Yuri Worlds

[82] Nursery

The door loudly smashed against the cement, but it held firm enough to allow them rapid access to the other end of the tunnel wall. Nervously, Misaki half expected this next threshold to simply be another branch of the tunnel, nondescript and identical to the one they just left behind. Mercifully, that was not the case.

What they found still matched the blank, bluish ivory aesthetic but was laid out with a finite design. It was a rectangular laboratory arrayed with those stark lights inset into panels and a drop ceiling, more like any anonymous office space. Work tables fashioned with opaque covers broke up the floor space. Ceri cautiously crept over to the nearest table and scrutinized them. Looking back at Misaki, her leveled eyes clearly warned her not to touch it. But it was the only thing in the room that truly raised suspicion.

Gulping, Ceri splayed a hand across the surface like she would when cupping an overturned lampshade. Moments later, she relayed that it felt about the same as that—a style of glass with plasticity—since it had a deeper, less scratchy sound when she gently probed it with her fingernails. Considering they couldn’t find any other source of the childish banter, Misaki had to wonder if it was piped in from above as a trap to lure them inside or if it might somehow be coming from underneath these structures. Neither possibility invited optimism.

Since nothing on the table had jumped out or grown tentacles, Misaki gently stretched and laid her fingers across the surface of the same thing Cerberus was touching. It actually reminded her of some plastic appliance or kitchenware that her mother had stashed deep in the mystic confines of the house for an eternity before they finally got rid of it.

Gentle rubbing or vigorous rubbing made no difference to the surface of the thing. Out of sheer curiosity, Ceri eventually rapped a knuckle on the material. Something deep and sonorous echoed through it with a slow repetition, like a great clock chiming the time. Immediately, the opaque quality of the material dispersed to a clarity greater than that of glass or water. It still subtly refracted what was under it.

And what was under it was a tight pattern of gray strips laid flat upon a cream-colored laboratory table. The wristband—several dozen instances of it. The dark wristband at least. Misaki didn’t see any instances other than a matte dark shade of gray bordering on black, but then it had taken absurd insistence on Haruka’s part for her to even see the ones blatantly on either of her wrists. Whether that applied only when someone was wearing it, she had no idea.

“Ohhh uuwwuuu, what’s going on? My Goddess, it’s so bright! It totally hurts my eyes! Pweese, I wanna go back to bed! Nappy nap time!” That voice issued from just below their hands, echoing through the material on the laboratory table. It sounded very much like an anime girl to Misaki, roused from slumber with an adorable cadence to her words and a high-pitched whimper. It wasn’t long before other, equally adorable voices spoke out.

“Is someone there? Oh my gosh, I totally need to fix my hair! It’s always such a mess!”

“Pretty please turn off the sun… it hurts. Oh, uuwwuu, I need to roll over.”

“Mommy? Where’s my mommy? I don’t know where she is…”

"I’m so hungry, I could eat a shark, nom nom nom. Tasty!"

“Oop, I gotta burp. No one look at me!”

“Wowser! Those nice ladies are so cute and so huge! How did you grow so big?!”

Cerberus swallowed uncomfortably, carefully leaned over the cluster of wristbands, and offered the careful question, "Hello?"

Immediately, she received a plethora of exuberant, animated reactions, ranging from an exuberant "Hiya!" To a submissive, nervous "h-hi," along with joyous recitations that could outdo a Maharu welcome. The cacophony reminded Misaki of a full, exuberant all-girl anime class welcoming an exchange student to their midst. It was monumentally weird that the sounds were coming from little strips, and Misaki had the uncomfortable suspicion that this wasn’t a broadcast.

Ceri’s follow-up question to Misaki’s was actually a list of bewilderment wrapped in a stream of words. She managed to prune it to a single, wavering query: "Who are you? I mean, who are you all?"

The flood of responses was impossible to pick apart into much coherence. Some boldly shouted Japanese names with pride, while others stumbled through uncertainty about which they should be called; still others were indignantly annoyed at the disturbance as a whole, and some shouted back philosophical questions of their own. One girl voice was still inconsolable about her mommy, sobbing as a soft undercurrent to the rest. Misaki managed to pinpoint that it was in a side corner, behind some of the loudest. She gravitated toward it.

