Yurui The Cursed One

The warmth slowly faded from her expression as she walked.

Unlike Alysa, most of the Ninth lived together in shared quarters whenever they were stationed at main HQ. At first, some officers preferred private accommodation, but over time the squad had turned the dorms into something closer to a communal living space.

Personally, Uden had never understood the appeal. Too much noise, too many people, and nowhere to disappear when you wanted a few quiet hours to yourself. It wasn't as though they lacked alternatives either. Even regular agents were entitled to their own private apartments, modest, but modern and perfectly comfortable. Still, if living together helped the squad bond, Uden saw no reason to interfere. She didn't have to understand the appeal for it to work for them. It’s not like it had any effect on her personal living situation.

Tonight, however, the room beyond the door was unusually silent.

Uden eased the door open, and before she could even look inside, the heavy smell of alcohol washed over her. She wrinkled her nose as her mouth tightened.

Then the entire room came into view, and somehow it was even worse than the smell had suggested.

People were scattered everywhere. Marcus had passed out upright in a chair, head tipped back and mouth hanging open, while Narun was widely sprawled out across the entire couch. A few others had simply given up on furniture altogether and were asleep on the floor beneath blankets dragged down from the bunks.

The tables were covered in empty bottles, half-full cups, and discarded food packaging, some of it still holding leftovers.

Uden let out a deep sigh. The entire squad were nothing more than a bunch of pigs. It seems that Alysa wasn’t the only one who could use a lecture on tidiness.

Maya had fallen asleep near the far end of the room, while Oba lay passed out on the floor, his knife still resting in his hand.

Uden lingered in the doorway, taking in the mess. Under normal circumstances, the sight would have been enough to warrant waking up the entire squad this very moment and giving them an earful about keeping things clean. Marcus's loud snoring certainly wasn’t helping with the little patience that she had left.

And yet she couldn't quite bring herself to wake any of them just to chew them out over the mess.

For all the disorder, everyone looked more relaxed than Uden had seen them in a long time. Whatever tension usually followed the squad around seemed to have disappeared for the night, leaving them sprawled across the room in an unusually peaceful silence.

Uden stayed in the doorway for a while longer, watching them sleep.

She had known some of these people for years. She had trained with them, dragged them out of botched missions, sat beside their hospital beds while they recovered from injuries that had nearly killed them.

Uden had gotten to know them in ways that went far beyond rank or duty. She had made it a point to spend time with them outside the missions, learn all their quirks and personalities, and map out all the optimal ways she could better increase the squad's synergies and optimize the overall efficiency. More than anything, though, Uden had simply grown fond of them.

That had taken her by surprise. She had always considered herself something of a lone wolf, even when she belonged to a larger group. Keeping people at arm's length had come naturally to her, and for most of her life she had preferred it that way. Depending too much on others, letting them get too close, had always felt dangerously close to giving up a part of the independence she valued so much. Somewhere along the way, the Ninth had managed to slip past those walls anyway.

For all the trouble they caused her, she had never thought of them as just subordinates. They were her comrades.

The thought hit harder once Uden remembered what was waiting for her in the morning. The squad clearly believed that, one way or another, the problem with Alysa was finally about to be settled.

They were wrong.

There was no chance in hell Uden was giving Alysa up. As much as she hated even considering the alternative, if the choice truly came down to Alysa or the rest of the Ninth, then she would let the squad walk and rebuild from the ground up.

She could almost picture how the conversation had gone. Bereth would have been the one pushing the hardest, naturally. Marcus and Narun were easy enough to sway once the mood of the room started shifting, while Maya would have gone along with whatever she thought had the best chance of keeping the squad together.

Janis was less predictable, though Uden suspected the entertainment had played a larger role in most of her decisions than she would ever admit. Johan was another matter entirely. Uden had known him long enough to recognize when he was scheming, but figuring out exactly what he wanted was usually a much harder task.

Oba, at least, she could trust.

Uden exhaled quietly and loosened her grip on the door handle.

There was nothing wrong with them being angry. They had every right to disagree with how she ran things, and tomorrow she would hear them out properly. What she wasn't going to do was let an ultimatum pressure her into making a decision she knew she would regret.

She had worked too hard to reach this point to start folding the moment pressure was applied. That didn't mean she wanted to lose them. The thought of rebuilding the Ninth from scratch was unpleasant enough on its own, never mind losing people she had spent years fighting beside.

Unfortunately, wanting them to stay and needing them to stay were two very different things. If they truly intended to make her choose, then Uden would make the choice and live with whatever consequences followed. Just like she had always done. The brief recollection of the past made her squeeze out a thin smile.

She looked across the room again, her expression tightening slightly as her eyes passed over the sleeping figures. She sincerely hoped that they would be able to reach a peaceful resolution tomorrow. As unlikely as it was.

Marcus snorted in his sleep.

For some reason, that almost made her smile again.

