cheap LED strips crawl along the walls. Christmas lights hang from exposed pipes overhead. Neon signs glow in pink, violet, and poisonous green. A large orange bulb burns in one corner, dimmed low enough to bathe the entire room in a permanent state of sunset.

There is a bar to my left. A pretty woman in a dark bunny outfit stands behind it, polishing the same glass she was polishing the last three times I came here. I still have no idea whether she actually works here or the boss just keeps her as part of the decor.

At the center of the room, a long table stretches beneath the orange light. The boss sits behind it with both forearms resting on the tabletop, fingers interlaced. Thick neck. Broad shoulders. Plain shirt and tie. A pair of glasses rests on top of his shaved head, though I have never actually seen him wear them.

He does not look like the head of a sprawling criminal empire. He looks like a middle-aged corporate manager who has spent so long scowling at his employees that it has aged him by a decade.

The curly-haired man stands a few steps behind him, silent as ever. Tall, lean, dressed in the same dark suit patterned with dozens of faint blue spots. Long black curls spill over his face, hiding most of his eyes. I still have no idea what his name is. All I know is that he is almost always somewhere near the boss and apparently sees no reason to speak unless someone addresses him first.

The old man in the black vest shuts the steel door behind me. I glance back at him.

Yep. Still playing a butler.

A bartender dressed as a rabbit behind the bar, a security guard dressed as a butler at the door—what the fuck do they think this is? A cosplay club? Standing here, I’m almost embarrassed to associate myself with these dorks.

I frown as I limp toward the table. Is it really that hard to dress professionally? I do not understand these people. At the very least, they could try not to look like a bunch of social rejects.

The boss’s gaze drops to my injured leg, moves over the blood on my clothes, then settles on my face.

He says nothing.

The ensuing silence makes me nervous.

“Sit down.”

His voice barely rises above the hum of the room, yet somehow it leaves me feeling as though I have just been screamed at.

I limp over to the chair opposite him and drop into it, then lift both boots onto the table. A streak of blood follows one heel across the wood.

His eyes settle on it.

I hold his gaze and smile.

For a moment, neither of us says anything. Then he leans back in his chair.

“You are as ill-mannered as ever.”

“Thanks.”

“It was not a compliment.”

“I know.”

His eyes narrow, annoyance tightening his expression.

I love messing with the boss, but I know better than to get carried away. The trick is judging exactly how far I can push before somebody drags me behind the bunker and puts a bullet through the back of my skull.

Boots on the table. Dirt on his floor. Showing up late. Ignoring the dress code on purpose. Little acts of disrespect- annoying enough to get under his skin, but never serious enough to get me in real trouble.

The boss is always calm. He speaks slowly, carefully, as though every word has been weighed before it leaves his mouth. But I have spent enough time around him to recognize the small signs of irritation, and he knows I recognize them. Usually, watching those cracks appear is half the fun.

Tonight, there is nothing. He has not even told me to get my boots off the table.

I glance past him toward the bar. The bunny woman is still polishing a glass. It might even be the same one she was holding when I came in. At this point, I am beginning to wonder whether she has spent the last several years standing behind that bar, polishing the same glass. Maybe it is some kind of punishment.

“Nara.”

I look back at him. “What?”

“Where is Stephan?”

There it is.

I give a small shrug. “Dead.”

The room goes completely still. Behind the bar, the cloth stops moving against the glass. The bartender stares at me for a second before lowering her eyes and resuming her work, slower than before.

The boss does not move. His expression remains calm, but his hands tighten together on the table, one thumb pressing hard into the other.

“How did he die?”

I look down and pick at the tear in my sleeve. A loose thread catches around my fingertip, and I wind it tighter until the skin beneath it turns white.

“The girl shot him.”

The boss’s jaw tightens.

There it is.

The reaction lasts only a moment, but I know him well enough to catch it. I almost smile.

“What happened?” he asks.

“The job went bad.”

“I gathered that.” His hands remain folded on the table, though his fingers are pressed together more tightly than before. “Tell me why.”

I pull the thread loose from my sleeve. “There was a girl.”

“A girl.”

“Yes. That is generally what people mean when they say there was a girl.”

The curly-haired man behind him shifts his weight, but the boss does not even glance in his direction.

“What kind of girl?”

For a moment, I am back in the desert.

Purple hair whipping through the moonlight. A white fox mask. The flash of a knife I never saw leave her hand. Stephan’s body jerking beneath her before the gunshot brought everything to an end.

