Yurui The Cursed One

For a heartbeat, I do not understand what I am seeing.

The room has folded in on itself. Chairs lie overturned. Desks have been shoved into crooked barricades. People crouch beneath them, hands clamped over their mouths, as if staying quiet might make them invisible. The walls are split with long black cracks where the creature’s bulk has pressed against the building, and dust drifts down from the ceiling like ash. No one breathes. No one moves. No one, except Miss Maevis.

She steps out from behind her desk with the calm, deliberate grace of someone crossing a garden path. Her shoes crunch over broken glass. The sound should have been lost beneath the monster’s rumbling growl, but the room had gone so terribly quiet that every step Miss Maevis took rang out clearly. Most of the students must have found it comforting.

I didn’t. I was rooting for the monster.

“Miss Maevis,” someone whispers.

She does not turn.

Kamila is the first idiot to stand up. Not to help, obviously. She has her phone raised before the rest of us have even understood what we’re looking at.

“You have got to be kidding me,” Sophia hisses as Kamila lifts her phone with shaking hands, camera already pointed toward the monster pushing through the ceiling. “Get away from it!”

Kamila ignores her completely. The screen’s glow reflects in her wide eyes as she stumbles closer, between overturned desks, trying to get a clear shot of the centipede’s head as it forces its way into the room.

“Oh my God,” she breathes. “Oh my God, this is insane—”

“Kamila!” Sophia grabs at the back of her sleeve. “Are you actually stupid?!”

Kamila jerks away hard enough to nearly lose balance. “Don’t touch me! This’ll go viral in like ten minutes!”

Another section of the ceiling caves inward with a deafening crack. The centipede’s head lowers. Several eyes shift at once, straight toward her.

The room changes instantly. People start screaming at her to move. Someone ducks beneath a desk. Sophia’s face drains of color. Sophie tries to look calm, but beneath the desk, her foot keeps striking the floor in small, frantic beats. Kamila freezes there with the phone still raised, too stupid to understand what is happening until the monster’s whiskers begin curling toward her through the dust.

Kamila has spent so much of her life watching the world through a screen that, for one fatal second, she forgets that her phone is the only thing standing between her and the monster.

Then one of its whiskers brushes her cheek. Miss Maevis turns, and for the first time since the creature appeared, actual fury flashes across her face.

“Back to your seat,” she says.

Kamila stares at her. Then at the monster. Then back at her phone. “I-I just need one second—”

Maevis’s expression darkens into something genuinely murderous. “I said move.”

Kamila finally understands why everyone else has been screaming at her. She turns to run, but the centipede is faster. Sophia screams and shoves her sideways with both hands hard enough to send the phone flying across the floor. Kamila falls badly, smashing shoulder-first into a desk.

The monster’s jaws snap shut where her head had been a heartbeat earlier. Wood explodes inward. Metal shrieks. The entire front half of the desk disappears into its mouth. Kamila lets out a raw, panicked shriek and scrambles backward across the floor so fast she nearly loses one of her shoes. The centipede lunges after her, its massive body moving with horrifying speed.

“Stop.”

Yashiro’s voice cracks through the room like a gunshot. Every muscle in my body locks instantly.

The centipede freezes mid-lunge. Its whiskers hang suspended inches from Kamila’s face. For one endless second, nobody moves. A thin line of blood trails from Yashiro’s nose. Then the creature convulses violently. The command is already breaking.

Yashiro’s eyes snap toward Kamila. “Move.”

The word hits the room like a physical blow. Kamila jerks violently, joints bending at stiff, unnatural angles, like a doll yanked by invisible strings. After a momentary pause, she starts moving away, her body twisting with each motion, stiff and graceless, as if Yashiro’s voice had reached all the way into her soul and stripped every last thread of her own will.

My mind pauses for a moment. I wonder if that is how I look whenever Yashiro uses her blessing on me. Seeing it from the outside makes my skin crawl. Kamila moves like a marionette in the hands of someone who has no idea what they are doing, her body jerking forward in sharp, uneven motions, her limbs bending at such extreme angles that it looks like they might snap and break at any moment. A chill runs down my spine.

Her legs kick backward so hard she nearly trips over herself, scrambling away. Her hands claw uselessly against the floor as the command drags her backward faster than panic alone ever could. The centipede tears free as Kamila desperately crawls away from it, its jaws slamming shut right behind her, hard enough to crater the floor and splinter the desks apart in an explosion of wood and dust.

Kamila screams. She keeps crawling long after she is safe, sobbing so hard she can barely breathe. Sophia stares at her in horror for half a second before grabbing the back of her pink sweater and hauling her farther away from the monster.

Yashiro wipes blood from beneath her nose with the back of her hand and looks down at Kamila with raw contempt. “If you stand up again, I’ll let it eat you next time,” she says coldly, no emotion in her voice.

The creature bends toward them. Its many eyes shift and blink out of rhythm. Its claws sink into the floorboards, and the wood splits beneath them. The whole room shudders. From behind one of the flipped-over desks comes a thin, helpless whimper.

Maevis doesn’t flinch. Plaster dust crunches under her shoes. White chalk powder clings to her fingers. Her face has gone blank in the way it always does when she runs out of patience. Above her, the creature lowers its head farther through the ruined ceiling.

Its whiskers pass over us, light as thread, tasting the stale classroom air, the blood drying on someone’s sleeve, the fear sweating through clothes. One brushes the hanging lights, setting them swinging. Another trails across Miss Maevis’s desk, and the wood lets out a low, creaking groan. No one dares breathe loudly.

Miss Maevis tips her head back. “Leave,” she says.

Its mouthparts twitch, making small, wet clicks. It does not back away.

A boy near the windows starts muttering a prayer under his breath. He stops when the centipede’s eyes shift toward him, each of them showing a warped reflection of his own face.

Miss Maevis’s gaze falls to the floor. The chalk lies there in pieces. She bends, gathers the fragments into her palm, and closes her fist until white powder spills between her fingers.

“I see,” she says with a cold look on her face.

Without saying another word, she climbs onto the nearest desk. There is something obscene about how calmly she does it. She steps over an open notebook, crushes a pencil case beneath her heel, and crosses from desk to desk while the whole room watches. The desks rock under her weight, but she keeps steady, moving across them with the sure-footed grace of a circus performer.

