Fwah! A fresh new morning after a good night’s rest!

There are no windows in Curse Ward so there's no way of truly telling when ‘morning’ is but sunlight is a relatively new phenomenon to me anyway. In the Underground, ‘morning’ was just whenever Mom decided to wake us up. It seems in here, morning is whenever the weird lights in the ceiling come back on.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Mei-Mei asks, standing over me with an annoyed look on her face. She always looks annoyed so it’s probably no big deal.

“Fweh? Push-ups! Want to join me?”

Right now, I’m in the middle of my morning workout—push-ups. A classic!

“I see...” she says, before pointing up to Bran who’s currently standing on top of my back as I continue my workout. “And what about you?”

“Hm? Me? Oh...” Bran starts from atop my back. “Pepper said she was looking around for ‘dead weight that nobody needs’ so she can use it for her workout and... Yeah...”

“I see, I see...” Mei-Mei nods along, before pointing up to the cute wolfgirl sitting on top of Bran’s shoulders. “And you?”

“Eh? A-ah...” Biscuit stutters from atop her high seat, slowly bobbing up and down with each one of my push-ups. “E-everyone was having fun together here and... Mm...”

“I see, I see, I see...” Mei-Mei nods, still clearly annoyed. “And what about the tree?” she asks, pointing to the tree in the corner of the room.

“...”

It doesn’t respond. It’s just a tree.

“Most importantly though...” Mei-Mei sighs. She suddenly raises her foot as high as she can and then slams it down on the back of my head with as much force as somebody of her size can muster.

“Why are you all in my cell?!” she screams.

Right now, Bran and Biscuit are assisting me as I perform my morning workout in Mei-Mei’s cell. The tree is here too for some reason. Since the whole Curse Ward gang is gathered together in her cell, it’s been pretty lively in here.

“Well, it couldn’t be helped. It had to be here.” I reply calmly.

“Why?!” she snaps back.

“Because Bran’s cell was too stinky.”

...

For some reason, Mei-Mei and Bran both attempt to stomp my head into the floor as I continue finishing off the rest of my set. I’m not really sure what I said to annoy them so much...

After enduring a torrent of physical and verbal abuse from an enraged human-dwarf combo, I successfully finish my workout and sprawl out on the cool floor in satisfaction while the others idle around the small room in a similar fashion. As much as Mei-Mei complains about it, I guess we’re still allowed to hang out in here after all.

“So?” she eventually says, looking over to me. “You’ve got one too, right? A Curse?”

Bran and Biscuit pause their boisterous game of thumb war to look over out of curiosity. It must have been a question that was sitting on everybody else’s minds as well.

Mei-Mei, who became a living corpse. Biscuit, who becomes forgotten the moment she leaves a room. The tree, who is a tree. And Bran, who... Actually, I don’t really understand what’s wrong with Bran.

Everyone in Curse Ward has their own Curse to deal with. I guess I haven’t shown them mine yet, have I?

“Fwah! That reminds me!”

I jump to my feet and rush over to my cell. A few seconds later, I return carrying a heapful of clothes in my arms and dump them on the floor. The others look on curiously as I spread them out across Mei-Mei’s cell.

"Oh!" Biscuit immediately jumps into the pile, digging out a cute, frilly dress and holding it up to me.

“C-can I try this on?” she stammers excitedly.

The clothes she’s wearing now are plain and ragged. A single oversized grey shirt that reaches down past her knees. Not something a cute girl should be wearing at all!

“Mm! It’s yours!” I give her a thumbs up.

“Eh? I-is that really okay? I’m really allowed?” She looks over at Bran who just shrugs.

Hugging the cloth to her chest and quickly running out of the room, she comes back shortly after, lightly twirling the hem of her new dress.

“H-how does it look?” she asks shyly.

Me, Bran, and Mei-Mei all look at each other, nod, and then shoot Biscuit a thumbs up in response. Tail wagging furiously behind her, she jumps back into the pile of clothes, beaming happily.

“Hmm...” Bran pokes around with half-interest through the clothes. I only really want to see cute girls in cute clothes but I guess it’s okay if Bran picks something too. Bran’s alright. I was planning on snapping one of his ribs later for every time he stomped on my head with Mei-Mei earlier but I think I’ll let it slide. For now.

