Yurui The Cursed One

I know I should say something about Kika, the homework, all of it. But what am I even supposed to say?

Hey, Miss Maevis, your sister and her friends filled my backpack with trash, threw me into a dumpster, and technically, I still have the assignment, it’s just soaked in garbage water and lying under a bush outside. Want to come dig for it with me?

No. Absolutely not.

I’m not insane enough to say any of that out loud. It would only make me more of a joke than I already am, and the mental image of asking Miss Maevis to search through trash with me for my missing assignment feels like the kind of thing that might actually get me killed. So I bite my tongue, lower my eyes, and hope that I can survive whatever punishment she bestows upon me.

She looks at the attendance sheet, then back at me.

“Miracle Academy is not interested in talent that cannot meet even the most basic expectations. Punctuality. Preparation. Composure. These are not achievements. They are the bare minimum required of anyone who expects to make something out of themselves.”

Her gaze sharpens.

“Sit down.”

Somewhere behind me, a few students murmur in agreement. No one says anything out loud. They don’t have to when Mis Maevis has already reiterated all their opinions and beliefs about me.

My new desk waits near the front of the room, buried deep among people who are already watching me. Even though it's just a few feet away, for me, with everyone staring at me, it might as well be on the other side of the world.

Still, I move. One step. Then another. Eyes down. Shoulders tight. The room seems to stretch with every step. Desks slide past. Shoes shift under chairs. Whispers rise and die before I can catch them. I keep my eyes down and pretend the only thing that exists is the empty seat waiting for me.

Just get there. Sit down. Blend in with the furniture. Disappear.

I almost made it when—

Kika steps neatly into my path, smiling like she has been waiting for me.

“I’ve got her,” she says warmly to Maevis, as if volunteering for something noble.

“That's not necessary,” I mutter.

“You look dizzy.”

“I’m not.”

“You’re very pale.”

“I said don’t—”

Kika’s fingers close around my sleeve before I can take the last step. To anyone watching, it probably looks like she’s helping me. One hand at my arm, the other against my side, guiding me toward my seat like I’m too shaken to make it there alone.

I try to shake her off, but her grip is too tight. Her thumb presses hard into my ribs. Then she shoves me. Subtly, to anyone looking from the side, it would appear as if she’s steadying me.

My feet tangle under me. The desk leaps into my vision, hard edge and polished wood, and then it hits me above the eye. Or I hit it. It happens too fast for me to notice.

The world goes white. A blank, brutal flash. My mouth snaps shut around my tongue. My knees crash into the chair. Every noise in the room disappears, and for one blank second, I think I’ve gone deaf.

Then the pain comes. Hot. Sudden. Sickening.

The classroom snaps back into place around me- the lights, the desks, the watching faces, a flurry of sounds, and I am bent over the edge of the desk, tasting blood, while Kika’s hand is still on my sleeve.

“Oh my God,” Kika says above me.

A chair scrapes across the floor as I hit it with my side. I have one hand on the desk, one on the floor. My vision is pulsing. Warm liquid is running down the side of my face. Kika is beside me in an instant, crouched low, her hand hovering near my arm in a perfect little performance of concern.

“Yurui, are you all right? You nearly fell into the desk.”

‘Nearly.’ She says it almost as if she didn’t just purposefully push me into the table.

To the left of me, someone lets out a quiet, smothered laugh. Yashiro doesn’t bother smothering hers at all. She laughs as if she just saw the funniest thing in the world. Sophia, sitting two rows behind her, looks back at her.

“She can’t even walk properly,” she pouts for a moment. “Jeez, do they not teach these slum rug rats anything at home? I’d be too embarrassed to show myself outside if I were her.”

I briefly glance their way and then turn back, ignoring them completely. I’m not going to go out of my way to make their day any better. My fingers find the place above my eye. It hurts before I even press down. A slick warmth coats my fingertips, and when I look, the answer is already there.

Blood, running hot down the side of my face.

“Sit down,” Kika says, soft enough to pass for kindness. “You are scaring people.”

I could say it. ‘She pushed me.’ I could say it loud enough for the whole class to hear. But even with blood warming the side of my face, the words fell silent before they ever reached my tongue.