The whisker closest to her drifts against her cheek. A few students make the same thin sound at once.

Miss Maevis lifts two fingers to her mouth and wets them.

I already know what is going to happen before it happens. Most of us do. Anyone who’d paid attention in Blessing Biology knows. Even the ones who’d spent the year staring out of the windows had that lesson etched into their minds.

*******************************

Miss Maevis had brought in a frog. It was dead. Very dead. Laid out on a little metal tray, belly-up, its eyes filmed over and cloudy. She didn’t say anything. She just stood there in her white cardigan, sleeves pushed to her elbows, completely unbothered as she cut off one of its legs.

The students looked at it nervously. Maevis did not offer an explanation for what she was about to do. She had never been the sort of woman who filled silence just because it frightened other people. A few people made noises. Lysa covered her mouth, which was pretty noticeable because she was the kind of person who acted like nothing ever got to her.

Miss Maevis held up the leg between two fingers. “Behold,” she proclaimed proudly. “Even death is obsolete in front of true power.”

Then she activated her blessing.

The leg jerked. Half the room screamed. The other half went silent, holding their horror behind their teeth. The stump on it closed over. The skin tightened. Something pale began to push out where the foot had been cut away.

It grew slowly. Horrifyingly. A soft little nub of a foot pushing out, too smooth, too small. Boneless-looking. Miss Maevis watched it happen with her usual bored patience.

Soon after, the rest of the body followed. And when it was done, she dropped the thing back onto the tray. Fifteen or so seconds later, the thing flipped over and croaked. It jumped around the tray for a bit until it jumped down to the ground, and the entire class backed away and screamed in horror as the zombie frog hopped toward us.

I could see a faint smug little smile at the corners of Maevis’s mouth. I don’t think any of us will ever forget what happened that day.

*******************************

She presses her fingers to the underside of the whisker. For a heartbeat, nothing happens.

Then the flesh swells. Pale growths rise from under the black shell, each one swelling over the next, folding and deforming as more push up beneath it. A blue vein thickens, trembles, and bursts. White fluid flows from the open wound. The whisker curls violently, striking the wall hard enough to crack the plaster.

Someone screams. Miss Maevis keeps her hand pressed on the whisker.

A lump the size of an apple bulges from the damaged whisker, pulsing. Then it tears free and drops to the floor with a wet slap, rolling under a desk where it continues to twitch. The centipede jerks back, smashing another strip of roof loose. Sunlight flashes over its armor. Dust falls in silver sheets.

For a second, I think that she might have actually killed it. It stings a little seeing my champion of justice suffering like this.

But then the whisker coils against the monster’s jaw. The wound contracts. The head lowers again. The rest of the body keeps crawling. More segments pass over the broken roofline, black plates sliding after one another in a chain too long to see in full.

The wound Miss Maevis left behind is hideous. Torn flesh, leaking fluid, black skin split open around it. But on something that enormous, it barely counts as an injury. It is nothing more than a blemish on the creature’s vast body.

Miss Maevis steps down from the desk. “It won't work. The thing is too large,” she says.

No one responds.

She examines the dark fluid on her fingertips with mild annoyance, as if the monster had dirtied her on purpose. “It appears that my blessing alone won’t suffice.”

Kika stands up so suddenly that she knocks her desk over. “Then we should help,” she says.

Yashiro turns on her. “Are you deranged?”

Kika places one hand over her heart. “No. I just thought we should do something to help. We are blessed, too, you know.”

“Do something to help? There is a monster on the roof.”

“All the more reason to do something before it’s too late.”

“We are inside the school. That makes it a school’s problem.” Yashiro’s face tightens with the effort not to strangle Kika in front of the class. “Let the teacher handle it.”

“The teacher just said she can’t.”

“I said my power was insufficient,” Miss Maevis corrects her.

“Some light assistance, maybe?” Kika says. “It wouldn’t hurt. Especially since several of us are blessed, and at least one of us is bored.”

Miss Maevis turns her head just enough to glare at her. “This is not a part of the class, Miss Kika.”

Kika smiles at her. “Let's just call it a practical exercise, then.”

Yashiro stares daggers at her, clearly not too eager to fight the giant monster. Even now, with the ceiling torn open and the shadow of a giant centipede falling across her face, Kika looks strangely delighted. It is creepy how little fear there is in her. She acts as if this were nothing more than some elaborate game designed specifically for her.

Miss Maevis considers her for half a second. Then she looks over the room.

“Kika. Yashiro. Arisa.”

Yashiro grumbles. “You know, I’m not even getting paid to do this crap,” she says as she stomps her way toward Maevis.

Maevis looks at her. “Didn’t I pay you to attend class?”

She grumbles again as she nears her sister.

At the back, a chair scrapes violently and slams into the wall. “Finally,” Arisa says.

She eagerly gets to her feet. Her black suit is powdered white from the fallen plaster. She looks almost relieved, as if this is what she has been waiting for all along. Her eyes are locked on the monster, and she is smiling wide enough that the students closest to her begin backing away.

“Judy,” Miss Maevis says in a monotone voice.

Near the broken windows, Judy flinches. She is small enough to disappear in plain sight. Most people only remember she exists when she trips, stammers, or gives them some other reason to laugh. Fruit-fly blessed. A cheap little blessing, good for dodging thrown pencils and cheating on reflex tests, and not much else. Her mouth opens once. Nothing comes out.

“Leon.”

Three rows ahead of me, Leon goes still. Minor telekinesis. A phrase usually spoken with the same sympathy people reserve for chronic illness. He can move small objects if he concentrates. Books. Chalk. Pencils. Etc. Once, in the cafeteria, someone made him hold a spoon in the air until blood ran from his nose. He did it because refusing would have made him a laughingstock. Then they called him the Spoon-Bender for the rest of the year, so I suppose that didn’t work out.

He stands. His knees almost fail him before he takes a single step.

Miss Maevis’s gaze moves over the rest of us. It crosses my face without pause. Obviously, I don’t want to be picked. But it still stings, realizing you matter so little that you weren’t even a consideration.

“Anyone hiding a combat-useful blessing, stand up.”

A few students look down. One boy half-rises and immediately sits again. Miss Maevis waits.