Pain pulses through my thigh, sharp enough to make my fingers tighten around the torn fabric.

I push the memory away.

I can’t give her away. If she finds out I tattled, I probably won’t live long enough to regret it. But lying outright would be just as dangerous. The boss has ways of finding things out, and I doubt he would appreciate being made a fool of.

A half-truth, then.

Just enough to satisfy him without saying anything that could come back to kill me. As long as I tread carefully, I might be able to keep everyone happy.

“The annoying kind,” I say. “Fast. Armed. A lot more dangerous than Stephan gave her credit for.”

“She killed him?”

“She finished it.”

The boss watches me without blinking. “What does that mean?”

“It means Stephan had already done most of the work for her by the time she pulled the trigger.”

Something in the room changes. The conversation at the far end of the bunker dies away, leaving only the low electric hum from the orange bulb and the soft movement of cloth against glass behind the bar.

The boss slowly unfolds his hands. “Explain.”

I lean back in the chair, careful not to put too much weight on my injured leg. “He got careless. Went at her before he had any idea what she could do, and she dropped him.”

“And after that?”

“He got back up and tried again.”

“As he should have.”

I let out a short laugh. “She had already put me on the ground without breaking a sweat. Charging her a second time wasn’t brave. It was stupid.”

The boss’s expression remains still, though something tightens along his jaw. “What would you have preferred? That he stand there and watch?”

“I would’ve preferred him to stop and think for half a second. She was faster than both of us, armed, and hadn’t even broken a sweat. He was never going to beat her, not in a thousand years.”

“And yet you survived.”

His eyes drop to my thigh. I resist the urge to shift the injured leg beneath the table.

“Because I was smart enough to stay down. I accepted the situation for what it was and didn’t try to fight the inevitable.”

One of his eyebrows rises, wrinkling the smooth skin of his forehead.

“So you played dead while your partner was being murdered?”

“I stayed down because getting up would’ve left two bodies in the sand instead of one.” I shift carefully in the chair as pain pulls through my thigh. “When she was gone, I got back on my feet and made it here. Alone.”

The boss’s gaze drifts over the blood stiffening my clothes before settling on the wounded leg beneath the table.

“You call that making it back?”

“I’m sitting in front of you, aren’t I?” A thin smirk crosses my face.

Usually, that would earn me something- a warning, an order to wipe the smile off my face, at least one of those looks that makes everyone else in the room suddenly fascinated by the floor.

Tonight, he says nothing. He just watches me until the smile begins to feel stupid and the silence presses hard enough that I finally slide my boots off the table.

I do it slowly, as though I had simply grown tired of sitting that way.

His eyes follow the movement.

Of course, he notices.

“When you first joined Embers,” he says, “we assigned you to Mikel’s team.”

I stare at him.

So that is where this is going.

“Mikel was useless.”

“Mikel ordered a retreat. You ignored him, pursued the target alone, and brought Miracle Inc. security down on the entire district.”

“I was about to get them when he panicked and ordered us to retreat.”

“He got injured during that retreat because you weren’t there to cover for him,” the boss reminds me. “Then he spent three weeks in a hospital before those injuries killed him.”

My mouth tightens. “I was busy pursuing the target. The mission is supposed to come first, isn’t it? It’s not my fault he couldn’t keep up.”

The boss says nothing.

I lean back and fold my arms. “If he couldn’t handle the heat, he shouldn’t have stepped into the kitchen.”

The boss continues as though I have not spoken. “After Mikel came Alva. She requested reassignment four times before disappearing on the northern routes.”

“Alva was an idiot. Her dumb ass probably got lost and is still wandering around the desert somewhere.”

The boss clears his throat softly.

“Tomas barely lasted six weeks before threatening to quit if he had to go on another job with you.”

“Who cares what some stupid drunkard thinks? I did my job, didn’t I? Every assignment completed with a perfect record.”

The boss gives me a pointed look but says nothing.

“Eugene refused to work with you after your second job together.”

“Well, Eugene’s an idiot.“

“Sal left Embers entirely.”

I shrug. “His loss.”

The boss’s voice remains perfectly level. Which does bother me a little.

“And Luka?” the boss asks.

The name hits harder than the others. My fingers stop moving against my knee, and for the first time since I sat down, I cannot quite bring myself to meet his eyes.

“Luka knew what he was getting into,” I say. “I explained the plan, told him where it could go wrong, and he agreed to it anyway. Nobody forced him to come with me.”

“You assured him the two of you could handle it.”