She was good at this. She never used too much force. Never enough to make it obvious. Her cruelty lived in the smallest movements- a heel behind my ankle. A shoulder against mine in a crowded doorway. Fingers pressing too long at the top of a staircase. Little accidents that kept happening whenever she was close enough to touch me. And yet, no one else seemed to really take notice.

I lift my head. The classroom is full of innocent-looking faces. Too innocent. Concern arranged neatly over curiosity. Sympathy wore thin over amusement. A few students look away like they are embarrassed for me, but not before I catch the shine of amusement in their eyes.

Nobody dares to laugh first. That is the only reason the room is quiet. The pleasure is still there, hidden behind every careful expression, moving through them like a silent secret.

Maevis doesn’t come forward. She sees the blood. I know she sees it. Her eyes pause on my face for half a second too long before moving away.

“Kika,” she says, calm as ever, “there should be gauze in the side cabinet. Give her some.”

Then her gaze finds me.

“Yurui, sit down. We are not stopping the lesson for this.”

Not Are you hurt? Not Who did this? Not even Can you stand?

Just sit down.

So I do. I pull myself into the chair with blood warm against my skin and the whole class watching, and the lesson goes on as if nothing worth interrupting has happened. The cut pulses under my fingers. Blood is already slipping toward my lashes. Kika returns with a packet from the cabinet and sets it on my desk with a sympathetic little exhale.

“Press hard,” she murmurs, low enough that only I can hear. “Head wounds always look worse than they are.”

Then she straightens up, smooths her skirt, and slips back into the seat beside me, calm as if nothing had ever happened.

Maevis picks up the chalk.

“Where were we?”

Pages begin turning around me.

The room fills with the gentle rustle of paper, an ordinary sound that makes my throat tighten. The truth settles in slowly: not one person in this room cares what happens to me. I already knew that, still, I hate that it hurt.

I clumsily fumble with the gauze until the packet tears crookedly between my fingers. When I press it to my eyebrow, pain flashes so sharply my vision blurs again. I keep it there. My hand shakes. My pulse pounds against the gauze like something trapped beneath it was trying to break out of me.

The classroom smells familiar. Paper. Dust. Chalk. Wooden furniture. Expensive detergent clinging to students' clothes. For one strange second, it almost makes me nostalgic.

Before Miracle Academy, I used to love school. I really did. I was the kind of girl who studied until I could barely keep my eyes open, who treated every test like a life-changing opportunity. My grades were perfect. My dreams were embarrassingly big. I had dragged myself up from the worst school in the city and earned my place here, at the shining center of Miracle City’s education system: Miracle Academy.

I can still clearly picture the moment I opened my acceptance letter. That was one of the few happy memories I’ve made in my short life. I used to think those fancy words at the top of the acceptance letter meant I had made it.

Little did I know, but they actually meant hell. I didn’t know this place would take every bright, hopeful thing I felt about school and grind it down until I could barely remember what it had been like to want a future.

The room still has that same all-familiar smell of paper, dust, and detergent. Except now, beneath it all, a smell of blood lingers in the air. My blood.

Maevis turns to the board. The chalk screeches against the board as she writes in sharp, precise strokes.

BIRTH

MANIFESTATION

PURCHASE

She steps aside.

“We’ll return to the basics, then,” she says. “You may thank certain ‘students’ for arriving unprepared.”

A few students groan loud enough to be heard across the classroom. Angry glares turn my way. I lower my head and turn my eyes to my desk.

Maevis taps her foot against the floor in a slow, measured rhythm, clearly irritated. I lower my head until my hair falls forward, shoulders tight. The last thing I need now is to be the first thing she sees as she’s venting her irritation in public.

“Name the recognized methods through which a person may obtain a blessing.”

Several hands go up. Of course they do. No one hesitates when the answer is easy. Everyone is too eager to please Miss Maevis, hands shooting up like they’re all competing for the honor of being her favorite little brown-noser.

A boy near the back raises his hand as high as he can, spine straight, expression bright with the desperate need for approval shining on his face.

“Yes, Daito.”

“You can be born with one,” he says quickly. “Or it can manifest before eighteen. Or if you’re rich enough, you can buy one.”

Maevis looks at him.