The centipede shifts overhead. Its legs drag along the outside wall, scraping over stone, window frames, and beams. The classroom gives a slow, wounded groan around us.

No one else stands.

“Disappointing,” Miss Maevis says.

Two students begin crying harder. I almost laugh. I want to. The sound is there, crouched under my tongue. See? I want to say. Now you know. This is what it feels like to be small. To be trapped. To be scared. To know no one is coming to save you.

Miss Maevis points toward the center of the ruined classroom. “Yashiro, stay out of reach. Small commands only, and stick to the individual parts of the body. Stagger it. Delay it. Make it miss. Do not try to command the whole creature. It is too large. Your blessing will backfire, and the backlash will hurt you way more than it could ever hurt the thing.”

Yashiro says nothing, which is the closest she ever comes to obedience.

“Kika, extraction and aerial positioning. Arisa, exposed tissue only. Do not attack the armor unless you have become tired of having teeth. Judy, identify weak points. Leon, debris control and shielding.”

Leon swallows. “Miss Maevis, I don’t think I can—”

“No,” she says. “You cannot. Do it anyway.”

That shuts him up.

The centipede’s head sinks lower. Its empty eyes drift over us. From up there, we must look like ants scattered across a floor tile. Small, frantic little things. Too far beneath it to be worth paying attention to.

Miss Maevis clasps her blood-darkened hands behind her back. “I will do what I can to keep you alive,” she says. “Please do not confuse that with permission to be stupid.”

Kika laughs softly. Yashiro takes a step closer to the massive hole in the roof.

Maevis eyes her angrily. “That's far enough,” she says with a stern voice.

Yashiro gives her a sarcastic bow. She does not transform. There are no claws, no wings, no burst of light. She only stands there in her dust-covered clothes, looking up at the monster as if she were seeing it for the first time.

Then she opens her mouth.

That is where her power lies.

She lifts her chin toward the monster. “Stop.”

The word echoes slightly through the classroom walls. My heart sinks. My body knows all too well what Yashiro’s commands feel like. Just hearing her speak is enough to make me shudder. My fingers clamp around the edge of my desk. My spine straightens. The air catches halfway into my lungs, and for one sickening instant, my body instinctively obeys the command.

The centipede freezes. Its head hangs above what used to be the front row. Its mouthparts open slowly. Its whiskers hang motionless in the air. Dust settles over its horns in a pale veil.

Silence drops so hard I can hear someone’s teeth chattering. The whole room hangs there, frozen in suspense. Yashiro’s mouth curves, barely.

The rest of the centipede’s body outside the room starts moving. The head stays fixed, but the rest of it keeps moving, dragging over the roof and wrenching the neck at an angle that should have broken something. Armor plates grind together. The monster twitches for a few seconds and then starts moving again.

Yashiro’s smile disappears. She hunches slightly, arms trembling, pain tightening her face before she can hide it.

A pointy, armored leg punches through the window. Glass bursts inward. Students scream and duck. Leon throws both hands up, and three desks shriek across the floor and slam together between the window and the kids. Glass hammers into the wood instead of the students’ faces.

Leon staggers back as if he has been shoved.

Miss Maevis looks at Yashiro. “I told you to only give small commands and to focus on individual body parts.”

“I got it,” Yashiro snarls through gritted teeth.

“Then act like it.”

Kika covers a smile with her hand.

Yashiro turns her head a fraction. “Laugh again, and I will make you swallow your tongue.”

Kika smiles. “Save your strength. You’re barely managing as is. Wouldn’t want anything bad happening over there.”

Yashiro goes still. Her face hardens. Her eyes move to Kika with enough hatred to make the air tighten. Then she opens her mouth.

Maevis urgently leaps toward them.

The centipede breaks free. Its head drops.

“Move,” Miss Maevis snaps, shoving both girls out of the way.

Kika’s uniform splits down the back. Four butterfly-like wings unfold from her shoulder blades, pale and delicate, their thin veins catching the dusty light. They look absurdly pretty in the ruined classroom. Then antennae curl from her forehead, soft as threads.

The next second, she is gone.

The gust behind her sends desks skidding and flipping. She catches Yashiro around the waist and tears her out from under the descending head. The centipede hits the floor where Yashiro stood, and the blow punches through wood, tile, and concrete.

The entire room trembles. A crack races from the front of the classroom to the middle rows, splitting around chair legs and shoes. Below us, the biology lab answers with a crashing sound of breaking glass.

Kika lands near the cupboards at the back of the classroom, one arm still locked around Yashiro’s waist. For one strange second, they look like something out of a painting: dust in the air, wings half-open, Yashiro held in her arms, looking like a damsel in distress held by an angel.

My chest tightens. Which is ridiculous. Obviously. A giant centipede is trying to drive its head through the floor. The ceiling is gone. People are bleeding. I have, by any reasonable standard, better things to feel strange about. Still, my eyes keep returning to Kika’s hand resting against Yashiro’s back.

I get frustrated by how easily she touches her. By how easily Yashiro lets her.

Yashiro looks down at the hand on her waist. “Let go.”

Kika lets go at once and wipes her palm against her torn skirt, smiling as if she had touched something dirty. “There, happy now?”

The knot in my chest loosens.

Yashiro’s eyes narrow. “I could have moved on my own.”

“Of course,” Kika says condescendingly. “You were doing wonderfully over there. I’m sure you had everything under control.” She smirks, knowing she likely hit a sore spot.

Yashiro turns her head. Plaster dust whitens one side of her face; it makes her expression look even flatter than usual.

“Enough,” Miss Maevis says, cold enough to freeze both of them.

The centipede pulls its head free. Broken concrete slides from its mandibles. Its eyes shift, cluster by cluster, taking in the room again.

Judy makes a sound like she has swallowed a pin. Then her eyes change.

The pupils fracture into hundreds of tiny black points. Her gaze jitters across the monster with insect speed: head, plate, joint, membrane, leg, shadow. Thin transparent wings tremble against her back, making a faint, frantic hum.

“There,” she says with a shaky voice, pointing a finger. “Behind the head. Third plate down. When it bends, it exposes a sizeable gap under the armor.”

Arisa’s grin widens.

Her already long blond hair spills lower, the side tails brushing near her thighs. Her blunt-cut bangs grow wild, falling thick over her eyes. She smiles faintly, and two long, prickly things appear out of the corners of her lips.