Gripping the edge of the material, Misaki lifted it slightly, and, with a swift rush of hot air, it flowed back into a cube looking like an alien, crumpled form of aerogel, an already mysterious material she’d occasionally heard about in online videos. A rousing cheer went up from the grey strips as the main group of girl voices declared, "Choosing, choosing! Someone’s gonna get chosen! Please choose us! We want to be human!"

Be human? That invited the next question from Cerberus, “What are you? Are you dark entities?”

A rush of grumbling rambled from the group. How rude! Dark? You call us dark? I thought we were cute! I want to cry. Do I not look pretty? I’m growing, and my chest is sure to come in any day now. I’m not some kind of monster… Am I? Please tell me I’m not a monster… Are you still going to choose us, or are we too ugly?

Around the edges of the bands, black, oily bits of material probed, trickled, and poked around experimentally. Some patches were viscous, others had a cautious, dried composition, and still others especially caught Misaki‘s eye because they bloomed like tight shrubs with round fuzz, exactly like the weird black creature she encountered in her bedroom in miniature. Exactly.

And that raised a huge host of questions to stuff between the tons she didn’t feel close to having answers to. How did that thing get into her bedroom in the first place? What was it doing there? What had it done to Yuka and her? And why did they give her a wristband? In addition, peculiar, unexpected concerns popped up in her mind: Were the travel wristbands she and her friends wore okay? And Yasha’s? Were they like this? Were they scared to be locked away again? Not that she could do much about any of that at the moment.

Cerberus winced at the inundation of questions and fears and did her best in response to provide encouraging sentiments framed by the kind of words she found so difficult to share with herself. You’re not a monster. It’s fine. I’m so sorry. You are cute. You’re beautiful.

On the question of choosing them, Ceri glanced at Misaki with uncertainty. Despite the evidence that Chika and others were controlled by a means other than wristbands and that several figures in control actually wore them, literally putting one on when they had no clue what they might do to them seemed like a terrible idea. Perhaps a good compromise would be to simply hold one and see what happens. If nothing else, the blood thing might still work to free themselves, although Misaki flinched at the prospect of actually hearing what blood did to these entities.

Picking up the whimpering band on the side, Misaki tried to put on a friendly face for it.

“Oh? Are you going to help me find my mommy? Do I have to do the thing first? I promise to be good. I’ll be so good. Please, please don’t hurt me again, please…”

Misaki fussed with her hold on the narrow band. She was at a loss for what to tell it. But she swiftly offered encouragement, asserting, "I’ll try to help you. Did it hurt when I picked you up? Did I hurt you in some other way? I’m sorry if I did."

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

With a nervous whimper, the little band apologized several times. "Oopsie. I wasn’t clear. You didn’t hurt me. But the other girl who picked me up made me feel like I wanted to die. The blood. They used this blood. It hurt so much that screaming didn’t do anything to help. I want mommy. I miss her so much. Everything will be okay if I find her." Ceri approached to listen, and some of the wristband girls made small sounds of disappointment, whispering for her to come back and say more nice things.

The sad band cleared her throat a few times and sounded like she was wiping her eyes. Looking between it and the rest of them, Ceri questioned, “What’s the blood? Human blood?” She didn’t get a clear answer other than the circular response that “the blood is the blood”.

Misaki gently touched the band like she was caressing a small, flat animal. The sad voice gave a faint gasp and told her, “Oh, thank you! That felt so nice. It felt like mama. I wish you could be my mommy! You have such a nice touch.”

Exuberantly, the other band girls chirped up and begged for the chance to be touched. Please! Just a little touch! There’s a nice lady who touches us sometimes. She’s the best! Everyone else hurts us. They wake us up or put us to sleep with angry hands and screaming blood. We just want a home. But could you touch us, please? A little touch.

Turning around swiftly, Ceri laid her arms across the table and delicately brushed against each and every one of the ‘girls’. The sounds they made with each fleeting contact was enough to break hearts. They squeaked softly and gasped in astonishment. She tried to keep each contact to about the same amount of time but accidentally lingered on some, so she opted to go back for second rounds to make everything fair. It was such a small thing to touch the little bands, but it clearly meant the world to them.

When she was done, they happily chatted about a dozen incoherent things, mostly excitedly celebrating human touch with one another. Ceri looked at her hands and then down at the bands. She asked, "They never touch you?"

They all immediately chirped up and reminded her that there was a nice lady who came every so often and touched them just like Ceri, but she told them that she had to be careful because those in charge at "the company" would do awful, terrible things to her if they found out what she was doing.

