Yurui The Cursed One

The first bell has already rung by the time I decided that it’s finally the time to drag myself out of the container. Class is underway, and Maevis is probably standing at the front of the room, staring at my empty seat while delivering some cutting remark about wasted opportunities and ungrateful scholarship students.

The smell should bother me more than it does. So should the cracked plastic tray digging into my hip, the wet paper plastered to my sleeve, and the powdery dust coating my nose and throat until I feel like a corpse buried alive. But none of that is as humiliating as the fact that I am still out here, curled up in a nest of campus garbage like some kind of pest.

I push myself upright, moving as quietly as I can.

A sound above me makes me flinch. I jerk sideways and press myself against the container wall, staying crouched as I listen. Shoes pass nearby, followed by bright, careless laughter. The academy has a way of sanding the rough edges off everything. Even its footsteps sound polished.

No one stops. No one looks down.

Good.

I brace one hand on the rim and haul myself up. My shoulder flares so sharply my vision fades for a moment. I grit my teeth, swing a leg over, and lower myself onto the pavement behind the service alcove. Something cold slides down the back of my neck. I ignore it and go straight to the real emergency.

The uniform.

My hands instinctively move over me before my eyes get a chance to glance down. I smooth the blouse, check the ribbon, flatten the skirt, inspect the sleeves, the hem, and the collar. I am looking for dirt, tears, anything dark and permanent enough to ruin my day in a new and exciting way.

Nothing obvious. My lungs loosen by half an inch.

A sane person would have been more concerned about the pain in her shoulder, or the grit in her hair, or the fact that she had just been hiding in a rubbish bin like a stray animal. Instead, I was standing in a garbage alcove silently thanking God because the navy blouse didn’t appear to be stained.

The uniform itself looked ridiculous and woefully outdated, like something dragged straight out of another century. Navy blouse, pleated skirt, ribbon at the throat, some old-fashioned thing that made me look like I escaped from a low-budget period drama.

At Miracle Academy, the uniform existed mostly as a decorative idea. It was written into the rule handbook in polished official language about tradition and unity and shared values, except the students whose families owned half the city ignored it with total impunity. They came draped in designer knitwear, tailored coats, heirloom watches, shoes soft as silk. The faculty never said a word. Rules, here, were only enforced strictly when they had to travel downhill.

So I was the only one who still wore the academy uniform every day. Well, it's not that I was against it or anything. In fact, this was one of the few rules that actually played in my favor.

Not because I believed in policy.

Because it was the only decent thing I had.

The blouse was old but carefully mended. The skirt had been altered twice and let out once. The ribbon at my throat had gone slightly dull at the edges where my fingers caressed it. And yet it was still far superior to anything else I had. Heck, from a distance it even looked kind of nice even.

I preferred that to the truth.

Without the uniform, everyone would see what my life actually looked like: cheap clothes washed until the fabric went soft and thin, cuffs that had lost their shape, hems I trimmed myself with sewing scissors because paying someone else was never an option.

Wearing any of that to Miracle Academy would be social suicide. I might as well walk through the doors naked. Honestly, I would probably face less ridicule that way.

Not that anyone at the academy doesn’t already know I’m dirt poor. Poverty leaves traces, even when you do your best to sand them down. It changes your posture. Your appetite. The way you scan a room for exits, threats, and anything useful someone else has thrown away. It settles into your reflexes.

But knowing I was poor and seeing the evidence laid out in front of them were two very different things. I could survive the first.

The second felt unbearable.

For all its ridiculousness, the uniform gave me one small measure of protection. It kept the worst of my life hidden from view.

I smoothed the blouse once more, then closed my eyes and rested my head briefly against the wall. The morning had already gone wrong in three separate directions, and classes had barely begun.

Maevis would notice I was late.

I should go. I know that. I know exactly how long I have already taken, how little margin there is left. The problem is that going means entering Maevis’s line of sight, and there are days when I would rather let Yashiro break my nose a second time than give Maevis a reason to notice me.

That thought would sound insane to anyone who hasn’t met them both.

Yashiro is cruel in a way I understand. She is vicious, yes, but not mysterious. Maevis, on the other hand, is completely unpredictable. There is no telling what she might do, and she's willing to do absolutely anything that comes to her mind. That unpredictability of hers terrifies me more than anything. More than any monster I could ever imagine in my head. And unlike those imaginary monsters, she's very much real and willing to hurt me.

I close my eyes for one beat too long, then open them and begrudgingly make my way back to school. Trust me, I would love more than anything to just turn back and go home, but that meant risking suspension, which in turn meant risking my benefits- education, food, and all other amenities provided for students of Miracle Academy.