The blessing comes over her like weather. Tiger-striped fur ripples down her arms and climbs her throat, vanishing beneath the torn edges of her black suit. Her jaw pushes forward. Fangs slide over her lower lip. Her nails blacken, thickening into claws. Her tail lashes once and knocks a chair sideways.

Arisa hunches forward and rolls her shoulders. A low, unpleasant growl slips from her throat as her body swells with a series of sharp pops, her shoulders widening until the seams of her suit strain.

Yashiro’s mouth tightens. She turns back to the centipede. “Bow.”

The monster’s head jerks down as if hooked from inside the skull. Its front segments buckle. Outside, the rest of the body lashes against the wall, legs gouging stone loose. The head dips just far enough to expose the layered plates behind it.

“Perfect,” Arisa says, smiling wide enough to show her fangs.

Judy points. “Now!”

Kika rises. Arisa jumps.

They meet in midair for half a heartbeat. Kika’s wings beat hard enough to send dust spinning in rings. Arisa laughs as Kika grabs the back of her suit and hurls her straight at the gap in the monster’s armor.

Arisa hits claws-first. Her hands punch deep into the gap, and black fluid splashes across the floor. The centipede convulses. She plants her feet against the armor and pulls. The membrane tears open with a wet, gristly sound. The spoiled, metallic smell follows soon after.

Around me, students gag. So do I. But my mouth keeps pulling wider until my cheeks ache. I press my lips together, and the grin pushes through anyway. I can’t make it stop.

The monster’s head is finally down. Holding it there for even a few seconds has Yashiro trembling all over, and blood starts running from her eyes and nose. Kika’s perfect wings are caked with dust. Arisa has both hands buried wrist-deep in the soft black flesh beneath its armor.

I cannot help but think that the red on Yashiro’s face contrasts really well with her pale skin and pure white hair. My heart starts beating faster.

For one brief, shining moment, they all look vulnerable.

Finally, Yashiro lets go and collapses to her knees. The head remains forced down, but the body behind it arches over the torn roof and drops through the hole from the other side. A second curve of armored body descends into the classroom behind us, legs unfolding like a row of hooked knives.

Judy reacts first. “Everyone back away!”

Leon throws up both hands. Every loose desk in the middle of the classroom tears across the floor and lifts into the air. Six desks lift. Maybe seven. Too many for him; even I can tell. They wobble in the air, crooked and shaking, just like Leon’s hands.

The centipede’s legs come down toward them. Leon shoves the desks between Judy and the strike. One leg punches straight through. Another cracks a desktop in half. The third goes right past them.

It catches Leon across the shoulder.

There is a sound like a branch snapping underfoot. A small, crunchy crack. He falls without screaming at first, as if his body needs a moment to translate what has happened. Then the blood comes, and Judy screams loud enough for both of them. From the sound of it, you'd think it was her who was getting impaled by the leg of a giant monster.

The centipede’s leg drags back. Leon snags on a splintered desk and twists before dropping beside it, face down, one arm folded at an awkward angle beneath him. He squeals in pain. Blood keeps spreading under him, crawling through the yellow knit of his sweater and dripping between the cracks in the floor tiles.

Nobody moves toward him to help.

Seeing bloodied Leon on the floor finally makes me realize the seriousness of the situation. The same Leon who sits three rows ahead of me and once got a nosebleed trying to hold a spoon with his mind for too long because someone dared him to. Now he lies face down beside a broken desk, blood soaking through his yellow knit sweater. There is so much red beneath him that it finally dawns on me that someone might actually die here.

As much as I hate the people around me, they are the only thing standing between me and the monster. That someone dying could very well be me. I cannot decide which is worse: having my life in the hands of these scumbags, or getting murdered by my knight of justice before they get the chance to save me.

Judy moves toward him, but Maevis is faster- already crouching at his side before Judy can close the distance. I do not even see her cross the room. One second she is standing there; the next, she is kneeling in the blood, pressing two fingers into the torn flesh between Leon’s neck and shoulder.

He screams. Miss Maevis does not flinch. She kneels in the blood and slaps him once across the face. The slap cuts him off. Leon chokes, eyes wide and wet.

“Breathe,” Miss Maevis says with a stern yet somewhat calming tone. “Through your nose. Slowly.”

Leon whimpers. Then he slowly pulls air in through his nose.

Something pale drifts from beneath her fingernails and dissolves into the wound. The bleeding slows. Beneath her fingers, torn muscle twitches- once, twice, like something startled awake. I watch the torn skin inch toward itself, slow and deliberate. Thin red threads stretch across the wound, drawing the edges together as if something inside her is sewing it shut.

Leon’s hand finds the floor. His fingers curl into it. He doesn’t scream, but the look of absolute agony on his face makes it very clear what he’s feeling right now.

Miss Maevis bends over him and spits directly into the wound.

I look away. Then, stupidly, I look back. I wish I hadn’t. The flesh is closing around her fingers like it wants to drag her hand inside. Leon has gone silent, way past the point of screaming. She pulls free and wipes her hand on his collar.

“You’ll live,” she says, way too calm for someone who just performed a gross medical procedure. “You’ll keep the arm, too.”

Leon lies there shaking.

“Can you stand?” Miss Maevis asks.

Leon tries. His fingers scrape weakly at the floor, but he does not get up.

Kika drops between them and the next descending leg of the monster. Her wings blur. The gust knocks papers into the air like frightened birds. She grabs Miss Maevis by the arm, catches Leon by the back of his sweater, and drags both clear as the leg punches through the floor where they were just a moment ago.

The classroom is falling apart all around us.

Arisa is still on the monster, claws buried under its armor, dragging herself along with every convulsion. She is still laughing, but there is less breath in it now.

“Man! This thing is really fucking stubborn!”

“Stop playing with it and finish it off already!” Pissed off, Yashiro shouts at her.

“I’m working on it! It just won't die!” Arisa shouts back at her as she desperately claws at the monster's flesh.

In one sudden movement, the monster swings widely to the side and throws her off its neck. Arisa hits the wall above the shattered windows hard enough to crack the concrete. For half a second, she stays there, claws embedded in the plaster, hair hanging over her face. And then her claws slip loose.