“I thought we could.”

“But you could not.” The boss leans forward slightly. “Your plan fell apart, you were cut off from the exit, and Luka stayed behind to buy you enough time to escape.”

My jaw tightens. “That was his decision. I never asked him to play the hero.”

“No. You only put him in a position where somebody had to.”

The pain in my thigh pulses with my heartbeat. I begin drumming my fingers against my knee again, faster now, though I do not realize it until the boss glances down at them.

“He made a bad call,” I say. “He should have left when he had the chance.”

“He stayed because you would have died otherwise.”

“And he died because he stayed.” I force myself to meet his gaze. “You think I don’t know that?”

The words come out more bitter than I mean them to. A brief silence settles between us.

Then I look away again and add, more quietly, “He agreed to the plan. We both did.”

The boss watches me for another long second.

“Only one of you came back.”

“Yeah,” I mutter, pressing my palm against the ache in my thigh. “I noticed.”

The boss allows the silence to linger before speaking again.

“And now Stephan is missing as well. Presumed dead, judging by what little you have chosen to tell me.”

“I already told you what happened.”

“You told me just enough to avoid admitting any responsibility.”

I shift in my chair, irritation beginning to outweigh the ache in my leg. “Then I still don’t know what you expect me to say. You keep assigning me people who can’t keep up, and whenever one of them gets themselves killed, you decide I must be the problem. Sounds like a

management problem to me.”

The curly-haired man lifts his head, his expression sharpening, but the boss remains still.

I spread my hands. “Hey, how about maybe you find someone competent to send with me next time.”

“We did.”

My hands slowly fall back into my lap.

“Stephan was one of the most capable operatives we had,” the boss says. “Whatever happened out there, his competence was not the problem.”

I stare at him, then let out a short laugh. “If Stephan was the best you had, we are completely fucked.”

The boss’s palms slam against the table.

The crack tears through the bunker. Behind the bar, the woman jerks so violently that the glass slips from her hand. She catches it against the counter before it can fall. My chair skids backward, and I nearly go over with it before slamming my good foot against the floor.

The boss rises.

For the first time since I joined Embers, there is nothing controlled about his expression. Raw fury twists across his face, only to vanish almost as quickly as it appeared.

He straightens his jacket, smooths one hand over his tie, and lowers himself back into the chair. By the time he looks at me again, his face is calm.

Somehow, that unsettles me more than the anger did.

“Forty-three field assignments,” he says. “Not one failure. Stephan followed orders, protected his partners, and understood that coming back alive mattered more than proving he was the strongest person in the room. He was never particularly bright, but he was a good man. Better than most of us.”

My fingers stop drumming against my knee.

His gaze travels over the blood staining my clothes before settling on my face.

“He survived every one of those assignments,” the boss continues. “Then we partnered him with you.”

I say nothing. I still think Stephan was a useless pile of muscle who did little besides slow me down, but judging by the way this conversation is going, now is probably not the best time to mention it.

“He held his own against Miracle Inc. security. Even when he was outmatched, he always made it back without any serious injuries. He was already being considered for an executive position.”

I glance toward the bar. The woman has finally abandoned the glass. It sits on the counter beside her cloth while she leans forward on both elbows, openly listening now.

The boss follows my gaze but does not turn around.

“I was the one who assigned you to Stephan.”

A cold thread works its way down my spine. I almost convince myself it is only the chill of the bunker.

“He wasn’t there because you needed protection,” the boss continues. “The reason I assigned you to him was that I needed to make sure.”

“Make sure of what?”

“Whether there was any merit to your constant complaints.” His hands come together on the table again. “For two years, you blamed every failed partnership on the people we assigned to you. I needed to find out if they were truly incompetent- or if you were the reason none of those partnerships lasted.”

The bunker seems to quiet around us. Somewhere behind the walls, water continues dripping at slow, uneven intervals, each drop suddenly distinct.

I force out an awkward laugh. “And what did your little experiment tell you?”

The boss holds my gaze.

“That I was very wrong to give you the benefit of the doubt.”

I hold his gaze, but my confidence has already begun to slip.

I shift in my chair, and pain tears through my thigh, but for once it barely registers. My attention has moved elsewhere- to the people around the room and how carefully they have positioned themselves.

The old butler stands beside the steel door with his hands folded neatly behind his back. The bartender remains behind the counter, no longer pretending to work. The curly-haired man has moved slightly closer to the boss.

Nobody is close enough to stop me immediately. The old man is the only thing standing between me and the exit.

