Yurui The Cursed One

Kika raises one hand without so much as turning to look at her.

Arisa stops mid-sentence. Around them, the room goes quiet.

Kika stares at me from across the classroom. Her eyes move slowly over my torn blouse, the bruises darkening my face, and the dried blood covering my clothes. She probably never expected to walk in and find me sitting calmly at my desk as though nothing had happened.

As calmly as someone in my condition could manage, anyway.

For a moment, the performance slips. Her lips part, and genuine shock flashes across her face.

Then she notices the room watching.

Her expression smooths over, her chin lifting as she slips back into character. By the time she speaks, her voice has regained its usual careful sweetness.

“I didn’t think you would have the nerve to show your face here after the stunt you pulled two days ago.”

I lean back in my chair.

“Article 137 of the Common Rights of Citizens of Razia,” I say. “Every citizen under the age of eighteen is entitled to formal education.”

Kika blinks, caught without an answer.

I have to bite back a laugh.

It is one of the laws they forced us to memorize in middle school, back when I still believed rights meant something.

Now I know they only exist for people powerful enough to enforce them.

Still, I doubt even Kika is brave enough to denounce one of the key articles of law with the entire class watching.

“So, unless you’ve been promoted to headmistress while I was gone, I don’t think you get a say in whether I’m here.”

A few students glance at one another. Someone near the back smothers a laugh.

Kika hears it. Her jaw tightens, just enough for me to notice.

Usually, this is where she says something soft and vicious- something innocent enough on the surface that no teacher could punish her for it, but cruel enough to make the whole room laugh at me.

This time, she does not.

Her gaze drops to my hands. My knuckles are still red from hitting Sophia, dried blood caught in the creases of my fingers. When Kika looks back up, the whole class is still watching her.

Then she smiles.

It is small and brittle, stretched over whatever she actually wants to say.

“We’ll talk later.”

“Can’t wait,” I reply sarcastically.

Her smile sharpens, but she turns away.

Arisa does not follow. She remains near the door, staring at me with an intensity that makes the skin along my arms prickle. There is no disgust in her expression, no amusement- only disbelief.

Then something clicks.

Her eyes widen, and she crosses the classroom before I can make sense of her reaction.

“What are you doing here?”

Arisa grabs the front of my blouse and yanks me halfway out of the chair, her knuckles digging into my chest.

For one sickening instant, I feel Stephan’s fist around me again, squeezing until my bones begin to break.

Panic surges through me. I wrench forward and drive my forehead into her nose.

Something crunches beneath the impact.

She lets go at once, staggering backward with a scream. Both hands fly to her face as blood spills between her fingers.

“The fuck is wrong with—”

The sight of blood spilling between her fingers snaps me back to reality.

The classroom rushes into focus around me: bright lights, overturned chairs, and a room full of people staring.

Arisa is not Stephan.

She is just a girl on her knees, clutching her broken nose and blinking up at me through tears. The shock on her face makes it clear she is no longer a threat.

I could leave it there.

Instead, I stand.

A strange heat spreads through me as she stares up in dazed confusion.

I kick her in the side of the head anyway.

The impact hurls her sideways. She crashes to the floor hard enough to rattle the nearest desks, and the class recoils as one. Chairs scrape across the tiles while students stumble over one another to get away from me.

All around the room, phones rise almost simultaneously.

Arisa groans and tries to push herself up. I step forward and plant my shoe against her cheek, forcing her face back against the tiles. Blood streaks across the floor beneath her.

The room falls quiet.

No one tries to stop me.

Kika stands frozen near the door. From across the room, Yashiro watches in complete silence. The same students who used to block my path and shove me into walls now keep as much distance between us as they can.

Their expressions have changed. There is no laughter now, no disgust, no smug certainty that I will lower my head and let this pass.

They are afraid.

Of me.

A grin tugs at my mouth as I imagine what they must see: a girl covered in dried blood, standing over someone who can barely move, smiling as though this is the first good thing to happen to her all day.

I should be horrified by that.

Instead, the tension I have carried for years begins to ease.