I stop, glance around, and dump the contents of my backpack into one of the academy’s manicured shrubs. There is no way I am carrying a backpack full of trash into the building. Even if it means catching hell from Yashiro later. Then I sling the now-empty but still damp and sour-smelling backpack over my shoulders and head for the entrance.

I pause in front of the door.

Here goes... Let's hope the rest of the day goes better.

An ominous chill permeates my spine. I know it won't. It's just a matter of how much worse it could possibly get. My biggest concern now is Maevis. I already got on her bad side by arriving a few seconds late this morning. Now that I’ve missed a good portion of her class, there’s no telling how she’ll react.

The academy closed around me at once: polished floors, sealed windows, white walls designed to look minimalist rather than expensive. The soft hum of AC was heard throughout mostly empty halls. Walking between those towering and magnificent walls, I might as well have been just an insect quietly crawling thru the corridor.

A girl in a fancy coat that cost more than my family spent on groceries in a month walked past me without as much as giving a glance in my general direction, leaving citrus perfume trailing in her wake. Somewhere nearby, two boys were discussing a skiing trip. To me, they sounded as if they were aliens speaking from another planet.

The boys give me a weird look as I walk past them.

SHIT.

I lean down and sniff the fabric of my uniform.

Damn. It stinks.

I smirk. I stare at nothing for a second, then a laugh almost escapes me. Thin, mean, private.

“Perfect,” I mutter. “They say I smell like garbage. About dam time I lived up to the reputation.”

The joke was bad. But it improved my mood immediately.

That was the thing about being humiliated on a schedule: eventually, you learned to survive on scraps. A private joke. A mean thought no one else heard. A momentary flare of spite. Without those, a place like this would hollow you clean out.

I start toward the stairs, then stop halfway up.

No.

No, absolutely not.

I was just lying in a pile of discarded campus filth. There could be dust in my hair. Something on my back. God forbid a smear on the skirt. If I walk into class like that, I may as well hand Maevis a written invitation to make my day even worse.

I turn at once and head for the bathroom instead.

The girls’ washroom on this floor is empty. Lucky me. The overly bright fluorescent light washed everyone out into something faintly sickly. On me, though, it looked almost natural. These mirrors are merciless. I go straight to the line of mirrors above the sink and check for the damage.

Uniform first.

Always first.

Collar clean. Ribbon straight. No obvious stains on the blouse. I lift sections of the skirt, inspecting the pleats. Still good. I lean closer. No gray streaks. No black smear. No wet patch sinking into the fabric where I sat in God knows what.

Thank God.

Only then did I let my gaze rise. I eye the rest of me. My hair has mostly come loose. Dark strands clung damply to my temples and neck. One cheek was smudged with something gray. And under my nose, dried in a thin crooked line, was blood...

I stare at the line of blood for a second.

Right.

Yashiro.

I pressed on the tap so hard the metal bit into my palm. Water came out cold enough to sting. I bent over the sink and scrubbed at my face, my mouth, the hollow beneath my nose. I pushed wet fingers through my hair, trying to coax order back into it, trying not to think about what had dried there or whose hands had put me in the trash in the first place. The more fiercely I washed, the more frantic the motion became, until it no longer had anything to do with blood.

I was trying to rinse the morning off my skin. Trying to abrade the shame away. Trying, absurdly, as if there might be some cleaner version of me underneath all this if I only worked hard enough to uncover her.

When I finally looked up, the girl in the mirror had changed very little.

Water glazed her skin. Her hair, darker with wet, hung in untidy bands around a face so ordinary it made my chest ache.

I was not ugly. I almost wished I were. Ugly, at least, is distinct. People remember it. What I had was worse: a face that slid past the eye and left nothing behind.

I am merely forgettable. Generic. Bland. Whatever you wanted to call someone like me, you wouldn't be wrong. Dark hair. Brown, heavy-lidded eyes. Small mouth with moderately full lips that stretches for a tad bit too wide, the only striking feature on my otherwise dull face. An ordinary nose, just a soft line down my face with a faint curve at the tip. Nothing striking, nothing memorable. The kind of face that dissolved into the crowd.

Some days, that feels like mercy. Today, staring at the mirror, it feels like an insult.

If I looked too long, the face in the mirror always began to slip away from me. After a while, it was no longer mine, just some tired girl shaped vaguely like me, staring back with my exhaustion painted on her face.

I braced both hands on the sink and leaned toward the mirror, searching my face for whatever made people look at me and see something they could hurt without consequence. There had to be some weakness written there. Some emptiness. Something that told them I would never fight back.

No.

I grip the sink until my knuckles ache.

Stop.

Heat rushed behind my eyes. I pushed the thought away so hard it felt physical. I dragged a wet hand over my face and made myself look lower, back to the uniform.