I could take him out without a problem.

Getting through the steel door is another matter.

I lean back, forcing a smile. “All right. What happens now? Another lecture? You dock my pay? Demote me?”

The boss watches me without blinking.

“We have been through this already.”

My fingers stop tapping against my knee.

I have heard those words before.

Months ago, a man named Baret had been dragged into the storage room downstairs with one eye swollen shut and blood soaking the front of his shirt. He had spent several minutes on his knees, promising that he could fix everything if the boss gave him one more chance.

The boss had listened without interrupting. Then, in that same calm voice, he had told him they had been through this already.

I left before they finished. The gunshot followed me halfway up the stairs.

I straighten slowly in my chair.

The boss folds his hands on the table. “You were given more freedom than anyone at your rank because your results appeared to justify it. We overlooked your behavior, your refusal to follow orders, and your inability to work with anyone for longer than a few months.”

“My inability?”

“You were warned after Mikel. Again after Alva. And again after what happened on the northern routes with Luka.” His voice remains measured, almost conversational. “When Stephan was assigned to you, I made it very clear that this would be your final evaluation.”

“I don’t remember that.”

“You laughed and said that if you messed it up, you’d put a gun to your head and pull the trigger yourself.”

Of course I did. I never did learn when to shut up.

Shit.

“You insisted that the problem was always your partners,” the boss continues. “So I gave you someone experienced, loyal, and proven. Someone who had survived everything this organization had asked of him.”

My mouth has gone dry. I glance toward the steel door again, only to find the old man watching me closely, as though he has been expecting me to make a move.

“And you came back alone, again,” the boss says.

My jaw tightens. “I already told you what happened. Stephan rushed her after I was down. I couldn’t stop him.”

“I am not asking for another explanation.”

“Then what do you want from me?”

“For the past ten minutes, you have told me why Stephan was careless, why he was incompetent, and why his death had nothing to do with you.” His gaze remains fixed on mine. “You have not once said that you are sorry he is dead.”

The accusation catches me off guard, and anger rushes in before I can think better of it.

“What good would that do? Being sorry won’t bring him back.”

“No,” the boss says. “But it might convince me that his death means something to you.”

“He made his own choices out there. I knew when the fight was lost and got out. Stephan didn’t.”

The boss studies me in silence, searching my face for something I apparently still haven’t given him.

“Is that all you have to say?”

I should stop.

Some part of me knows that. It is shouting at me from somewhere deep beneath the anger, telling me that there is still one answer he might accept. One small admission that might let me walk out of this room.

Instead, I hear myself say, “He got himself killed.”

The moment the words leave my mouth, I know I have chosen wrong.

I never learned when to shut up. truly.

The boss does not shout. He does not strike the table again. Nothing in his expression changes at all.

He simply looks at me, and in that complete absence of reaction, I finally understand what he had been waiting to hear.

Not an explanation.

Not another excuse.

Just some sign that Stephan’s death meant more to me than an inconvenience.

The boss exhales softly through his nose.

“I see.”

I shove myself to my feet. Pain rips through my thigh, nearly folding the leg beneath me, and I catch the edge of the table with one hand.

“Wait.”

The curly-haired man steps forward.

“Hold on,” I say, raising my free hand. “That came out wrong.”

His hand slips beneath his jacket.

My heartbeat slams against my ribs.

“Boss, wait. I can explain—”

He yanks his hand free, a dark, metallic shape clenched between his fingers.

Oh, fuck—

The suppressed shot is little more than a cough.

Nara hits the concrete before the sound fades, her body folding beside the chair with one arm trapped awkwardly beneath her. Blood spills from the neat hole in the center of her forehead and runs through the grooves in the floor.

For several seconds, nobody moves.

The bartender is the first to look away. The boss remains seated, his gaze lingering on Nara’s body before drifting to the bloody boot print she left across his table.

“Clean it up.”

The old man leaves his place beside the door, grabs Nara by the arms, and drags her away. Her boots scrape across the concrete, one catching briefly against the leg of the chair before slipping free.

The bartender disappears behind the counter and returns with a bucket and mop. No one says a word as the curly-haired man slides the pistol back beneath his jacket and the first sweep of the mop sends red water spreading across the floor.

The boss watches it in silence.

“Two,” the boss says.

The suited man looks over. “Sir?”

“Two of our best field agents lost in a single night.”

A thin stream of diluted blood runs between the grooves in the floor. The boss removes his glasses and sets them carefully on the table.