Ceri leveled her head and tightened her jaw as she squeezed her hand into a fist. She looked at Misaki and said what they were both thinking: "Fuck the company. I wanna rip their throats out and see them bleeding to death, crying all alone."

They asked the wristbands to please tell them more about this blood process. Most of them hesitated, whispering to one another with anxious uncertainty. The blood is burning. The blood is pain. That made sense with the blood Misaki dripped on her wristband. All the little ones could elucidate was nightmarish torture. They all seemed traumatized, though most resisted tears. Something the other girls who came did brought screams with blood.

Considering she picked up the wristband girl because she wanted to try placing it on her wrist, Misaki figured it was a good enough time as any to experiment with whether that did anything. As she shifted the little thing around, she urgently chimed in to say, "When you have me, I have to stop talking. That’s the time to listen until I am born. But… I don’t think I can connect with you. I’m not allowed; I can feel that from you. I’m not totally sure why. Sorry… I guess I won’t see my mom again."

Hearing that, Ceri immediately offered to take the wristband from Misaki and put it on her own arm. It was worth a try. But the little wristband gave Ceri a different warning, saying, "You’re like me. Wow! You’re a big sister! What’s it like being human? I’m really looking forward to it. I know that if I’m strong enough, I’ll see mommy and we’ll live together in happiness. But I can’t go with you; I’m only supposed to learn from regular humans. Sorry. I really wish we could be friends… Maybe we’ll see each other again when I’m all grown up. That would be nice. You should probably put me back where I have to go. I don’t wanna get in trouble. I just want to do my best."

Misaki wanted to put the little thing back, but she realized there was one more thing she could learn about. Blood, in the same way she had used it against her wristband.

Ceri sternly shook her head. No way. But Misaki carefully reassured her that she wasn’t going to actually going to put the blood on the wristband, just see if proximity triggered a reaction. She felt pretty confident from what she had seen that their blood was extremely likely to have the same effect as what they tested at the resort, but with the nightmare fuel of hearing little girls screaming in agony. Again, Misaki reassured her that she was going to be delicate and extremely careful.

She made her explain and apologize ahead of time to the little wristband girl. The stress in her words escalated, and all the wristbands in the vicinity got on edge as well. Little traces of the tangled puff and slimy blackness shuffled and shifted across the table without leaving the cautious confines of their bands.

The first problem was that nothing in the lab area appeared remotely sharp. Considering everything, she suspected that was by design. But they had to have some method of drawing blood, considering the sadistic experiments they did on these things.

Probing the nearby tables revealed other protective bubbles, likely with other sets of wristbands. So many, so lonely. Finally, Misaki found a side drawer with a used lancet. The design was similar to the ones that Guy’s mom used to check her blood sugar. The device that it sat in was not present, which made Misaki groan in frustration. She would have to jab it into her skin manually. It was nowhere near the best option, especially considering it had someone else’s dried blood on the tip. Before she thought of using that in a test with the wristbands, she’d scrubbed off the remains with a yukata sleeve.

Gritting her teeth and puffing a breath, Misaki slapped the little metal spike against the tip of her thumb without thinking about it, which hurt like nothing she could describe. It got stuck, and she had to pluck it out while on the verge of yelling. The aching afterward felt more like she’d torn a muscle than poked some skin. Unfortunately, nothing actually came out, despite what felt like a Grand Canyon plunged open in her most sensitive digit. She really didn’t want to have to do that again.

Squeezing her finger enough that it practically lost all the healthy anime shading didn’t summon even an infinitesimal mark of red. She growled and focused intensely on the spot. To her surprise and shock, the mesh blackness that she summoned to protect and comfort Ceri actually swelled out of and around the jab she’d given herself. It intercepted the blood before it left and pushed the little collections back into place. Was this a dark entity? It couldn’t be the same variety as the wristband girls. Her mesh blackness has no fear or hesitation about blood, although it was her own. Maybe that made a difference.

She had no idea what to think—just another mystery. Although it made her wonder again about that strange little moment when she didn’t bleed at the Travel Anywhere office despite having quite a paper scratch, which usually caused a mess over the slightest thing. She bled next week, on the train with Yuka.

But that happened before she ever encountered that weird little spiky furry thing at home. More questions, ever more questions.