“Idiots,” she whispered.

Then she closed the door and stepped out into the cold corridor that felt a little colder now and resumed her walk, this time, she was heading home.

Her quarters occupied several floors near the upper residential levels of the building, though calling the place quarters had always struck her as ridiculous. It was a penthouse apartment large enough that your average house could have easily fit inside the main room and still have some space left to spare. It was decorated with marble, gold trim, furnished with absurdly expensive furniture, and had entire rooms dedicated to purposes Uden still occasionally considered unnecessary. Like, who needs a vine room in their home ? Seriously, how much vine does a single person need to justify that ? And the huge wardrobe full of clothes she hasn’t worn once… Such a waste of space…

She checked the time as she entered the room.

4:35.

Uden stared at the display on her watch.

Three hours and twenty-five minutes.

She needed to be awake well before eight. Showered, dressed, fed, and sitting behind her desk before the first of the squad members arrived at her office. Preferably with enough coffee in her bloodstream to prevent her from nodding off during their little rebellion.

For now, her number one priority should have been to get as much sleep as she could so that she’d be as well rested as possible for tomorrow.

At least her body certainly thought so.

From the very moment the apartment door shut behind her, all the accumulated exhaustion hit her at once. Her legs and shoulders burned, and her bed upstairs felt as tempting as going to heaven itself.

Just as she took a single step toward it, she stopped and her eyes wandered down towards her trousers.

“You have got to be fucking kidding me.” She cursed under her breath as she stared at the annoying little crease that refused to go away.

Any rational person would ignore it and go to sleep. But Uden was not your regular person, which included sometimes not being the most rational either. Damned she may be, but she was going to get rid of that crease before she even thinks about going to sleep.

Her eyes closed for a tad bit longer than she was comfortable with, but Uden managed to snap herself out of it before she could pass out.

No. Not now. She thought to herself as she walked toward the laundry room.

The laundry room had occupied a smaller chamber at the rear of the apartment, though smaller was relative when one was talking about a room large enough to contain multiple large washing and drying machines, storage cabinets, an ironing station, and a dresser Uden could probably have rented out as a studio apartment.

She removed her trousers, changed into more comfortable casual pants, and laid the trousers carefully across the ironing board.

For a moment she just stood there and admired the expensive fabric. By now it wasn’t even that expensive considering her earnings, however, there was still something baffling about a regular piece of fabric costing more than an average person's monthly salary. She had made every single wrong choice in her growing up and somehow got rewarded for it.

Life sure had a strange sense of irony.

Uden thought to herself as she turned on the iron.

She could feel the heat slowly gathering beneath her palm.

Outside the windowless room, far below the horizon, dawn was beginning to reach Miracle City. She couldn't see it from here, but she knew the sky would already be lightening above the massive towers that were rising all around them like a forest of trees.

Three hours and change. That’s how much she had left to rest, if that.

She pressed the iron against the fabric and moved it slowly downward. Then upward, then downward, rinse and repeat until the wrinkle finally softened.

Uden adjusted the trouser leg and went over it again, just to be safe.

It was still hard to believe that in just a few hours she’s going to be handling a full-blown mutiny. It wasn’t all that bleak, though, she knew that Alysa had her back, obviously. Oba was most likely going to take her side eventually as well. She knew the man well enough by now to be able to tell. Still, two people were not enough to turn the tide even though they held a high rank. Without holding an outright majority, she could only salvage this if she held the majority of officers on her side. Maya was pretty much out of the question, as Uden couldn’t picture her ever turning against her friends. Funnily enough, that left Yurui Wells, the brand new officer, as the tiebreaker. Life truly had a strange sense of humor, leaving the fate of their entire squad in the hands of the rookie who had joined their squad only a day ago.

All she could do now was trust that Maevis’s little protege made the right choice.

Uden let out a quiet sigh and put away the iron. The crease had completely disappeared.

Just in case, she leaned closer, examined even the faintest remaining line in the fabric, and ran her hand across it just to be sure.

There.

Perfect.

Uden stared down at the trousers.

Then at the clock on the wall.

4:49.

Fourteen minutes.

She had spent fourteen precious minutes removing a wrinkle nobody else would have likely noticed or even cared about.

Uden rubbed both hands over her face.

She should have been furious with herself for wasting her precious time on something that stupid, and yet, some little part of her felt very satisfied by the extinguished imperfection.

Uden lifted the trousers from the board and inspected them beneath the light.

No wrinkles.

No creases.

Nothing out of place.

Good.

When eight o'clock came, Captain Uden would be sitting behind her desk in a flawless uniform, and whatever happened after that would happen on her terms. Her opponents would not have a single thread of weakness to grasp upon.

She switched off the light and finally headed toward bed, far later than she had originally planned for. But such was the burden of commander.

The thought almost made her laugh.

Almost.

She was too tired to laugh, so she settled for a wide smile instead.