“Nara was not entirely wrong,” he says. “If those two represent the best Embers has left, then we are in worse shape than I thought.”

The suited man remains silent for a moment. “Word of what happened will spread.”

“By morning, it will be all anyone in our circles is talking about,” the boss agrees.

The mop passes over the same patch of concrete again, gathering what remains of the blood into a pale red smear. The boss watches it disappear before turning his attention toward the steel door.

“We cannot afford another failure. Call Ivy.”

For the first time that night, the suited man’s composure slips. It is no more than a slight tightening around his shoulders, but the boss notices.

“You said we would never involve him again.”

“I changed my mind.”

“And how much are we giving him?”

The boss looks at him.

The bartender’s mop slows against the floor.

“All of it.”

The suited man stares at him. “The complete files?”

“Every page.”

“Once he has them, we lose the only leverage we have left. There will be nothing stopping him from walking away.”

“That will only matter if he survives.”

Silence settles over the bunker.

The boss takes a cloth napkin from the table and wipes away a small fleck of blood near its edge. He examines the wood beneath it, then folds the stained cloth neatly in half.

“And if he does survive?” the suited man asks.

“Then it will prove we were fools to leave someone that capable sitting idle.”

The man waits, evidently expecting more.

The boss sets the cloth aside and replaces his glasses.

“Give him a chair.”

That draws a genuine reaction. “You want him on the board?”

“If Ivy completes this assignment and returns alive, yes.”

The suited man’s expression tightens. “You understand what that would give him.”

“I understand precisely what it would give him.”

For several seconds, neither man speaks. Then the suited man inclines his head.

“Yes, sir.”

He collects a thin folder from the end of the table and turns toward the corridor. Behind him, the bartender continues mopping, methodically erasing the final traces of Nara from the concrete.

By the time the steel door closes, almost no blood remains.

A phone begins ringing somewhere in the forest, its shrill tone carrying between the trees.

Moonlight spills through a break in the canopy, washing over a black car parked alone in a small clearing. A man lies stretched across its roof, completely motionless.

The phone rings again.

With a groan, he sits up and pulls the device from inside his coat. His hood slips back.

Even at a glance, the face beneath it could never be mistaken for human.

Pale, wormlike tendrils spill from either side of his head in layered clusters, glistening wetly beneath the moonlight. Thin breathing slits pulse between them, opening and closing in a slow rhythm. More tendrils twist across the lower half of his face, writhing over the place where a mouth should be.

The phone rings a third time before Ivy finally answers.

“Hello.”

“Ivy.” The curly-haired man’s voice comes through the speaker.

Ivy rubs the back of his neck. “I’m busy.”

“I’ll be brief.”

“Please do.”

A pause.

“Do you remember the matter we discussed?”

Ivy looks up through the trees.

“The private one?”

“Yes.”

“Still working on it.”

“How long?”

“At this rate?”

One of the fleshy tendrils beside his mouth twitches.

“A few months.”

“That won’t be necessary anymore.”

Ivy goes still.

The voice continues quickly.

“The boss has reviewed your recent performance. He is satisfied.”

“Mm.”

“Very satisfied, in fact.”

“Satisfied enough to give me what I asked for?”

Another pause.

“I wouldn’t put it quite like that.”

“You can put it however you want after I get what was promised to me.”

A notification tone cuts through the call. Ivy lowers the phone and finds a new message waiting on the screen, containing a single attachment.

He opens it.

His entire body goes still.

The display fills with folders- hundreds of them, perhaps more. Names, photographs, home addresses, employment histories, security classifications. At the top of the directory, a single heading stretches across the screen:

MIRACLE INC. — INTERNAL PERSONNEL RECORDS

The fleshy tendrils along Ivy’s head slowly fan outward.

The suited man continues speaking through the phone. “The boss has decided to grant your reward ahead of schedule. Naturally, we hope this demonstrates the value we place on your continued—”

Ivy ends the call.

Silence returns to the forest as he scrolls through the files, his thumb moving faster with every passing second. Then another message appears beneath the attachment.

Angel Street 54.23

06:00

Senior Management Promotion Party

Ivy stares at the address. One of the narrow tendril like things covering his mouth curls upward.

He pulls his hood back into place, climbs down from the roof, and disappears between the trees.

The clearing stands empty once more.

Moonlight shifts across the black car, slowly illuminating the burned-out interior through the windshield. A charred body sits behind the wheel. Another is slumped in the passenger seat, while two more lie folded across the back.

Not a single seat is empty.

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