Yurui The Cursed One

She lunges immediately.

Good. Straight to the point. Just how I like it.

At least, I think I do.

The haze inside my head has been growing thicker, blurring the line between my own thoughts and the ones that arrive sounding almost, but not quite like me. Maintaining control is becoming harder by the second.

I suppose all power comes at a cost.

A little confusion seems like a fair trade for this much strength.

Probably.

Her claws rake across my chest, forcing the armor inward until its pressure grinds against my ribs. It bends beneath the blow, but refuses to split.

Arisa’s eyes widen. She strikes again, harder this time, but her claws only press shallow grooves into the armor before it ripples back into shape. All she leaves behind are a few pale scratches. I glance down at them, then raise my eyes to hers.

“You’ll have to try harder than that.”

Arisa springs backward before I can grab her.

Smart.

She circles me instead, crouched low, her eyes moving over my new body. She is not staring at the spikes or the extra arm. She is watching my legs. The slight tremor passing through them. The way my left knee keeps shifting beneath the armor as the joint struggles to settle into its new shape.

Whispers break out across the classroom.

“That isn’t what she looked like before.”

“What the hell—”

“She has more arms.”

“Shut up. She can hear you.”

I pay them no mind. Just insects chirping in the background.

Arisa moves before I can pick out her shape through the haze in my eyes, darting to my right just as I swing.

My arm cuts through empty air.

She changes direction beneath it and slashes behind my knee. Her claws scrape across the softer fold of armor covering the joint. The armor refuses to split, but the blow twists my leg sideways, tearing something deep in the back of my thigh.

I stagger. By the time I catch my balance, Arisa is already gone.

She is faster than I remember.

I am faster too. Hell, I might even be faster than her.

The problem is that this body is all wrong. My limbs are different lengths, my balance keeps shifting, and new arm and whatever the hell else was coming out of me occupy spaces my instincts still think are empty. Every few seconds, I grow another fraction taller. I have more speed than I know what to do with and no idea how to control any of it while my body keeps changing all around me.

Arisa rushes in again.

I turn too late. Her claws catch the side of my head and wrench it sideways. The armor shields my skull, but my neck takes the full force of the blow. Something cracks down my spine, and my right arm goes numb for half a second.

She slips away before my fingers can close around her.

The armor is too strong for her to tear through, so she has started using it against me- forcing the body beneath it to bend, twist, and break instead.

Clever.

Annoying, but clever.

“Suppose it was bound to happen eventually,” I murmur.

Unfortunately for her, clever is the one kind of fight I know how to win.

Maevis is the only person I have met who can outthink me, and too bad for her, but Arisa is no Maevis.

She circles toward the windows.

I force my legs to move slower. More Carefully. Each step still sends pressure grinding through my hips, but I remain upright.

“I mean, look at you. Strong blessing from birth. Rich family. Popular at school. Plenty of friends willing to stand around and watch while you murder someone.”

“Shut up.”

“All that luck had to run out sometime.”

“You don’t know anything about me!”

She goes for my eyes again.

Predictable.

This time, I manage to follow her. Not clearly, not all the way, but enough to snap my right hand around her wrist before her claws reach me.

Arisa jerks to a stop. Shock freezes across her face as my fingers tighten and the bones beneath them begin to creak.

“What’s wrong?” I ask. “You were doing so well.”

She slashes at my hand with her free claws, carving shallow grooves into the armor without loosening my grip.

I swing with another arm.

Arisa twists aside, but not fast enough. The hooked spikes along my forearm rake diagonally across her chest, tearing through her uniform and into the flesh beneath.

Blood pours down her side as she screams, flooding my nostrils with its hot, coppery smell.

The haze inside my head thickens, and every part of me turns toward her.

Arisa looks up at me, and for the first time, I see genuine fear in her eyes.

Fuck. She did not look this frightened when she faced the centipede.

Her eyes remind me of a cow waiting in a slaughterhouse chute, staring blankly as the animals ahead disappear one by one, already sensing what waits for it at the end of the line.

At the time, I felt bad for those cows. Now I know what it feels like to be waiting at the other end of the corridor.

Life is much kinder when you are the one holding the knife.

Arisa wrenches against my grip, but I only squeeze harder. A sharp crack cuts through the classroom, followed by a shriek as she claws uselessly at my fingers with her free hand.

A few students cry out and stumble backward, retreating deeper into the classroom.

Of course they do.

They are finally beginning to understand which one of us they should be afraid of.

I stare down at Arisa struggling in my grip.

“You look much smaller from up here.”

Arisa ducks, plants one foot against my chest, and twists through the air. Her heel crashes into the side of my head hard enough to wrench my skull sideways.

I barely feel it. The armour absorbs the full impact.

She lands badly, still trapped by the wrist, and the sudden drop yanks her shoulder backward at an unnatural angle.

A laugh bursts out of me, louder than I intended and not entirely human.

“If I’d known all of you were this fucking weak, I would have killed you all years ago.”

A few days ago, I was malnourished enough to lose a fight against a determined child. That version of me already feels distant, reduced to the faint outline of someone I used to be.

Now I am strong.

Strong enough to hold Arisa in place no matter how violently she struggles. Strong enough to wipe the smile from Sophie’s face.

Even Yashiro is watching me now, her usual boredom sharpened into wary calculation as Arisa hangs helplessly from my grip. For once, nobody in this room looks untouchable.

Maybe not even Miss Maevis.

The fear I carried for years suddenly seems almost foolish.

Arisa’s wrist buckles beneath my fingers, and her scream breaks into a raw, strangled sound. She claws at my hand with her free one while tears spill down her cheeks and blood from the gash across her chest patters steadily onto the floor.

I watch her face and realize I could still let go.

If I stop now, I can claim self-defense. She attacked me. Blinded me. Tore open my stomach in front of the entire class and tried to kill me.

No one could blame me for fighting back.

Then her eyes flick toward Yashiro, as though she is still waiting for someone to put me back in my place.

My fingers tighten.

The last of the defiance drains from Arisa’s face.

Much better.

I had only planned to beat her until she stopped moving. Nothing permanent. Just enough to make sure everyone in the room knew there were consequences for messing with me, heh, that’s what you ge–

Before I can finish the thought, Arisa throws herself at my leg and drives her free hand toward the softer seam above my knee.

This time, her claws punch through.

Pain tears up my leg as my knee buckles beneath me. Arisa sees me falter, and hope flashes across her face.

It lasts less than a second before my body reacts.

Muscle surges around the wound, tightening around Arisa’s claws before she can pull them free. Bone grinds beneath it as my thigh swells unevenly around her hand, layers of new flesh closing over her trapped claws until they disappear inside me.

Her smile falters.

She jerks backward, but her hand remains trapped.

Something in me goes cold.

After everything she has done, after everything I have already proven, she still smiles the instant she thinks I am weak again- as though one wound is enough to put me back in my place.

That settles it.

I swing my new arm.

The spikes slice through her wrist with so little resistance that I barely register what happened.

Then her hand hits the floor.

Arisa stumbles backward, still trying to wrench herself free before she realizes there is nothing left connecting her to me. She stares at the hand on the floor before her gaze settles on the blood pouring from her wrist.

For a moment nobody dares to make a move.

A broken howl tears out of Arisa, and the rest of the room seems to break with her. Several students scream, while near the back, a pale-faced girl staggers away from her desk, doubles over, and vomits onto the floor.

The whole room erupts into chaos. Suddenly, everyone bolts for the door at once, knocking over chairs and crushing into one another in their desperate bid to escape.

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