“Licensed through Miracle Inc,” she says. “Not bought off some backdoor dealer like contraband in an alley. Blessings are highly regulated assets. If you somehow obtain one illegally thru some unofficial channels, the authorities will not admire your resourcefulness. They will detain you, interrogate you, and they’ll make sure that the next several years of your life are as miserable as possible.”

A few students laugh carefully. Maevis does not smile. She taps the third word on the board.

PURCHASE.

“Do not misunderstand the term,” Maevis says. “A blessing is not something you simply buy and walk away with. It is licensed. Registered. Monitored.”

Her eyes move over the room.

“Inheritance is straightforward, manifestation is rare, and usually messy. Licensing exists because Miracle Inc prefers powers to be kept in check.”

She turns from the board.

“Consider, for a moment, the damage that can be caused by even one undocumented blessing. Now imagine several. Unregistered. Untrained. Unmonitored. Not to mention the individuals in question may not be especially pleasant to begin with.”

Her gaze moves across the room.

“That is why naturally manifested blessings must be reported and registered immediately. Failure to do so is not a youthful mistake. It is a serious criminal offense. Prison is possible. Long-term registration as a blessed offender is almost guaranteed.”

A few students in the front row shift in their seats. Maevis notices but doesn’t heed them at all.

“This academy does not exist to celebrate potential,” she says with unchanging expression on her face. “Potential is only useful once it has been refined into something reliable.”

Her eyes move over the room.

“Miracle Inc is not interested in gifted children. It is interested in results. You are identified, tested, ranked, disciplined, and shaped until your talent can benefit the larger society.”

A pause.

“And, preferably, generate a return. Otherwise, you are just a waste of space.”

Her gaze passes over the class and lands on me just long enough to feel personal.

I keep my head down and don’t say a thing. Not that there is anything I can say, really. It pisses me off how I’m nothing but a punching bag to all these rich assholes, and that there is nothing really that I can do about it.

I can’t count how many times I’ve imagined taking revenge, flaying them alive as they scream in agony, following some of these bastards home and stabbing them in a secluded alley where no one would hear them scream, bringing a gun to school and moving down all these rich scumbags. Honestly, I had dreamed of burning the whole academy down more often than I’d like to admit.

Not in a heroic way. Not in some clean, righteous fantasy where the guilty get what they deserve, and the victim gets vindicated. Just ugly, desperate thoughts. The kind that comes when you have been cornered for too long and some part of you starts looking for any way out, even if it would ruin you. When you know you can’t win, but still want to make sure everyone else loses too.

That was the trap. The second I struck back, the story would change. They would stop being rich kids who had spent years grinding me down and become innocent victims with bright futures. I would become the thing they had always made me out to be- the violent girl from the slums, the stereotypical charity case that proved people like me don’t belong in their fancy places. The monster, finally showing her teeth.

It wouldn’t matter that they were the ones who pushed me to the brink. I would lose.

So I swallow it. I stand there and take it like I always do, because apparently “life well lived is the best revenge” is the only thing my poor ass could really look forward to. And even that was a stretch.

Rich people just love little euphemisms like that. And why wouldn’t they, when a nice and comfortable life is a given? For the rest of us, though? Where I came from, a well-lived life was usually nothing more than a pipe dream. You couldn’t really expect to build comfort out of a rotting apartment in the middle of the slums, or be happy when having to skip meals every other day.

Still, if the chance ever came to hurt them back without destroying myself in the process, I don’t think I’d hesitate. Not for a second.

Beside me, Kika has her workbook open, scribbling something with her pen. I cannot help but notice a tiny smear of my blood drying on the side of her knuckle where she must have caught it when she “helped” me up. She hasn’t bothered to wipe it off yet, and it makes her look a little deranged.

Maevis turned back to the board. The piece of chalk rested between her fingers, white dust clinging to her knuckles. For a moment, she said nothing. She only stared at the half-written list behind her, as if deciding whether to go thru with it or not. Then she set the chalk down. The sound was small. It still cut through the room.

“This year,” Maevis said, “there will be another way to earn a blessing.”

Every head perked up instantly.

Kika stopped writing so suddenly that a streak of ink bled across her page. Yashiro, who had been slouching with practiced disinterest, sat upright as if someone had pulled a string through her spine. Near the windows, one of the boys blurted out:

“Another way?”