“If I had known it was this easy,” I say, pressing my foot down until Arisa whimpers, “I would have started hitting back years ago.”

Blood drips from my forehead onto Arisa’s hair. I must have split my own skin when I headbutted her, but I barely feel it.

Arisa shifts beneath my shoe, trying to turn her face away from the tile.

“Where is she?”

I press down harder. “Where is who?”

“My sister.”

The words break on the way out.

I turn my full attention to her. She is not glaring up at me or waiting for a chance to strike back. Beneath the blood streaming from her nose, she looks terrified.

I start to lift my foot from her cheek. Then her hand snaps around my ankle, and my whole body goes rigid.

“The woman who came for you,” Arisa says quickly. “Tall. Blonde. She was wearing a black suit.”

My head starts spinning.

Right, Thea.

With so much happening tonight, Arisa's stupid sister has completely slipped my mind.

As my weight shifts off her cheek. Arisa takes the chance to turn her face toward me.

“Her name is Thea,” she says. “She’s my sister.”

I step away.

Arisa drags herself onto one elbow, breathing through her mouth as blood runs over her lips and chin. Now that I know what I am looking for, I can see it- not an exact resemblance, but something in the shape of her eyes and the blunt way she holds my gaze.

Thea looked at people the same way.

Kika shoves her chair back.

“Arisa—”

Yashiro catches her by the sleeve before she can move.

Kika turns on her. “Let go of me.”

“If you rush over there now, you’ll only make this worse,” Yashiro says quietly.

“She’s bleeding.”

“And still capable of handling herself.” Yashiro’s grip does not loosen. “Do not humiliate her by implying otherwise.”

Kika reluctantly sits down, worry still plastered all over her face.

Yashiro keeps hold of Kika’s sleeve, but her attention remains fixed on me, her expression unreadable.

Arisa wipes her mouth with the back of her hand, smearing blood across her cheek.

“Thea was sent to collect you,” she says. “She was supposed to take you to the Institute of Medicine and Science. She never arrived. Nobody has heard from her since.”

For a moment, I can only stand there in silence, unsure how to respond. Thea’s death had already been buried beneath everything that came after the crash—Stephan, my mother, Violet. By now, she was just another body left behind that night.

But Arisa has been waiting for her to come home.

She has probably spent the entire night trying to reach her, wondering why she never came back, while I have known the answer since early this morning.

Thea is dead.

Her head was crushed into pieces right in front of me.

I watched it happen.

A laugh slips out of me.

Arisa’s eyes narrow. “What the hell are you laughing at?”

I try to swallow it, but another one follows. I cover my mouth, and it leaks through my fingers anyway.

Of course.

Thea had been driving me straight toward the institute, and the only reason I never reached it was because Nara and Stephan tore the car apart and left me dying in the desert. They had brutalized me, broken nearly every bone in my body, and somehow still managed to save me from whatever Miracle Inc had waiting at the end of that road.

The thought is so twisted that another laugh forces its way out.

“Fuck.”

Every face in the classroom turns toward me. I double over the desk, laughter spilling out faster than I can breathe.

Arisa stares at me. “What is wrong with you?”

I shake my head, trying to stop, but that only makes it worse.

Of all the people in the world, those two lunatics were the ones who saved me from whatever fucked-up fate Miracle Inc. had planned for me.

“SHUT UP !” Arisas voice cuts through the laughter.

She pushes herself upright, unsteady on her feet, blood still running from her nose. “What happened to my sister?”

I look at Arisa, and the laughter catches in my throat.

Her bloodied face pulls me back to the desert. Thea lies in the sand again, gold fur painted dark by blood, her body twisted where it fell.

Then the image shifts.

The wreckage. Shattered glass. My mother slumped inside the car, completely still.

I have spent hours doing anything I could to avoid facing reality, but there is no avoiding it anymore: my mother is dead.

The thought finally breaks through whatever has been holding me together, and my vision begins to blur.

There will be no more arguments when I return home. No tired voice asking where I have been. No covered plate left on the counter. No more finding her asleep on the couch because she was too tired to make it to bed.