She lands badly. One knee gives under her, and she catches herself on both hands before her face hits the floor. Her left leg looks horrific. Even from across the room, I can tell it is very bad. For a second, she just stares at the bent leg.

“Ah,” she says, breathless. “That’s definitely broken.”

Miss Maevis takes a quick look at her. “If the leg is broken, sit this one out, don’t have time to heal bones right now.”

Arisa spits blood onto the floor and laughs under her breath. Her eyes are bright in a way that makes her look more excited than hurt. “You’re not very comforting.”

“I am not trying to comfort you.”

Arisa’s grin widens. Then she shifts her weight onto the other leg and throws herself back into the fight.

Kika drags students clear of falling beams. Judy screams warnings until her voice starts to break. Leon lies on the floor, white-faced and shaking, but the desks still move when he lifts his fingers. A broken desk shifts just enough to keep someone’s ribs from being crushed.

Yashiro takes a step forward. She does not try to hold the whole creature again.

“Stop.”

The head jerks still.

“Turn.”

One segment twists sideways, fighting the rest of the body.

“Down.”

The front plates buckle. None of it lasts. A heartbeat, maybe less. Then the creature tears itself free, and she has to speak again.

Blood runs from Yashiro’s nose. Red gathers at the corner of her mouth. One hand presses hard against her ribs, like she is trying to keep herself from coming apart. She catches what she can. A leg here. The head for half a breath. One curve of its spine moved in the opposite direction. Nothing major, but each time she does it, someone gets a second to escape.

I watch Yashiro bleed from the corner of her mouth and keep going. I watch Leon drag himself across the floor on one good arm, moving debris for people he barely knows. I watch Arisa fight a monster on a broken leg and laugh about it in my head. And I can’t help but think: the door is right there.

A diagonal path cuts through the overturned chairs and broken glass, straight to the exit. Between two desks, there is a gap just wide enough for me to slip through sideways. No one is watching it. They're all too busy playing heroes.

My hand tightens on the side of my desk. I could leave. I could get out of this room, and no one would be the wiser. I make sure that nobody is looking at me, and I start moving.

By now, disappearing into the room comes naturally to me. Almost like a talent. The room shakes around the monster. Dust drifts through the air. Somebody is screaming near the windows. Nobody pays attention to the quiet girl slipping between overturned desks.

I keep my head down and navigate carefully through the wreckage. One slow step after another. Around broken chairs. Around splintered wood. Past a streak of black fluid shining wetly across the floor. My side aches where they hurt me earlier this morning. Every step pulls at it. I keep moving anyway.

The door is getting closer. Not a soul so much as glances my way. Great. There is no one to stop me now.

The monster slams its head into the floor near the board. Dust bursts upward. Students scream. Kika dives in. Miss Maevis shouts out an order, but it slips past my ears. I take another step.

No one sees me. Everyone is too preoccupied with the monster to pay attention to me. For once, being invisible works in my favor.

"Stay."

Yashiro's voice catches me by the spine. My body stops. Foot half-raised over a fallen notebook. Hand braced on the edge of a desk. My lungs forget to move.

It isn't meant for me. I know that. It's aimed at the leg scything toward Arisa, at the centipede's head, tearing free of the concrete. My body obeys anyway. I’m all too used to being gripped by her voice. For a second, I belong to her.

Then it fades, leaving my heart hammering. I stumble forward and grip the desk hard enough to hurt my fingers. Yashiro does not even notice that her command caught me, too. I suppose I am still too insignificant to be worth noticing. Of course, she doesn’t. To people like Yashiro, the rest of us are just like little insects underfoot.

I force myself to breathe. The door is close enough now that I can see the dents around the handle. I take one more step.

One of the centipede's whiskers touches my cheek.

Everything in me goes still.

The damp and cold whisker gently brushes from my temple to my jaw, leaving a slick line behind. Not a strike. Not a grab. Just a careful touch, as if the thing is deciding whether I am worth eating. Its head turns toward me. The clustered eyes shift, one after another, until every one of them is looking at me.

No.

My body goes cold with a childish, useless sense of betrayal. It was supposed to be different. The monster was supposed to be honest. It was supposed to kill indiscriminately. It was not supposed to single me out.

Its mouthparts start moving. A soft clicking sound can be heard from deep inside the head, wet and almost intimate. Maybe it smells the blood on me. Maybe the old gauze. Maybe fear leaves something in the air. I do not know. I only know that it was stupid of me to expect some random monster that just crashed into my classroom to be my ultimate champion of justice. Maybe every living thing can naturally sense weakness.

Its head lowers towards me. My legs will not move. However, this time, the only thing keeping them in place is fear.

Kika slams into me from the side. The air gets knocked out of my lungs. Her arm locks around my waist, and her wings beat once, hard enough to throw dust into my face as she yanks me backward.

The centipede’s mouth snaps shut where my chest was a second ago. The desk vanishes in its mouth. Wood folds inward. Metal legs twist together with a thin, screaming scrape. The drawer bursts open and spills pencils, paper, a torn notebook—all of it dragged wetly between the black plates. A moment later, there is nothing left but splinters and one bent desk leg dropping to the floor.

Kika lands badly, taking me down with her. We skid across the floor. My shoulder clips something hard, and pain flashes behind my eyes. For a second, we stay tangled together on the floor, both breathing hard.

Kika looks down at me with an expression that hovers somewhere between amusement and disbelief. “You really were trying to sneak out.”

“I was leaving.”

“Sure you were, right into the monster's mouth.”

“Away from you.”

That actually earns a laugh out of her. Then she pushes herself upright and lets me go. I hit the floor.

The centipede lunges again.

“Stop.”

Yashiro’s voice cuts across the room. For a second, the monster obeys. Almost. Its head shudders, stalls, then forces forward again, slow and stubborn, as if dragging itself through deep water. Then, with almost no effort, it breaks free.

Yashiro’s face changes. The smugness had vanished from her face. Only fury remained.

“Stop,” she says, louder this time. Anger cracks through her voice.

Yashiro stumbles and barely catches herself, one hand braced against her knee. A long line of blood runs from her nose. The pressure in my head doubles. My ears pop. Somewhere behind me, a student retches. The monster stops inches from Kika’s wings, held there by nothing but Yashiro’s voice.

Kika glances over her shoulder. “Thank you.”

“Fuck off,” Yashiro says through her teeth.