“Oh? I kind of like this...” Bran picks out a plain-looking pair of pants and jacket. It looks like something easy to run and move around in, or—in Bran’s case—something a shut-in might wear to laze around the house in.

He leaves and comes back shortly after, wearing what he picked out and looking weirdly bashful for some reason.

“H-how does it look?” he asks shyly.

Me and Mei-Mei look at each other, nod, and begin throwing shoes and heavy balled-up clothes at him in response—much to his complaints. Biscuit is too absorbed in picking out clothes to even notice the commotion.

“Hmm. I’ve never seen clothes like this before. Where did you find them?” Mei-Mei asks.

“Before that... Try this one!”

Mei-Mei prods the clothes suspiciously and I toss her something from the pile before answering her questions. First and foremost, cute girls should be wearing cute clothes!

“Look. Pointless things like style and fashion aren’t something I’m really... Hm?” Mei-Mei pauses to look at the thing I tossed her—a long white coat, as long as a robe. It looks like something somebody smart might wear. Like a doctor or something. It’s much too big for her and the sleeves are far too long but those are things that can be fixed easily enough. It suits her!

“W-well, I suppose if you’re going to be so insistent then I guess I have no choice but to wear it. And with all these pockets, I would be wearing it purely for practical reasons... Yes.” Looking uncharacteristically bashful, Mei-Mei continues to admire her new coat while awkwardly feigning indifference towards it.

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After having fun picking through clothes with everybody, Mei-Mei eventually pushes the unanswered question back to the forefront.

“So?” she asks. “Where did this come from?”

“Fwah! Well...”

I explain to the three of them about my Curse and my bizarre ability to vomit strange objects from another world. I tell them about how the clothes they were picking through were a product of that Curse and I had thrown them up earlier while alone in my cell. Mei-Mei and Biscuit listen on with interest while Bran makes a sour face and begins to undress for some reason.

“Hmm. So it’s not just clothes then? And the objects are random every time? So where are all the things that aren’t clothes?”

As Mei-Mei asks that, I feel the hold on my ability slip and I cough out a strange metallic object onto the floor in front of everybody. Mei-Mei picks it up, wipes it down with her sleeve, and examines it with keen fascination.

“Ah, I usually just send this weird stuff back in again. I don’t know what it is so better there than here, I figure.”

Mei-Mei taps and fiddles with the object in her hands. It suddenly lights up and begins displaying strange, colourful images on its surface. Mei-Mei’s face lights up almost as much as the strange device.

“Keh-heh! This is crazy... I have to study this! I can, right? You have no objections to me keeping this, right?”

“Sure. I don’t want it.” I shrug.

I don’t want it. And giving it to Mei-Mei sure beats swallowing it back down again.

“From now on, if anything else strange comes out I want you to bring it straight to me! In fact, bring it all to me! Everything! Understand?”

“Mm! Understood!”

“Keh-heh! If I open this up, I can poke around inside and... Keh-heh-heh!”

Giving her a double thumbs up, I leave Mei-Mei alone to play with her weird new toy as she cackles to herself. Biscuit is still happily digging through cute clothes and pretty dresses, while Bran is...

“Bran...” I lightly place a hand on his shoulder. “Why are you naked?”

Mumbling to himself as usual, Bran is sitting with his back to the wall, looking somewhat disturbed. For some reason, at some point during the explanation of my Curse, Bran had decided to take off all but his underpants.

Gently patting him on the shoulder, I speak to Bran in a gentle voice.

“I understand the feeling of wanting to strip off and be naked all the time. I get it. I really do. But this is a girl’s room, Bran. You can’t strip in a girl’s room. That’s sexual harassment. You can go to jail for that, you know? Sexual harassment.”

“I’m the one being harassed right now!” he complains, slapping my hand away. “Don’t touch me, vomit woman! I was wondering why these clothes were all so damp... Dammit, If I have to be covered in a girl’s bodily fluids, I want her to at least be a little bit cute!”

...

“Say, Bran?”

“Ugh... What?”

“I’m curious. How many ribs does a human have?”

“Eh? I, uh... Twenty-something, I think? Why?

“Twenty huh? Ah, no reason. Don’t worry about it.”

“O-okay? Sure...”