She kind of had it coming. I mean, she signed me away. Handed me over to Miracle Inc. like some piece of property.

On the other hand, she also worked herself hollow for years just to keep me fed.

Both things are true, and I hate that I can miss her this much after what she did to me.

I bite down on my lower lip until I taste blood.

Miracle Inc did not make her sign those papers, but it did build a world in which parents had to sell their children for a chance to escape the hell that was poverty in Miracle City. Being poor in Miracle City meant watching your children go hungry, sleep through winter in rooms with broken windows, and grow sick from mold and contaminated water while knowing nothing would ever change. After enough years of watching your children suffer, handing one of them over to Miracle Inc. could start to feel less like abandonment and more like giving them a chance to escape.

Arisa takes another step toward me.

“Where is Thea?” she repeats, her voice firmer now.

I stare at Arisa’s swollen, bloodied face and try to find some gentler way to say it.

Then I remember Thea ambushing me on the balcony, dragging me down the stairs while I begged her to let me go, and shoving me into the back seat like a sack of potatoes without so much as a reaction. I remember the desert sliding past the windows, me trying to make small talk just to make the ride a little less unbearable, and her mocking me for it.

Any sympathy I had disappears.

“She’s dead.”

Arisa goes still. Her lips part, but no sound comes out.

I should stop there, but I am still angry enough at Thea to make her sister suffer for it. I want Arisa to feel even a fraction of what I felt when that bitch dragged me away from my home, towards some mysterious institute.

“She died out there,” I continue. “What was left of her was still lying in the sand when I left.”

Arisa’s expression changes piece by piece as the meaning sinks in. First disbelief, then understanding, and finally horror.

Under different circumstances, I might have felt sorry for her.

Now all I can think about is how nobody looked at me that way when Thea dragged me from my home.

“Honestly?” I say. “Good riddance.”

A chair scrapes loudly across the floor as Kika shoots to her feet. This time, Yashiro does not even try to stop her.

Everyone in the room is staring at me like I have lost my mind, and only then do I realize how unhinged I must sound. For a second, I almost regret saying it.

Then I remember Thea looking down at me while I cried and begged her to let me go.

The feeling disappears.

“Your sister kidnapped me,” I say. “She was delivering me to Miracle Inc.”

Arisa’s face tightens.

“So yes. I am glad she is dead.”

The sound Arisa makes barely sounds human. It begins as a breath trapped deep in her chest, then tears free as a raw, broken howl as her knees buckle beneath her.

Orange-and-black fur bursts across her skin. Her shoulders wrench wider with a series of loud pops, splitting the seams of her uniform. Muscle swells along her legs as the bones lengthen, shredding her shoes around her feet. Claws punch through her fingertips. Two curved fangs descend over her bloodied lower lip.

Desks scrape and topple as everyone scrambles away from us. The moment I look at Arisa, every instinct in me screams at me to move.

She raises her head, tears cutting dark trails through the fur on her face. Whatever confusion remained in her was gone. All that is left is grief sharpened into rage.

I bring my arms up, but she moves first. Her hand closes around my throat before I can take a step, and the classroom drops away beneath me.

My back smashes through the first row of desks. Wood splinters, metal legs snap and spin across the floor, and I tear through another row before hitting the tiles hard enough to drive the breath from my lungs.

For a moment, I can only lie beneath a cloud of dust, staring at the ceiling as pain arrives from every direction. My ribs flare, something stabs at my shoulder, and the back of my skull throbs with every beat of my heart.

“Fuck,” I groan, forcing air back into my lungs.

I brace one hand against the floor and force myself upright, my arm trembling beneath my weight. Across the wrecked classroom, Arisa lowers herself onto all fours and digs her claws into the tiles.

I catch every warning in her body- the tightening of her shoulders, the weight settling into her hind legs, the way her head dips toward me. I know exactly when she is going to lunge, yet a cold jolt still runs through me as I realize my body may not be fast enough to react.

Her claws tear free from the tiles, and before I can even raise my arms, she is already on top of me.

Fuck. This is not how this was supposed to go.

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