Kika moves out of the way. The force behind Yashiro’s voice snaps.

The centipede slams down again, and this time the floor gives way. A section of the classroom collapses into the biology lab below. Desks, chairs, tiles, screaming students. Leon, still on the floor, flings one shaking hand outward. Three falling students jerk sideways in midair and crash into the edge of the remaining floor instead of dropping through.

His previously healed shoulder opens again. Blood stains his yellow sweater in a spreading bloom. Miss Maevis glances at him, only long enough to assess that he is not dying. Then she looks away.

Leon lets out a single quiet laugh. It comes out cracked and thin, tangled somewhere between pain and disbelief.

Judy crawls close to the edge of a broken desk and peers at the monster through her shattered, glittering eyes. “The cut,” she says. Her voice is almost gone. “Behind the head. It opens when Yashiro forces it down.”

Miss Maevis turns toward her. “How long?”

“Not long.” Judy swallows. “Less than a second.”

“Can it be held open?”

Judy hesitates. She looks at the monster, then at Arisa’s claws, then nods too quickly. “If the armor plate is held.”

Arisa spits a mouthful of black fluid and blood onto the floor. "I'll hold it."

"You can barely stand," Yashiro says.

"I know," she says, still grinning. "That's fine."

Kika lands hard beside them. One wing is torn near the base, shaking faintly every time she tries to hold it still. "I can carry her."

"No," Yashiro says.

Kika's expression shifts. "No?"

"You will miss."

"Say that again."

"You. Will. Miss."

The tension between them sharpens fast. Miss Maevis steps between them before either one can speak again.

“Enough. Save your bickering until after the monster is dead.”

Her voice stays calm. Both girls fall silent.

The classroom around us is almost unrecognizable. Sunlight pours through the missing roof. The blackboard hangs crooked, split through the middle, half its writing wiped away by dust and impact. A massive hole has been torn through the floor, exposing the biology lab below. I take one last look at the ruined classroom before scrambling for cover.

Miss Maevis looks at the gap behind the centipede’s head. “Open the armor there,” she says. “Wide enough for me to reach inside.”

Kika glances at the ruined whisker, still swollen and leaking. “I thought you said you couldn’t kill it.”

“Not through the armor.”

Arisa gives a weak laugh. “You’re really going inside it?”

“Yes, I’am.”

Yashiro wipes blood from her mouth with the back of her hand. “You are reaching the point where your blessing is gonna hit you back.”

“I’m fine.”

Miss Maevis looks her up and down. “You look as if you're about to collapse and die.”

“I know my limits,” Yashiro snaps, blood still wet at the corner of her mouth.

“No,” Miss Maevis says calmly. “You ignore them.”

For a second, Yashiro glares at her with open hatred in her eyes. Miss Maevis studies her for a moment, calm as ever.

“Do not try to hold the entire creature again,” she says. “Open the wound and release it.”

Yashiro’s jaw tightens. “I know how my blessing works.”

“No,” Miss Maevis replies. “You know how to force weaker things into obedience. This is beyond what your blessing can handle.”

Yashiro frowns. Miss Maevis looks her in the eyes.

“One short command. That is all. Afterward, you are done. If I hear your voice again, I will silence you myself.”

Yashiro crosses her arms and looks away without reply. For once, Kika’s smile is gone completely.

Leon pulls himself upright on shaking arms. He looks half-dead already, skin pale beneath the blood drying on his face. “I can hold it open,” he says.

Miss Maevis studies him for half a second, just long enough to decide if he can still be useful. “No,” she says at last.

Leon’s shoulders tense. For a moment, he looks really dejected.

Miss Maevis points toward the wreckage scattered across the floor. “Move the desks,” she says. “Use them to wedge the armor plate open.”

Leon swallows once and nods.

Judy raises one hand. It trembles. “I can guide them.”

Miss Maevis looks at her once. “Good. Tell him where to place them.”

The centipede rears back. Its body rises through the ruined roof, blocking the sun. For a moment, the whole room turns dark beneath it. All I can see is the underside of it: overlapping plates, hooked legs, pale seams of softer flesh between the armor. Bits of ceiling dust cling to the joints as they flex above us.

Maybe that was why I felt so betrayed when it looked at me. Because some pathetic part of me had started believing it was on my side. Not literally. I am not insane. But if it had dragged Kika screaming into the dark beneath all those legs, I think part of me would have enjoyed it.

On the other hand, the monster would not have cared either way. About justice. About cruelty. About any of it. It was just hungry. And I was nothing more but a little soft lump of flesh in front of it.

“Yashiro,” Miss Maevis calls.

Yashiro steps forward. Her shoes slide in dust and blood, but she steadies herself without looking down. The centipede’s head turns toward her.

For once, Yashiro does not look untouchable. She looks exhausted. Barely upright. Her hands tremble at her sides.

“Open,” she says, her breath coming unevenly.

The wound behind the centipede’s head jerks wider, flesh trembling as it parts against its will. Black fluid spills over the armor while the creature thrashes, already trying to close itself again.

Judy points with both hands. “There! Left side, under the plate!”

Kika launches with Arisa in her arms. Arisa’s broken leg swings uselessly as Kika carries her in. Her claws are already out. She is grinning through the pain, wide-eyed and terrified, and somehow that only seems to make her happier.

Leon lifts both hands. Broken ceiling beams grind loose from the wreckage, dragging dust and wire with them as they rise. One beam. Then another. Then a third, each crooked and trembling in the air as Leon struggles to hold them there.

The centipede thrashes harder.

“Hold,” Yashiro says.

The word cuts through the room like a blade. The centipede stalls. The students freeze. My own breath stops halfway in my chest.

Kika was the first to move. She cuts through the dust with Arisa in her arms, wings beating unevenly, one torn edge shaking apart in the air. At the last second, she twists and drops Arisa straight onto the opening.

Arisa hits claws-first. The impact snaps through her whole body. She cries out, but her hands stay where they are, claws buried under the edge of the armor.

“Leon!” Judy cries.

Leon slams a beam into the gap. It wedges under the plate with a crack. The second follows.

The monster bucks hard enough to make the building groan. Blood runs from Leon’s nose again. The third beam slips wide, spinning toward Kika. Kika folds one wing and drops under it.

“Sorry,” Leon chokes.

