Yurui The Cursed One

The most annoying thing was that she had been fair with them. Perhaps she could have been a bit more lenient, but Uden had never promised leniency. Her stance was to be firm, but fair. Rule with an iron fist, but not in a way that would cause too many grievances.

There was a difference between running a squad and running a nursery, despite Alysa occasionally appearing determined to test that distinction. She expected competence and discipline because outside the training rooms, mistakes had consequences, and those consequences more often than not were fatal.

For all her faults, Uden had never expected anything from her subordinates that she wouldn't have been willing to do herself. She could be demanding, certainly, but she had never sacrificed people for the sake of making an operation look better on paper, nor treated anyone under her command as expendable. She had buried enough subordinates over the years to know exactly where that kind of thinking led to.

In any case, whatever the squad thought of her now, Uden knew it wasn’t on her, as she had done her best to be a good captain.

Her attention wandered downward as she walked, and that was when she noticed the crease running across the thigh of her trousers.

Uden frowned at the sight of the imperfection.

It wasn't particularly noticeable, and under ordinary circumstances nobody else would have given it a second glance. Unfortunately, now that she'd seen it, she couldn't get it out of her head. She tried smoothing the fabric with two fingers as she walked, only to make herself even more conscious of the stubborn line running through otherwise perfectly pressed cloth.

A few sleepless nights and an unruly squad were no reason to forgo her standards.

With everything she had been dealing with over the past few days, Uden had most likely forgotten to iron the trousers after washing them. The realization made her frown.

Carelessness had a way of spreading if you let it. A crease in your trousers today, a forgotten report tomorrow. In her position, even small lapses could become lethal ammunition in the hands of her competition, and Uden had no intention of giving her rivals anything they could use against her.

At least it was the middle of the night. No one was around to see her looking anything less than perfect.

Uden forced her attention forward.

There was no point dwelling on it. Nobody had seen the crease, and she could deal with it before morning. That was all that mattered.

She walked just a few more steps before her eyes drifted downward again.

The crease stood out so much, the fucking thing might as well have been painted white and glowing in the dark.

Uden breathed slowly through her nose.

She had wondered before whether there was something genuinely wrong with her. Probably. It wouldn't exactly be the most shocking revelation of her life. Knowing that didn't make the crease disappear from her mind, unfortunately, and now that she'd noticed it, she could already picture herself lying in bed with her eyes closed while the exact shape of the wrinkle remained stamped behind her eyelids.

Fine. She would iron it before going to sleep.

That settled the matter. For now at least.

Uden increased her pace before her brain could start obsessing over the stupid crease on her trousers again.

As she approached the residential dorm section assigned to the Ninth squad, she considered walking past and going straight to her own quarters. She was exhausted, and every sensible part of her told her to go straight to bed. There was no real reason to keep making rounds, even more so as technically she was still on leave until morning.

And yet, she kept on walking, her feet carrying her past the main hallway as she took a turn into a smaller corridor, leading right towards Alysa’s suite.

Uden slowed down just when she neared the door. She had no intention of waking her. She only wanted to check that the idiot had actually gone to bed instead of spending another night screaming at her games until sunrise.

Uden carefully pried the door just enough to get a good look at the room. The door opened without so much as a whisper. The captain had to admit that the obscene amount of money poured into the place did not come without their share of benefits.

Most of the apartment was dark, save for a small lamp left burning near the far wall. Its dim amber light was just enough to reveal the state of the room, and Uden immediately regretted looking too closely. The mess in front of her almost gave her a stroke.

Alysa clearly hadn’t gotten the memo about the importance of keeping things tidy. Empty pizza boxes had been abandoned around the low table and across the entire room, dirty dishes crowded the kitchen counter, and pieces from some board game had spread halfway across the floor. Clothes had been discarded wherever they happened to land, including a lone sock hanging from the arm of the sofa. Uden’s eye twitched at the sight of it.

Her hands tightened. She had been through some shit in her life, seen her fair share of gore and messes she couldn’t forget no matter how hard she tried, but those were special circumstances, so to speak, in her eyes, there was no excuse to keep a fancy suite in such a sorry state. At this rate, the room was in danger of getting infested with roaches.

Uden was already wondering how long it would take to bully Alysa into cleaning the place when something in the far corner caught her attention.

Alysa herself was asleep in all her glory while sitting inside one of the enormous sitting bags, slumped far enough sideways that half her body was hanging in the air. Her head rested against the shoulder of another girl sitting beside her.

Uden recognized the newcomer after a moment.

Yurui Wells.

So this was Maevis's new officer. Uden knew next to nothing about her, but considering the glowing recommendations coming from that woman, it was difficult not to expect something extraordinary out of her.

The girl was asleep as well, her posture hardly more dignified than Alysa's. At some point during the night, the two of them appeared to have simply fallen asleep while playing, losing consciousness right where they sat as they leaned against each other. As evidenced by the open board-game box lying nearby, surrounded by a bunch of scattered pieces.

A smile tugged at Uden's mouth as she took in the sight. Of all the things she had expected to find in Alysa's room tonight, this certainly hadn't been one of them.

Uden’s eyes drifted down to the girl’s clothes, or what was left of them. Torn fabric hung loosely from her body, barely surviving whatever transformation she had gone through.

One of those, huh.

The more extreme transformation Blessings had a habit of destroying clothes almost as quickly as their owners could replace them. At least the girl had ended up in the right place for that particular problem. Security Force dealt with transformations often enough that nobody expected a uniform to last forever, which was precisely why theirs were kept simple in the first place. Comfort and freedom of movement mattered more than looking impressive, and anything that got shredded on a mission needed to be cheap and easy to replace.

Uden made a mental note to order the girl fifty spare uniforms. She would have to pull up her file in the morning and check the measurements first, preferably before ten; anything submitted later had a habit of getting pushed back a day.

Uden made a mental note to add fifty spare uniforms to tomorrow’s orders. She would need to pull the girl’s file first and check her measurements, then get the request in before ten. Leave it any later and the logistics department would probably push the order back another day, which was exactly the sort of minor inconvenience she had no intention of dealing with.

Yet another item added for tomorrow’s check list.

She eased the door a little wider, careful not to make a sound, and took another look at the two girls. They seemed remarkably comfortable around each other, especially considering how little time they could have spent together. Whatever had happened while Uden was away, at least something had gone right for a change. After the week she'd been having, she was more than willing to take that as a small victory.

Admittedly, Uden had been hesitant about bringing in someone new, even with Maevis's glowing recommendation. The Ninth was a pot already close to boiling over, and Alysa only kept turning up the heat.

It wasn't entirely her fault. Her difficult personality had a habit of pushing people away, and no amount of advice from Uden had ever seemed to change that. Eventually, she'd stopped trying to force it. Someone who had spent most of her childhood in near-total isolation wasn't going to develop normal social skills overnight. If Alysa was ever going to learn how to connect with people properly, it would have to happen naturally and at her own pace.

Yet there Alysa was, asleep against somebody who had known her for what, a day? Maevis might have accidentally accomplished in twenty-four hours what Uden had been failing to do for years.

Normally that would be irritating if it wasn’t kind of ironic, that even after all this time Maevis was still sticking it to her without even intending to do so.

She watched them for another few seconds.

Yurui shifted slightly in her sleep. Alysa made a quiet noise of protest and leaned closer without waking.

Uden's smile widened.

Maybe some fresh blood was exactly what the Ninth needed to cool things down a little.

“I better not ruin this one, as I do with all good things happening around me,” she murmured under her breath as she closed the door shut and continued making her way toward the main living quarters.