----------------------------------------

Our fun and uneventful days quickly drift into weeks here inside the Curse Ward...

I wonder how much longer they’ll be keeping me in here. How long is a sexual harassment sentence anyway? I tried asking Mei-Mei but she just scoffed and told me that we were never being let out of this place. I also tried asking the guards through the door and was told that nobody is to leave or enter Curse Ward without express permission from the Warden himself. It’s thanks to that rule that there’s been no guards around and we’ve been allowed to wander about the prison wing as we like. All food and daily necessities are delivered through a small hatch at the entrance so not a single guard has ever had to step a single foot inside this place at all.

With thoughts of delicious packaged goods on my mind, me and Biscuit sort through today's food drop-off. Usually, she and Bran would do this together but Bran has been mostly bedridden these past couple of weeks due to seven of his ribs mysteriously shattering in the night somehow.

“Fwah... I wish they’d send more meat. I don’t think I’ve been getting enough protein lately...”

“Meat would be n-nice. Mm.”

Biscuit nods in agreement as she happily picks out and collects all the cups of pudding.

What’s the deal with the pudding anyway? Why do they keep sending so many? Is there someone on the Surstrom Spire kitchen crew whose job is to just constantly pump out pudding all day?

“Fwah! I forgot to ask the guards if I could send that letter to Mom! I bet she’d be pretty worried by now.”

I look over at Biscuit as she tries to gather up all the tubs of pudding in her small arms.

“How about your mom?” I ask. “Do you need to send a letter too? We can ask Mei-Mei to help you write one as well. We can send them both together!”

“Ah... I don’t have... I’ve never met...” A lonely expression passes Biscuit’s face before she quickly hides it behind the stacks of pudding in her arms. “A-after I was born, I think she probably... forgot.”

“Oh... What about the other one? The man one? Your, uh... dad! What about your dad? You guys have those, right? I don’t know if you guys have those.”

As a demon, we don’t really have male parents like I assume other races do. A demon will go out, devour some random guy, and spit out a baby demon shortly after. We call those random guys ‘seed origins’ but they’re not family to us though. They’re dead and eaten long before the baby ever comes out.

“My dad... hates me.” Biscuit replies, still hiding her face.

“O-oh...”

It didn’t even occur to me that a parent could hate their child. I guess every family is different and not all of them can be as close as my mom and sisters are to me...

“Well...” Scooping up the downcast little wolf girl, I rest her atop my shoulders. “Let’s go do something fun!”

“Mm!”

She instantly cheers up again at my proposal.

Shortly after...

... We find Bran in the bathroom, complaining about something again for some reason.

“I said I can do it myself! I’ve already triggered the bathroom event flag before! I don’t want to do it again! I don’t need you two here! Especially Pepper! Biscuit is fine but I don’t want that gorilla anywhere near—! Ow, ow, ow, stop! Stop!”

Bran tries to pull the stall door shut but me and Biscuit continue to force it open.

“Gorilla? Don’t worry! There’s no gorillas out here, Bran! It’s just us two dynamite beauties trying to help out a friend in need! Right, Biscuit?”

“Mm!”

Biscuit nods as she pushes the door back against the struggling Bran. The ‘something fun’ we chose to do is harass Bran while he’s in the bathroom. Harassing Bran has quickly become a fun pastime for the residents of the Curse Ward.

In this particular case, we’re using the pretence of his mysterious rib injury to ‘help’ him use the bathroom. I think Biscuit is genuinely trying her best to help him though, whereas I just think it’s funny to mess with him.

“I don’t need help! It only hurts when I laugh, cry, lie down, breathe, move around, cry, and be forced to play tug-of-door with some meathead with no respect for privacy! I can use the bathroom on my— Ah!”

I punch a hole through the door. Gripping it from inside, I tear it off its hinges and toss it to the side.

“Why?! What do you have against bathroom doors?!”

After much complaining, Bran decides he doesn't need to use the bathroom anymore and returns to his bed. I guess he'll just hold it in until he figures we've moved on to doing something more entertaining.

And just like that, another fun and uneventful day in the Curse Ward passes us by...

...

Recently, I’ve noticed Bran has started to hoard empty bottles in his room for some reason. I’ve also noticed Bran’s room has started to stink even more too...

Probably just a coincidence.