Maevis did not look at him. She let the question hang there. Let it crawl from desk to desk. Let every student imagine, for one dizzying second, that this might be their chance. When the silence had done its work, Maevis spoke again.

“Miracle Inc has announced a new end-of-term award. The highest-ranking students in this cohort will receive top-grade blessings directly from the company.”

The room changed. No one moved, but everything sharpened. Ambition. Fear. Hunger. It gathered in the air between them as Maevis picked up the chalk and added a fourth line to the board. A wave of whispers swept through the classroom, every student leaning toward the next as excitement rippled from desk to desk.

Maevis stops writing.

“Enough,” she proclaims loudly.

The whispers cut off all at once. One moment, the classroom was buzzing with frantic little voices. The next, every mouth had snapped shut, every pair of eyes fixed on Maevis as if she had just cracked open the sky and shown us a piece of heaven.

But the silence wasn’t the same as before. Before, they had been listening quietly. Now, they stared with hunger in their eyes. I could see it on their faces. That bright, greedy shine. That sudden belief that maybe, somehow, this was the opportunity they had been waiting for, their time to shine. A blessing from Miracle Inc. A real one. The kind that could tear a life up by the roots and plant it somewhere better.

Everyone looked extremely hyped. Everyone except me, because I knew better.

Miracle Inc wouldn’t waste miracles on kids from the slums. It didn’t matter how hard we worked. It didn’t matter how high we ranked. The second one of us would get close enough to touch the prize, they’d find some loophole to hand it to anyone else. That was the way the world worked. And out there, in the slums, you learned the shape of the world early.

Maevis kept going like she hadn’t just thrown the room into chaos.

“Do not mistake it for a charity, the reward is not being offered out of kindness.”

Of course it is not. Nothing is ever free, and if something sounds too good to be true- it is. Only a complete idiot would think otherwise.

That quieted a few people.

“Miracle Inc chose this academy for a reason. They are not looking for enthusiasm. They are not moved by desperation, and they have no interest in sob stories. They are looking for competence. Talent. Students who can draw out a blessing’s full potential and turn it into something Miracle Inc can benefit from. They are looking for a return on their investment.”

Her eyes moved slowly across the room.

“From now on, everything you do matters. Your attendance. Your grades. Your conduct. How well you operate under pressure. Every detail, no matter how big or small, will be evaluated.”

Not a single person dared to whisper now.

“A top-grade blessing is not a prize they give away lightly. Miracle Inc will not waste one on someone who cannot produce results.”

Hands went up before Maevis had even finished speaking. One at first. Then three more. Then half the room seemed to come to life. Yashiro’s hand was already in the air, higher than everyone else’s. She didn’t wait to be called on.

“How many are we talking?”

Maevis continued addressing the class as though Yashiro had not interrupted. “The final number has not been announced.” She did not so much as glance her way.

For a moment, the room held still. Then the silence began to crack. A chair scraped against the floor. Someone exhaled too sharply. A whisper passed from one desk to the next. Students who had been slouching moments ago now sat upright, eyes moving, counting, calculating.

And just like that, the classroom has become a battlefield.

Yashiro’s gaze swept the rows. People she had laughed with yesterday were suddenly avoiding each other’s eyes. Friends leaned away from one another. The more confident ones smiled too calmly. Some looked smug. Even the quiet ones had gone watchful.

No one said it aloud. They didn’t need to. It was clear as day: there wouldn’t be enough for everyone.

Two rows ahead, Sophia leaned toward Kika and whispered, not quietly enough, “You’re basically guaranteed one.”

Kika’s expression barely changed. She only lowered her eyes for half a second, wearing the kind of modest smile people used when they already agreed with you but knew better than to say it out loud. She looked back at Sophia and shrugged.

“Already got one, no need to risk any complications by taking on a second blessing.”

Maevis cuts in quickly.

“Nothing is guaranteed here. Starting now, the slate is wiped clean—every one of you has an equal shot at winning. Treat this school term as if it’s the most important time of your life, because for some of you, it truly will be.”

Sophia glances my way and snorts.

“Yeah, right…”

A low rumbling sound echoes thru the school's walls. The building’s roof trembled slightly, not violently, but enough to set the suspended lights swaying on their chains.