“Save your apologies for later!” Judy snaps. “Left. Left! Go left!”

Yashiro’s voice cuts through the room again. “Bend.”

Blood runs over her lower lip. The wound gives another inch.

Arisa pulls. Kika catches the back of her suit and pulls too, wings snapping unevenly behind her. Across the room, Leon forces the beams deeper into the gap, shaking so badly I can hear his teeth click.

The plate lifts. Just barely.

Miss Maevis breaks into a run before the gap has fully opened. She cuts across the classroom in a blur of torn cardigan and powdered dust, shoes slamming against broken tile hard enough to echo. Desks scrape aside beneath her hands. A hanging cable whips across her shoulder and snaps. She doesn’t slow down and keeps running.

The centipede convulses. The opening begins to close again. A leg spears down toward her.

Leon throws a desk into its path. The leg punches through it like wet cardboard.

But it is enough. The leg veers off-course and punches through the floor beside Miss Maevis instead of going through her chest. She continues running without looking back at him.

She plants one foot on the leg punched through the floor and launches herself upward. Kika catches her wrist and drags her the last few feet to the wound.

For a second, Miss Maevis hangs beside Arisa, one hand braced against the black armor, the other poised above the open wound. The centipede’s body jerks violently. Its mouth opens. A shrill sound spills out, thin as metal scraping glass.

Miss Maevis pushes her arm into the wound.

Black fluid gushes over her hand and runs down her sleeve. It splatters across her cardigan and face, but Miss Maevis only leans farther in, braced against the creature, fingers working blindly inside the wound.

Arisa stares at her from inches away, grin cracking at the edges. “Oh…” She laughs once, breathless and strained. “That looks much worse from up close.”

Maevis ignores her completely. The flesh around her hand begins to grow. At first, it appeared as if the wound was healing. In its own fucked up way. Pale tissue rushes to close the wound with horrible efficiency. Flesh piles over flesh. Veins burst. The armor around the opening bulges as if something inside is pushing to get out.

The centipede shrieks. Miss Maevis keeps her arm buried in the wound, deep enough that the torn flesh closes around her forearm. Calm as ever, she stands there while the creature’s own body turns against it.

The front legs lock first. Then the pair behind them. Then the next. The stiffness runs down its body in a terrible wave. The centipede arches over the classroom, every segment pulling tight. Armor plates crack as the flesh beneath them swells. Its mouthparts snap open and shut, spraying black fluid across the broken floor.

Yashiro drops to one knee. A large amount of blood rushes out from her nose and eyes and splashes on the ground. Her blessing gives out completely.

The centipede twists free. One leg catches Kika’s wing and rips through the membrane.

Kika screams.

The sound comes out raw and ugly, stripped of all her usual composure. Arisa sinks her teeth into the leg that caught Kika’s wing.

The monster bucks. Kika falls. Miss Maevis pulls free and goes after her. Arisa’s claws scrape once against the armor, then lose their grip. All three drop toward the broken floor.

Leon throws both hands up. Their fall slows, but only barely. Enough to keep them alive, not enough to spare them from serious injuries.

“No,” he says with a look of horror in his eyes, but his voice comes out weak, almost swallowed by the noise of screaming people falling and the screech of the centipede.

Kika falls first, skidding across the floor with one wing twisted under her. Miss Maevis drops to one knee hard enough to crack tile. Arisa crashes through a heap of broken desks, starts laughing before she has even stopped moving, then folds over and spits blood between her hands.

The centipede slams its head into the wall. Stone cracks. Whatever Miss Maevis started inside it keeps spreading. The armor swells in uneven ridges, pulsing from underneath. The first segments split. Then they cave in on themselves. Its legs draw inward against its body, twitching helplessly.

Judy stumbles back, hands still trembling in the air. “It’s dying.”

No one cheers. We only stare, waiting to see how much damage it can still inflict before it finally dies.

Then the creature slams sideways into the wall. The classroom jolts hard enough to throw people off their feet. Windows burst. The outer wall bends inward with a deep, grinding crack. For one second, I see it clearly: the academy coming down in pieces, floor by floor. Under enough pressure, even all that polished wealth cracks like cheap plaster.

The thought almost makes me laugh. Miss Maevis gets to her feet. “Kika.”

Kika pushes herself up slowly. One wing hangs behind her in torn strips, too damaged to fold properly. Her face is pale beneath the dust. “Still here.”

“Left side. The floor’s too damaged. Get everyone clear.”

Kika lets out a thin, exhausted breath. “Working on it.”

She staggers once, catches herself, then launches low across the room. Her good wings beat hard to compensate for the ruined one that trails uselessly through the air behind her.

“Leon.”

He is on his knees, blood dripping from his nose onto his sweater. He looks up, his eyes full of dread. A ceiling beam comes loose overhead. It twists and descends slowly as students beneath it watch with wide eyes.

Leon’s face breaks. “I can’t.”

Miss Maevis does not relent. “Three seconds.”

“I can’t,” he replies with a shaky voice.

“Then make it two.”

His hands rise, trembling. Leon’s arms shake violently. Blood runs over his mouth. He looks like he might fold in half, but the beam holds.

“One,” Miss Maevis starts counting.

Nobody waits for her to continue. Students crawl, stumble, and drag one another out of the trajectory of the falling beam.

“Two.”

Judy seizes a boy by the collar and hauls him backward hard enough that he falls on top of her.

“Three.”

Leon’s arms buckle. The beam comes down. It hits where they were a second ago, and the room disappears into dust.

For a while, I cannot see anything. I can only hear the building breaking.

Moments later, the sounds of the aftermath of carnage fill the room. Coughing. Crying. The deep, wet grinding noise of the centipede tearing itself apart somewhere beyond the haze. Kika is somewhere nearby, speaking in a strained sweet voice. Arisa switching between laughing and swearing. Judy sobbing in short, furious bursts. Yashiro coughing blood and telling someone, very sternly, not to touch her.

I stay where I am. Dust coats my tongue. My eyes burn. The side of my face is cold where the whisker touched me.

The centipede convulses one last time. Its head drops through the broken floor into the biology lab below. The impact shakes the building down to its foundations. The rest of the body follows in sections. Armor scrapes over stone. Legs curl inward. Segments slide, twitch, settle. Black fluid pours through the cracks and drips into the ruined room beneath us.