This was not the problem. My face was not the problem. It could look however it liked as long as the blouse was clean and I got through the next hour without drawing Maevis’s attention. That was all that mattered.

I lower my eyes to the uniform again, forcing myself through the checklist one last time. Ribbon. Chest. Sleeves. Skirt. Hem.

Clean.

Good.

I pull the ribbon tighter, smooth my damp hair behind my ears as best I can, and practice breathing as though I’m not one bad glance away from falling apart.

The script is simple.

Open door. Apologize. Sit down.

Do not ramble. Do not explain. Do not sound sarcastic, even by accident. Do not look challenging. Do not look too frightened either, if possible, because some people can smell fear, and Maevis, I think, can probably smell it from a mile away. I would honestly rather jump out of the window than have to go thru another round of Maveis torment.

A memory inadvertently comes to my mind: Maevis’s office after the final bell, three weeks ago, shutters half-drawn against the evening light, the room smelling of paper, starch, and that sharp, medicinal smell that seems attached to her.

I wasn’t being disrespectful. I hadn’t done anything wrong. It was just a misfortune of giving a wrong answer at the wrong time.

She told me to come to her office after class. I opened the door nervously, already having a rough idea as to what to expect. Maevis got up from her desk. She looked at me and told me to hold out my hand.

I did.

The first strike of the ruler across my knuckles sent a sharp flash of pain through my hand. By the fourth, my fingers had blurred into one throbbing ache. The ruler came down for the seventh, and my fingers answered with a soft crunch that made my stomach drop.

I remember the silence afterward more clearly than the pain. The way Maevis set the ruler down, exactly parallel to the edge of her desk. The way she looked at my hand shaking in my lap, all swollen, skin split over two knuckles, one finger bent at the wrong angle. My face goes pale. I feel as if I'm about to throw up.

Maevis looks at me with that cold, piercing glare.

“Yurui, look at me when you are being disciplined,” she said.

I did. By then, I was crying, which irritated me almost as much as she did.

She reached for my chin. Her touch wasn’t gentle, but it wasn’t rough either. Her thumb settled beneath my jaw.

Maevis did not explain herself that evening. She had always understood that silent humiliation cut deepest. She only said, very quietly, “Be still.”

Then she leaned down and pressed her mouth to mine.

There was no tenderness in it. No cruelty either. Just cold efficiency, as if she were treating a difficult patient. Her hand stayed under my jaw, firm enough to make resistance feel pointless while that unbearable heat moved through me, her saliva carrying the retinoic acid compound, healing the tissues as it spread throughout my body. The healing took hold so fast it felt invasive, almost suffocating. My broken hand throbbed once, hard enough to blacken the edges of my vision, then began the sickening work of knitting itself back together.

Her breath had a faint aftertaste of antiseptic, bitter, and clean.

As I looked at her face, I had one horrified flash of recognition: from that close up, she looked exactly like Yashiro. Since then, the resemblance has rooted itself in my mind like a curse.

I don't know if it was fear, pain, or maybe I was simply too tired, but when she drew back, I let out a quiet moan.

She looked at me for a moment, my repaired hand cradled uselessly against my skirt.

“How flattering,” she said. “But I was fixing your hand, not indulging you. Next time, keep your preferences to yourself.”

The heat in my face turned unbearable. I buried my hand deeper into my lap, wishing I could disappear with it.

For one long second, I wished Yashiro had slapped me right now.

By the time I reach the east corridor, the bell has already come and gone. Once classes begin, the building settles into an eerie artificial silence. Sound doesn’t disappear so much as get swallowed. Doors click shut. Voices flatten into thick marble walls. Even footsteps seemed to fold into the silence, the air itself seeming to hold its breath.

The hallway outside Maevis's classroom carried the kind of atmosphere that made people lower their voices instinctively.

And who do I see standing there, as if I was cursed by every single deity that has ever existed. In all her beauty—

Maevis stands beside the classroom door, casually flipping through a yellow folder stacked with papers. She does not look up when I arrive. As always, she lets the silence do all the work for her.

Fuck me, I guess. This just keeps getting better and better.

Misery fills my face.

It has been like what? An hour since I arrived at the school, and the day is already turning into my worst nightmare. All the worst-case scenarios keep happening one after the other.

Maybe it's just a dream? I think hopefully, but the cold, piercing look Maevis gives me as she glances up from her papers immediately snaps me back to reality.

Or not.

Whatever hope was left dissolved quietly, leaving just the two of us standing there in complete silence.

ME AND THE MONSTER. ALL BY OURSELVES.

Visit and read more novel to help us update chapter quickly. Thank you so much!