An earthquake? No… unlikely. They don’t really happen here.

A few heads tilted upward, then drifted back down. The building, though elegant and freshly renovated, was old at its core. Our wing had been under renovation for months. There was always some machine groaning somewhere behind the walls, some distant vibration threading through the structure.

Maevis does not acknowledge it.

“I know what some of you are already imagining.

“Power beyond the limits of muscle and bone. Speed no training could ever grant. Beauty that draws every eye in the room. An influence that opens any doors. Years added to your life. A body less willing to fail. A mind others cannot dismiss.

“Those aren’t just fantasies. For some of you, those are your futures.

“Hold on to that. Because there won’t be any applause or glittering tokens waiting at the end of this term. What you’ll get is an advantage. The kind people spend their entire lives chasing.

“Some of you already know what that feels like. Some of you were born into money, fame. Others had to work their asses off to get where they are. What you have in common is that every single person here believes that they deserve more.

“Here, for once, none of it matters.

“At the end of this term, the best among you will walk away with a power that cannot be trifled with.

“Officially, no decision has been made. Nevertheless, you should assume it will go to one person.

“Just one.

“So if the thought of someone else taking it makes something twist inside you, good. Do not be embarrassed by it. Treat it as a motivation to succeed no matter what.”

A murmur of nervous whispers follows the end of her speech. Maevis gets back to her desk and sits down, looking over some papers.

My eyebrow throbs in time with my heartbeat. The gauze is already soaked through at the center. When I shift it, fresh pain flashes so hard you’d think I just got stabbed with a knife.

Kika slides her handkerchief quietly onto the edge of my desk. White linen. Embroidered corner.

“Use that instead,” she whispers. “I’d hate for you to stain your cuffs.”

I look at her. She keeps her attention fixed on the front of the room, profiling the scene.

I liked to think I was good at reading people. Not perfectly, of course. No one was. But usually, if I watched someone long enough, I could catch something: a flicker in the eyes, a tightening around the mouth…

Even with difficult cases- people like Maevis, I could sense the general outline of what they were feeling. Anger. Amusement. Contempt. Boredom. Something.

With Kika, there was nothing. Or worse, there was too much, and I couldn’t trust any of it. I could never tell where the lies ended and the truth began. Was any of her kindness real, or was it only another mask she put on when it served her? When she hurt someone, did anything in her flinch, or was that just another part of the act too?

It was frightening to imagine that everything she did- every smile, every gentle word, every wounded look, might be nothing more than a mask. But there was another possibility. A really frightening one.

That there was no mask.

It’s scary to think that Kika might be exactly what she seems to be in any given moment. That none of it is a facade. Maybe she really is just batshit insane. That possibility terrifies me more than any explanation I could come up with, so I try to push it to the back of my head.

The class is still buzzing with energy. You can feel it now in everything they do. In how quickly they write. In the way they glance at one another and then away. In the invisible columns, rearranging themselves over their heads.

Yashiro asks another question, and half the room jumps on it at once.

“Are students who’ve already been blessed still eligible?”

“Yes,” Maevis replies without looking away from her papers. “As long as they are willing to take the risk of a second blessing.”

Another hand shoots up.

“How big is the risk exactly?”

“Nothing is known for sure, but there have been reports of serious psychological and physical side effects after receiving a second blessing. If you’re found eligible, the choice is yours. You’ll have to decide whether the risk is worth it.”

Judy, a girl sitting near the back, calls out, “And how exactly do they decide whether someone’s eligible?”

Maevis glances down at her papers.

“Use your imagination.”

She turns the page.

“Don’t worry too much. If you haven’t had any noticeable side effects from your first blessing, you can count yourself eligible.”

A few people smile. Several glance at me without turning their heads.

My pulse is loud. I lower my forehead until it almost touches the desk, one hand still holding the gauze in place. The now-wet gauze is cool. That helps with the pain.

I should have been making a list. How late I was. How much trouble I was in. What Maevis was going to do with me. Whether I could still make it home before dark if she kept me too long. Whether blood came out of the fabric better with cold water or hot.