Then the thing goes still.

Tension freezes the room. You could hear small debris hitting the floor. Drawn-out silence follows. The classroom looks ruined beyond recognition. Sunlight spills through the torn roof, dust drifts down, and dark blood dries across the broken floor. A wave of relief washes through the room.

One student starts crying. Then another. Soon, the whole room breaks open with sobs, shaky laughter, and names echoing through the wreckage as everyone searches for survivors.

Kika sits against a collapsed desk, her ruined wing gathered awkwardly in her lap. She keeps her jaw tight, but even the smallest movement makes her wince.

Arisa lies flat on her back nearby, one leg bent wrong, staring up at the sky through the hole in the ceiling. “That,” she says weakly, “was incredible.” She looks like an athlete who just finished a marathon. Beat down but oddly satisfied.

Yashiro wipes blood from her mouth with the back of her hand. “You look like you enjoyed that.”

Arisa grins. “A little.”

“You nearly died.”

Arisa’s grin widens. “That was the fun part.”

Yashiro frowns at her. “You are messed up.”

Arisa smiles weakly. “Aren’t we all?”

Kika laughs once and immediately regrets it as pain twists across her face. Yashiro looks away without saying a word. Back to her usual cold demeanor.

Nearby, Judy kneels beside Leon, both hands pressed over her mouth. Miss Maevis is working on his shoulder again. Leon lies still, gray-faced and barely awake.

“Stop shaking,” Maevis tells him calmly.

“I’m trying,” Leon whispers.

“Then hold still.”

Leon squeezes his eyes shut and bites down hard. A small, broken sound slips out of him.

Every single pair of eyes in the room is laser-focused on them. At Kika, cradling her torn wing in her lap. At Arisa’s claws, still dirtied with the monster’s blood. At Yashiro, kneeling in the dust with blood on her chin and anger still burning in her eyes. And at Leon, pale and shaking on the floor. The same Leon, who once bled trying to hold a spoon in the air, and somehow ended up holding the ceiling long enough for people to crawl away with their lives.

I can already feel the room changing around them. Everyone is looking at them with those glimmering eyes, the way kids look at superheroes. Just when I thought there was finally some hope for equality, they went and did it again, hogging all the attention all for themselves. They already looked larger than life before, and now they just got elevated way above that even. All hope I ever had for a fair chance at life, a shot at making it in school based on my own merits, vanished just like that.

Even worse, everyone looked pretty beaten up. Sooner or later, they would need someone or something to vent their anger on. At the back of my head, I already knew that I’d be the one who’ll have to bear the brunt of it. The thought sends shivers down my spine.

I look toward the blackboard. Most of it is shattered now, but one word still survives beneath the cracks.

MIRACLE.

Of course.

The word makes something sour twist inside me. Tomorrow, people will talk about this like it was heroic. They’ll talk about how those spoiled rich scumbags saved everyone. They’ll praise them to no end.

But the truth is simple. They don’t deserve any of those praises. All of their "Accomplishments" are nothing more than a result of pure luck. And yet, no one is going to call them out on it. But that’s what it is, isn’t it? Luck wrapped up in prettier words. Lucky enough to be born with power. Lucky enough to afford miracles. Lucky enough to matter when the world falls apart around them.

People will look at them and see greatness. I look at them and can’t help but think: give anyone equal opportunities, and they’ll perform just as well as those. Give me any half-decent blessing, and I’d take care of the monster by myself in minutes. That's right. They are not special. Just a bit lucky, that's all. I can do anything they can do. Even more. Heck, maybe I’d take care of them as well while I’m at it. Killing all the birds with a single stone.

The thought hits so suddenly that it throws me off for a second. And before I can stop it—

I laugh.

Not loudly. Just one sharp sound. But in the complete silence of the ruined classroom, it might as well have been as loud as a scream.

The people nearest me go quiet. Heads start turning my way. Kika looks over first, still holding her torn wing. Then Yashiro turns, blood dark on her chin. Arisa props herself up on one elbow, suddenly much more awake.

Miss Maevis turns last. Her face stays calm, but I feel the room narrow around me the moment her eyes settle on mine. My stomach drops.

I clamp my mouth shut and squeeze my hand over it until my teeth dig into my palm. Too late. The laugh crawls back up my throat anyway, broken and ugly, slipping out between my fingers before I can crush it down.

The silence around me tightens. Nobody says anything. Yashiro stares at me with open contempt in her eyes. Kika tries to look concerned, but revulsion keeps leaking through the cracks. And Maevis- Maevis watches me as if I have just confirmed every ugly thing she ever thought about me.

“What is wrong with you?” Yashiro says slowly.

Heat crawls up my neck. “I—”

Another laugh nearly escapes me. I choke on it.

Kika sees that happen and looks at me, weirdly delighted. “Oh, wow,” she says, grinning now. “You’re worse than I thought.”

“Enough,” Miss Maevis says very sternly.

The word lands flat and cold. Arisa’s smile closes. Kika looks away. Even Yashiro stays silent. Her eyes stay on me.

“I do not have time for you right now,” Miss Maevis says. “Be quiet.”

Then she looks away and starts checking the nearest students for injuries. Just like that, I am back to being irrelevant again.

The room feels smaller now than it ever did. I looked around the ruined classroom. Even now, with plaster dust drifting through the air and half my classmates groaning in the rubble, I could feel it in my chest: that horrible little flicker of joy.

Kika was still on the floor. Her hands trembled as she brushed dust from her skirt, desperately trying to hold on to the last shred of dignity she had left. A few months ago, I would have done anything to see them like this. Broken postures. Shaking hands. Blood on expensive clothes. Brought down to the floor.

For once, they looked less like the academy’s precious little angels and more like me: dirty, shaken, and close to tears. The satisfaction of seeing them like that hit me so hard it made me dizzy. A laugh slipped out under my breath.

Kika looked up. Dust in her hair. Blood near her mouth. Horror written plainly across her face.

My smile widened.

Maevis caught the expression on my face and glared at me from across the room. I didn’t even try to hide my smile. I couldn’t hold it in anymore and burst out into an uncontrollable fit of laughter.

Maevis’s head turned toward me. The look she gave me was that of pure disgust.

“Yurui. To my office after school.”

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