Real problems. Manageable problems. Problems that mattered here and now. There was no use tearing myself apart over some distant future when the present already had its hands around my throat. I needed to think. I needed to figure out how to survive the rest of the day before making any future plans.

Instead, my thoughts just stop. I sit there with my hands in my lap, looking at the front of the room while Maevis gathers her papers. Around me, everyone starts moving again. Chairs scrape. Someone coughs. A few people begin whispering, quiet at first, then less quiet once they realize the announcement is over.

I should move too. I should be thinking of what to say when Maevis calls me up. Whether I can say no. Whether saying no would make any difference. But I don’t get that far. I just sit there, feeling the blood dry under my collar.

Maevis office.

The thought keeps pounding in my head in a strange rhythm alongside the pain pulsing near my wounds, resulting in a rather intense headache that is strong enough to make me hunch over.

Behind me, Yashiro says, loud enough that she can’t pretend she didn’t mean me to hear, “Oh, what's wrong? Head hurts? Maybe stop trying to think so hard. Doesn’t seem like it’s helping, you'll just overload the few functioning brain cells that you have.”

The girl beside her snorts. A few people glance over. Only for a second. Long enough to check my face, then they look away again.

I keep staring ahead, pretending that I haven’t heard a thing. They know I heard her, but if I don't react, there isn’t much that they can do about it in class. So I sit still. I keep my mouth shut. And I try to breathe evenly, as if that will help me out of my current predicament.

Besides, I know I’m probably smarter than all of them put together, so the insult doesn’t land as hard as she wanted it to. It’s like being called short by someone who has to stand on a chair to look you in the eye. Embarrassing for them, mostly.

Someone behind me says, “You think they’d really waste a blessing on a scholarship charity case?”

Sophia laughs under her breath.

“Sure. Maybe they’d give her an appropriate blessing as well. Like a rat or a roach. Would suit her well.”

Laughter erupts around the room. She looks back at me.

“So what do you think, Roach? Would you like to be a rat girl? Or a roach girl? Mmm, I guess you already kind of are, but you get what I mean, right?”

Sophie and Kamila giggle like it was the funniest thing they had ever heard.

I keep staring straight ahead. Ignore them. In the classroom, they can’t do anything to me as long as I don’t respond. It isn’t much of a strategy, and I’m already sick of it, but it’s the only one I have.

Kika makes a small disapproving sound, the kind meant less for me than for everyone watching. Then she leans half an inch closer and says, in the same soft voice she used in the hall, “Keep pressure on it. You look awful.”

That almost gets me. Not the cruelty. The craftsmanship. I know she doesn’t care about me. She’s the reason I’m bleeding in the first place. And now here she is, leaning close, lowering her voice, making herself look like the only person in the room decent enough to worry.

From the outside, it must look almost touching. Kika, kind enough to defend the girl everyone else is laughing at. Kika, gentle enough to notice I’m hurt. That’s the frightening part. To anyone looking from the side, she would appear to be the kindest person ever. Which is very scary to think about.

Another tremor moves through the room, stronger this time. Desks chatter faintly against the floor. Chalk dust sifts off the tray.

A student near the windows lifts his head. “Did you feel that?”

“Eyes up front,” Maevis says sternly.

He shuts up and does as he’s told. I think his name was J.C. Or at least, that was what everyone else called him.

She turns back to the board and underlines MIRACLE INC with a neat, decisive stroke. It was strange how little the earthquake seemed to bother her. Then again, it barely counted as one, assuming that’s what it was. Maybe she was just trying to keep everyone from panicking.

“Do not confuse opportunity with affection. The academy did not open its gates because it loves you. It opened them because someone thought you might be useful. Prove them right, and you may thrive here. Prove them wrong, and every door opened for you will close just as quickly.”

There was no need to name me. I could clearly tell that this was aimed at me. Judging from everyone's looks, it would appear that everyone else did as well.

I close my eyes.

The ceiling groans overhead.

Not the quick complaint of an old building this time. A long, loaded sound, metal under strain. It runs from one end of the ceiling to the other, slow enough to feel in my teeth. As if by instinct, the whole class goes still.

Maevis looks up at last. A second groan answers the first. Heavier. Closer. The windows tremble in their frames. Fine grit rains down onto open notebooks. Somewhere above us, something scrapes across the roof in slow, grinding intervals. Everyone falls silent, as if they’ve swallowed their tongues.

Then the first scream of torn metal comes down through the beams.

My heart starts hammering, adrenaline flooding my veins. A few students squeal and shrink back in their seats. The room goes stiff from anxiety. Even Mis Maevis's gaze seemed to tighten a little.

The sound strikes so loud it feels like the building has been struck open. The hanging lights whip back and forth. Desks shriek against the floor as students scramble away from them. Above us, a seam tears across the ceiling. A crack splits across the ceiling, and daylight bursts through in a single white strip.

For a second, some part of me tries to rationalize it.

But then the roof peels upward.

Not cleanly. It tears. Beams wrench free. Plaster explodes downward in white bursts. Students scramble to their feet or duck under their desks, all of them staring at the widening gap as if staring hard enough might turn it back to normal.

Something rises beyond it.

The rest of the roof gave way one tile at a time. At first, there was only a scratching above us, faint enough to be mistaken for loose slate shifting in the wind. Then the edge of the broken roof dipped, and something black eased over it.

Not climbed. Crawled.

A leg found the stone. Then another. Then a dozen more, each one long, thin, and hooked, moving in a slow wave down the length of a body, mostly still hidden by the walls. It was only visible through the giant hole in the roof and through the windows. Its shell caught the sunlight in broken flashes, slick as spilled tar. Dust slid over it and fell in little streams.

I couldn’t take all of it in at once. My eyes kept moving from one part to another: the overlapping plates, the twitching legs, the long catfish-like whiskers combing through the air. They moved delicately, almost thoughtfully, brushing the splintered beams and sweeping the dust.

Then the head came through.

It was more terrifying than the body. Disproportionately large, broad, and plated in dark armor. Horns swept back from the skull, and between them clustered too many eyes, small and shining. Two long, catfish-like whiskers trailed from the corners of its mouth, twitching as they combed the air. Its mouth opened without a sound. The insect-like mouthparts inside moved over one another, slow and careful, like fingers testing the edge of a blade. Behind it, the rest of the creature dragged into view, long and segmented, looking horribly close to an overgrown, mutated centipede.

For a moment, it only looked down at us. Then more and more of its body kept coming, segment after segment sliding over the broken roofline. It was too large to take in all at once.

The windows rattle hard enough to crack. Someone finally let out a scream.

The students are staring at it wide-eyed, frozen from fear. Sophia has gone white. Yashiro’s mouth hangs slightly open, but no sound comes out. Maevis stands frozen beside her desk, chalk still in hand, staring at the thing as if it has personally offended her.

I start laughing.

Not loudly. Not like I find any of it funny. It just slips out of me, sharp and breathless, before I can stop it. No one turns to look. They are all staring up at the roof.

The creature’s shadow crawls over the classroom, covering the desks, the scattered notebooks, the uniforms, the blood-soaked gauze. Even the words at the very top of the board disappear under it.

MIRACLE INC.

Gone.

My head is pounding. My face feels sticky. Every breath hurts a little. This morning has gone so far beyond ruined that I’m almost numb to it all. I look up at the thing hanging over us, all legs and armor and those creepy-wet, shining eyes.

And something in me goes quiet.

It wasn’t calm. It wasn’t bravery. It felt more like my soul had simply stepped out of my body and left the rest of me behind.

Since Yashiro first said my name in the hall this morning, everything has felt wrong, my whole day was ruined. I can still feel it clearly- their voices. Their hands. Their eyes on me. The way they smiled as if none of it mattered.

But this thing is different. It stands in the open, it doesn’t wear any disguises. It doesn’t have any reason to pick on me. I don’t think it even realizes I’m the poor girl everyone else has chosen to torment. It cannot tell the difference between my classmates and me.

For the first time since entering the academy, I don’t feel any lesser than my ‘peers’. We are all equally small beneath the giant thing above us. It is just a monster. Huge. Hideous. But in a way, honest.

My laugh dies in my throat. For the first time since I came to this academy, I feel something flare up inside me. A thin, ugly little ray of hope.

Good, I think to myself.

Let it come down.

KILL THEM ALL.

The thought that this might finally end my suffering sends a sick flicker of warmth through me.

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